JPMorgan CEO hates on remote work, Britain takes on flexible working, and work-life balance

Matt is back to talk about the growing divide in workplace flexibility across different sectors of the workforce. We dive into new research showing how Britain's frontline workers are being left behind in the flexible work revolution, creating a "two-tier" system. We'll explore Randstad's 2025 Workmonitor report revealing that workers now prioritize work-life balance over pay, and discuss JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon's stance against remote work (spoiler - he really f*ing hates it!). 

Connect with Matt:

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Articles:

Inequality in flexible working dividing Britain into ‘two-tier workforce’
It's not about the money. Employees now choose work-life balance over pay
‘I’ve had it’: JP Morgan boss rails against Gen Z in expletive-laden outburst

Chapters

• 1:24 Inequality and Flexible Working Dividing Britain into Two Tier Workforce
• 7:46 It's not about the money. Employees now choose work-life balance over pay
• 13:52 ‘I’ve had it’: JP Morgan boss rails against Gen Z in expletive-laden outburst

Transcript

Stacey Nordwall (00:00):

Welcome to Toot or Boot, where each week we talk about news related to HR and the world of work. We toot the news we like and we boot the news we don't like. I'm your host, Stacey Nordwall, a serial joiner of early stage tech companies as their first in or only HR person. And joining us today we have Matt McFarlane. Welcome back, Matt.

Matt McFarlane (00:22):

Hey, great to be back. Excited to do this again. Yeah,

Stacey Nordwall (00:25):

I'm excited. And if people did not hear you previously, I know we talked a lot about how you are the LinkedIn compensation guru right now. Tell people a bit about yourself if they didn't hear you on the previous episode.

Matt McFarlane (00:40):

Yeah, I actually found out people call me the comp guy, so I guess that's a nice thing. It means that I'm obviously talking about the right things. So yes, my name is Matt. I'm the director of foundation. So foundation helps startups get their compensation practices in place and build practices that are clear, fair, and competitive.

Stacey Nordwall (00:59):

All right. Well, we love that It's very clearly needed and I think with the economy as it is, I think you have a lot of people coming to you to talk about their comp philosophies.

Matt McFarlane (01:12):

Always.

Stacey Nordwall (01:13):

All right, so let's dive in. We have an article from The Guardian. It's titled, inequality and Flexible Working Dividing Britain into Two Tier Workforce. So the recap here is that a report by time-wise, a social enterprise that helps businesses with flexible working policies, indicates that frontline workers in Britain have not seen changes in their working hours or shift patterns unlike office-based workers. They said that for workers in sectors like retail, healthcare and construction, the world of work remains frozen in time. And that this is creating a two-tier workforce with office-based employees being better able to manage work-life balance because of the flexibility they have. So they're asking that the government work to ensure that more workers will benefit from the changes in the employment rights bill making its way through Parliament and said that they've demonstrated through a pilot study that flexible working can be introduced into sectors like construction, which are on site and complex due to scheduling by introducing flexibility through other things like different working hours. What did you think?

Matt McFarlane (02:18):

Yeah, I think on the whole, this is positive. I mean, it's not a new issue. I think we've known ever since the real rapid acceleration of remote work and flexibility due to covid that this kind of two-tier workforce that they refer to is just a reality of the ways in which we work. I think for a lot of these frontline workers, construction, healthcare, aged care, things like that, you have to be on site to do your job. That being said, as the article mentions, there have been these, what do they call them, like demos essentially, where they've been able to test and see flexibility work effectively. And I think that where that can be done, we should absolutely look at introducing it. I think as well as that we're seeing this interesting space in the economy where a lot to do with due to ai, but white collar roles and sort of knowledge working professionals are not seeing the demand that they did at the start of covid for new jobs.

(03:20):

And it's a very interesting, very difficult and competitive jobs market at the moment for people in those sorts of roles. Contrary to frontline workers where we are seeing construction and again, aged care, healthcare is exploding in demand. And I think for me, I love thinking about supply demand economics with labor, it obviously shapes a lot to do with compensation, which is an area I focus on a lot. There's huge demand for these people and these experts that are working in these frontline roles. And I think there's a real case for change here to use that as a wedge to drive and introduce greater flexibility within the workforce. My experience typically with these sorts of industries is that they tend to be a little bit more traditional around workplace expectations. And so I think that's probably been a lot to do with the reluctance of employers to introduce flexibility is that it can be hard. It's another thing to manage. I get that, but at the end of the day, flexibility is a positive thing and if anything, it makes it easier for them to introduce more people to the workforce because of those that then enables to participate because of flexibility. So for me, this is nothing but positive. I think it's nice to see this change come about and see those in frontline roles, try to get some of the flexibility that us in white collar roles have maybe benefited from unfairly in the last few years.

Stacey Nordwall (04:40):

Yeah, I mean, same for me. It was a toot. I think, again, I think I've said this in the past, a lot of the folks that I talk about are work in tech, our office workers. That's been my experience predominantly. And so I always have it in the back of my head that, okay, the things that we're talking about really only apply to a subset of employees because anyone who isn't sitting in an office, the things that we're, when we're talking about hybrid or remote work, these aren't their realities. These aren't things that can apply to them. And so it did make me curious about, well, what are the other kind of options for flexibility that we can offer for people? Because all of the things that we talk about as to why we don't want to go back into the office five days a week because of caregiving responsibilities or commuting or all of these different things.

(05:33):

These are all things that frontline workers and workers in these industries are having to deal with and what conversation are we having around that? So I think it is really important to draw this out more and to think more about where are the flexibilities that can be offered and almost, I don't know that this is almost the opposite of flexibility, but even the fact that a lot of times when it comes to retail or service work that their schedules are completely unknown. So that is what can we do maybe even to make it their work more known, which I don't know the opposite of flexibility, but just what are the things that you can give people to make it easier for them to balance that work in life is kind of the thing I'm trying to get at

Matt McFarlane (06:24):

A hundred percent. And I haven't been in a frontline role like hospitality, et cetera for a long time, but I remember when it used to be a lot more, there was a roster that was put up on the wall and you kind of had to note that down and it was set in stone, and if you couldn't work a shift, you had to find a replacement. Technology has come so far and I've seen so much in these sorts of workforce planning tools that are available now where really flexibility shouldn't even be a problem. I've seen some of the capabilities that it's giving to companies to be able to swap shifts or change things around or find people to share with or whatever it might be. So for me, I think a lot of the challenge that comes with introducing flexibility to these industries, I think to a large extent from my experience, and I'm saying this from someone who hasn't been in the industry for a long time, but from that experience many years ago, I feel like that's really worked to mitigate a lot of the issues that companies might have with introducing flexibility there.

(07:18):

So yeah, I think it's a no brainer to me. Again, I think it's just going to make it easier for them to not only introduce people into roles that they're probably struggling to fill at the moment, just given demand and just make it a more compelling, more enjoyable place to work.

Stacey Nordwall (07:35):

Yeah, I love that. And speaking of which, our next article from INC is titled, it's Not about the Money, employees now choose work-life balance overpay. The recap here, according to Randstad's 2025, work monitor report, work-life balance is the top priority for employees surpassing pay. They say that return to office mandates may push employees to leave their jobs, and that work-life balance has been a stronger determinant of employee satisfaction than pay even pre pandemic. They say that even more generally employees are looking at non-monetary aspects of their work. Its experience like flexibility, like having friends or community at work. What did you think? I'm assuming that as someone who thinks about compensation, you're also thinking compensation is not the only lever, obviously when people come to a job.

Matt McFarlane (08:32):

Yeah, I loved everything about this. I think I particularly like that Gen Z seemed to be the generation that are prepared to actually stand behind a lot of the platitude that I think my generation millennials talk about, but are very poor at implementing. We talk about worklife balance and rights and all this and that and find the job you love, all those sorts of things, but then we'll just subject ourselves to terrible things because I don't know why, but so Gen Z are just so much more prepared to just be like, I don't really like this, so I'm just going to leave and I'll just find another job and it'll be fine. And so I really like that kind of brash approach that they've got. I think on the salary side of things, and I think the thing I would urge to people is not that salary is not important, it's just that it's like there's an expectation there, but then actually the upside for them really is that work-life balance.

(09:26):

And I think it speaks to a bigger theme that I'm seeing emerge in that generation, which is that they really don't want that kind of nine to five for 60 years until they retire. And that whole dynamic and that whole model is really shifting. And another thing I'm seeing the emergence of is this kind of concept of micro retirements. We're actually between those two to three year stints at a job, they're actually looking to take these sort of sabbaticals. And so I think there's a learning there for a lot of companies that if you're wanting to retain this talent, don't let them get to the end of two to three years and go, actually, I'm just going to quit and go do something for six months. Give them the space to have those opportunities and retain that knowledge and expertise within the business and just find ways to make things like that work because it's clear that the traditional career path is not going to fly for these professionals anymore, and they have much greater expectations.

(10:18):

They've seen people, and I think we've all seen the tiktoks and the reels of people who are sitting in their car after finishing at five, six o'clock, and they're like I just entered the workforce, and I'm kind of confused about when people actually live their life. So how do I fit that part in? So we are seeing that notion really dominate the expectations and the EVP that these people are looking for. So I think we just have to, as companies, we have to find a way to make sure we're appealing to those things rather than trying to force that whole generation into the same model, which we've kind of put up with for a long time.

Stacey Nordwall (10:53):

Yeah, I mean, this is something I've said before too, is I think they're reacting to the fact that that model doesn't really exist anymore. Anyway. My parents worked at the same job for 30 years. They got their pension, they got their retirement. That doesn't exist for me anyway, and it doesn't exist for later generation. So why would I adhere to this same model of working when that's not the trajectory anyways, that's not the payoff. It just doesn't exist in the same way. So I think it makes a lot of sense that folks wouldn't be as okay with it. What are they buying into if the employer is not providing these kinds of things? What am I there for?

Matt McFarlane (11:44):

Yeah, the whole dynamic has changed. They don't see, I mean, they've come into a workforce where there's layoffs everywhere. That whole concept of single job for life is, you're right, it's completely fragmented now. AI's come on the scene and they're seeing all these entry level roles being destroyed by the fact that AI can do a lot of what those sorts of roles are doing. So they've got diminished opportunity there as well. They're really looking at, well, okay, well, let's try to maximize the life I'm having instead. I think as well, you often see, I mean, well, let's talk about the cost of living crisis as well. They're not seeing maybe the reward for climbing that ladder any anymore than what they did, and they're often seeing it at two greater cost to their work-life balance or their life in general. And they've just decided, actually it's diminishing returns. I'd rather stay in an individual contributor role at the level that I'm at rather than necessarily pursuing promotion, et cetera, and it's just not doing it for 'em anymore.

Stacey Nordwall (12:45):

Yeah, and I think going back to one of the things we started off saying is that everyone makes a complex set of evaluations when they decide they're going to work somewhere. Salary is one of those. Flexibility is one, vacation time, retirement, all of these different levers, and they all change at different points in your life. Different things become more important, less important. So when they say employees now choose work-life balance, overpay, I think for me, I just think, well, all you're really seeing is that people are always making these complex evaluations and that they're deciding which levers are more important to them. And it's not surprising to me that turns into something that looks more like work-life balance, overpay.

Matt McFarlane (13:37):

Yeah, maybe this will be the generation that actually sees it.

Stacey Nordwall (13:41):

Let's hope so. Okay. Well, speaking of Gen Z, we have from the telegraph, I've had it, JP Morgan boss rails against Gen Z in expletive laden outburst. So the CEO of JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon, who is all over the place lately, has been railing against remote work and apparently was recorded some not safer for work language about what he thought about remote work. And he's not a fan. He said he didn't care if people signed a petition to stay hybrid. He wasn't going to go back on bringing people into the office. And if they didn't like it, they could leave a memo. Staff received about it previously had said The benefits of working together in person are substantial and irreplaceable, and as we spend more time together at the more advantages we gain, what do you think about this so much in office? It's the advantages just exponential. And if people don't like it, they can leave. What do you think about this?

Matt McFarlane (14:50):

So there's a lot to dislike about this. There are some silver linings I think, to what I would say is otherwise quite a large cloud. But yeah, so I was really fascinated by this. It's obviously dominating the news at the moment. So I read a few articles about it, and from what I can understand it, the kickoff was that we're having this town hall. Someone from one of the teams basically asked the question asking if there was any lence because for his particular circumstances, all of his colleagues were in different offices and different locations. So in terms of sitting in the office with your teams, obviously no impact to this person. So he'd asked a pretty valid question by the sounds of it, based on a lot of these articles in their reporting. And he was essentially told clear out your desk, which being, is it this person being fired? I would say if that language suggests yes,

(15:45):

JP Morgan have kind of said, no, no, no, we were just saying go home essentially, and we'll sort this out. But I think it's quite clear that this person was at the very least made to feel that their employment was incredibly fragile by virtue of asking what in my mind is a valid question. And for me, that's something that is probably the biggest or one of the biggest issues with this is that again, you don't who wants a culture? I mean, maybe people do want this, but certainly I would never want to be in a culture where you feel uncomfortable to ask questions of your leadership team. That was issue number one for me. So whether you did or didn't fire the guy, you kind of made him feel like his job was under threat because he asked a question. I can guarantee you he's never going to ask a question again of the leadership team and potentially anyone else that was in that room is probably not going to do the same. Number two, the actual recording. And I found and listened to the recording as well, and Jamie Dimon really railed against the faith he had in his managers, in his leaders

(16:53):

In ensuring that his team and the broader organization could work effectively in this hybrid remote environment. And that for me is just another massive red flag. I mean, is everybody coming back to work a massive knee jerk reaction to the fact that he thinks that nobody's doing any work remotely? Sure. Is it valid, debatable that, I think for me, the fact that you've basically just said to every leader at JP Morgan, I don't trust you to actually be able to run a team the way that I think you should. I mean, that organization is tens of thousands of people. That's a lot of people who are suddenly going, okay, cool. My boss, my boss's boss's boss now thinks very little of me as a manager, which is another massive issue. And again, I don't think returning to the office five days a week is necessarily a solve for poor leadership.

(17:44):

God, I'll keep going because getting through the negatives with this, and then I'll talk about what I think are the positives naturally the way he spoke to his people. And again, the recording is there just is terrible, I think. Is there ever a time where it's okay to kind of yell and swear and whatever your employees known? Not really. Look, I think the case, and this is starting to step into the silver lining, there's a case from my perspective where being a passionate communicator is important, I think, and I think he probably was a little overcome with his passion for his dislike of remote work in this conversation. But then I think the flip side of this is, had a woman or a female CEO done the same thing, would they still be a CEO? Would it have been seen the same by the senior team or the board or anything like that if it had have been a female CEO?

(18:36):

And I'm inclined to say no. And so I think, again, it's something that he's obviously felt very comfortable doing because hey, I'm a guy and I can get away with it. So that for me was a negative. The things that I liked about this article, so one, I said he really clearly called out bureaucracy and the fact that decisions that seemingly should have been made more quickly and in a more agile manner were slowed down by bureaucracy, by all of these different committees and things like that. And I think what I liked about this is that he said, bureaucracy is essentially killing the organization. It's making these decisions really slow. But he actually, or in the article anyway, it seems that he took ownership of that and he said, that's my responsibility, that's my fault. And so he has kind of taken responsibility about that.

(19:25):

The other thing that I sort of liked about the return to office is that it was quite clear why he was doing it. Like he said, I've picked up the phone to call people on Fridays and I can't get onto anybody. I go to the office and on days that're supposed to be in the office and nobody's here. So I get, although I don't think it's the right solution, and we've talked about leadership and things like that, I kind of get why he's done it. And if anything, it almost gives a lot more clarity to the justification of the rationale behind why they've come back to the office. Then 99% of other Fortune 500 CEOs or any other CEOs who have brought people back where they've kind of just said, we're doing, it's, I think it was Amazon, was it, it's a gut feel can't, there's no data that says this, but I just feel like we work better. So at least he's kind of said, look, these are the two things that have driven me to make this decision. And potentially, and maybe this should have been the question that the person asked is, well, okay, if I pick up the phone on Friday, or if you see me in the office on the days we're supposed to be here, can we go back to being hybrid? I'm not sure, but at least there's some obvious rationale there. But yeah, so I've thought long and hard about this article, a lot of different opinions.

Stacey Nordwall (20:35):

I feel like you had a generous interpretation of some of the positives,

Matt McFarlane (20:40):

Maybe I'm trying to be even handed,

Stacey Nordwall (20:44):

So to call out some of the things that you mentioned about the bureaucracy. And so again, they didn't go into that too much. But from reading that, my thought was, but what does this have to do with being in office? In person? In office? Because that's a good point. The bureaucracy would still exist if that's your problem. And I thought also, I looked up how many employees they have. They have 300,000 employees. So again, when you're talking about being in office and you said you researched and the person asked exactly the question that I had in my mind, which was, when you have that many employees, everybody, you're not, the chances that everybody's co-located with their team and the people that they need to work with is pretty low. It's unlikely. So in that case, again, what is the benefit of being in person in office five days a week if that person who apparently was told to clean out their desk if your team isn't even there. So that was something again, where I struggle with this. The other thing is Morgan Williams, we were talking about this and she said, oh yeah, well, they also just have a new office and this is probably why.

(22:05):

So I go and look up the office. It is a 3 billion Park Avenue business complex that also has a vast art collection. So is that why people need to come back into the office? Because you just dropped three bill on headquartered that for me. I was like, okay, come on. And the other kind of snarky part of me was as an HR person who has been required to deliver a business case with data for every breath that I ever took and every dollar I ever asked for, I would love to see the business case. I would love to see a business case about return to work five days a week in office actually does what any of the CEOs say it does. I want the business case for it.

Matt McFarlane (23:05):

Well, I, I mean, I follow a lot of people like Nick Bloom, et cetera, who are very well researched in this space. And there isn't one, right? There's not a lot of evidence to suggest that that's there. I think to your point that in Jamie Dimon's mind, he's probably got 3 billion business case reasons for why this is going to work. He doesn't want to have that written off on the balance sheet. And I also wonder, I didn't know about the arch. I wonder if that's all one of his flaw.

Stacey Nordwall (23:36):

I hadn't thought about that either, but that's kind of funny. But yeah, I mean, obviously I was being snarky, right? There is no business case that supports it, so I just

Matt McFarlane (23:47):

No, and I think I was offended on behalf of whoever the chief people officer of JP Morgan is because I think whilst of course they're not responsible for leadership and they're not solely responsible for leadership or solely responsible for another thing that I think they mentioned in the article, which is that people are on Zoom calls and they're essentially distracted by messages and things like that, and they're not there for the purpose of the meeting, but I just think he's obviously got a really clear handle on the issues that he sees at the organization. I think the return to the office is the wrong solution, but I would be looking at, okay, well, what do we need to do to help leadership lead more effectively in some of the behaviors we are expecting? How do we help people have more productive meetings and hopefully fewer meetings and be doing that classic thing where 50 people get invited into a meeting, but only three people need to be there. There's so many things there where I go, you've actually got a pretty good grasp of the issues. You've just gone about this completely the wrong way, in my opinion, and you've acted like a buffoon in how you've kind of delivered it to people.

(24:50):

So I don't think there's no on balance of this. It's definitely a big boot because whilst there are a couple of things there that are interesting, and I think were positive in some respects, overwhelmingly, this is a bad news story from my perspective. And I mean, again, there's so much in this story. The fact that he said, I don't care how many people signed this petition. Granted, it only had, I think 15,000 out of 300,000 employees you were saying, but what a way to tell your people that you don't care what they think no matter what. Even if all 300, 290 9,999 or whatever, even if all of them sign this petition, you don't care what they think. It strikes me as odd for somebody who I thought was otherwise quite a commercial sort of maybe data led leader that we should maybe listen to different opinions and thoughts and things like that. But anyway,

Stacey Nordwall (25:46):

I am chuckling because I'm just imagining the next time they send out some kind of employee engagement or employee feedback survey, to your point, why would you fill it out? Clearly, this guy does not care what we think. So what is the point? Yeah,

Matt McFarlane (26:09):

Maybe it's another one of these underhanded things. I mean, I feel like we're in this era of CEOs. I know last episode we talked about Elon Musk and Doge. It's like we're in this era where, and meta as well, we're in this era where CEOs say one thing, but they mean another. Where it's like, I'm going to create this horrendous environment because hopefully it will mean people leave. I'm going to force people back to the office because hopefully it will save me some money on layoff fees and having to notify the government and things like that. And it's like,

Stacey Nordwall (26:37):

Yeah,

Matt McFarlane (26:38):

Sure, that will happen. But you've got to think about the kinds of people that are leaving. It's more often than not, and again, people like Nick Bloom have done some incredible research about this. It's more often than not your high performers, you have choice and people who require flexibility to participate in the workforce and all these sorts of things. So you just end up with a probably lower performing, more male, more white like workforce at the end of the day, which is, if that's what you want, if you want mediocrity, then great, go for it.

Stacey Nordwall (27:12):

That's great. No notes

Matt McFarlane (27:16):

And scene.

Stacey Nordwall (27:18):

All right. Matt, thank you again for joining so much. I've really appreciated your perspective on this. For people who want to learn from you, follow you, connect with you, how can they do that?

Matt McFarlane (27:30):

Yes. Great to be here. Definitely look me up on LinkedIn. That is where I am most active. I also have a newsletter where I interview heads of people and founders and other experts within the startup space and talk about everything to do with compensation and how you can implement practices as well. So that's called the Foundation series, and you can find that on my LinkedIn too.

Stacey Nordwall (27:51):

Alright, fabulous. Thank you so much.

Matt McFarlane (27:53):

Great to be here.