JPMorgan’s Tower Sends a Clear Message: Work-As-Life Is Here to Stay

Hungry bankers fear not — employees at JPMorgan’s new headquarters in Midtown Manhattan will be able to get a midnight snack. Or a 3 am snack. Or a 6 am snack.

The 60-story, amenity-packed skyscraper at 270 Park Avenue is scheduled to open this year, just as Wall Street beats the return-to-office drum louder than ever. With a gym, massive food hall, and 24/7 grab-and-go option, the building reinforces a long-standing law of Wall Street: work and life are often indistinguishable. And if you want to be successful, that work happens face-to-face, either in a conference room or the in-house pub.

Headhunters, consultants, and management experts told Business Insider that JPMorgan seems to be telegraphing its cultural expectations as much as the Wall Street hours with the new building. Representatives for JPMorgan declined to comment.

“There’ll be people there at night, there’ll be people on the weekends, and if you’re there, you might as well take advantage of some of these things,” said Alan Johnson, founder of compensation consultancy Johnson Associates, adding that Wall Street has long had an “obsession” with people putting in face time.

JPMorgan has been a leader of the wider return-to-office push. It called nearly all employees back to the office full-time earlier this year, and CEO Jamie Dimon has blasted remote work, saying it can negatively impact a company’s culture.

“Don’t give me this shit that work-from-home-Friday works,” Dimon said during a leaked employee town hall earlier this year. “I call a lot of people on Fridays, and there’s not a goddamn person you can get a hold of.”

Robin Judson, founder of recruiting firm Robin Judson Partners, said the culture could send two messages: “It can say, ‘We really care about the people who work for us,’ or it can say, ‘You’re going to be working all the time, so we’re going to make sure that you don’t have to leave your desk for very long.'”

An ‘explicit recognition’ of long hours

While many of the food options are open on weekdays from 6 am to 5 pm, the grab-and-go Park Ave Express is open 24 hours, seven days a week, according to screenshots of the bank’s intranet obtained by Business Insider.

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Meridith Dennes, managing partner of the headhunting firm Prospect Rock, said that bankers know the realities of the job when they opt in. With the building, JPMorgan is acknowledging the nature of the work.

“That’s part of the gig,” Dennes said. “That’s why you’re being paid so much. If you don’t want to sign up for that, then don’t do it. There are plenty of people who want that, and they’re trying to make it as pleasant as possible.”

Even with that mutual understanding, banks have faced something of a reckoning in recent years over the working conditions for young employees, and JPMorgan was among the companies to impose new policies last year to protect against burnout.

The 24-hour nature of some aspects of the new headquarters, however, cements the expectation of long hours in the office.

“We have seen some react to that kind of approach where there’s food available all the time and coffee available all the time as a bit of an encouragement to always be at the office,” said James Atkinson, vice president of thought leadership at the Society for Human Resource Management. Without guardrails, he said, it can harm mental health.

“It’s an explicit recognition that that’s not changing,” Peter Cappelli, a professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, said of the building and bankers’ hours. “They’re not moving to 9-to-5 work, and neither is anybody else.”

Why the amenities matter

If employees are going to be at work up to 100 hours each week, they’ll likely enjoy having a swanky building, the experts told Business Insider.

Yet as lavish as a building is, it’s not the biggest factor for people when deciding where to work. Atkinson said that his data suggest coworkers, pay and benefits, and work environment consistently rank higher in people’s priorities.

That doesn’t mean, though, that there’s nothing in the $3 billion investment for JPMorgan. As much as some employees might love the Wellness Center or trendy restaurants, the new building will likely help the bank enforce its culture of choice.

“It’s a little bit of looking out for the employee and a little bit looking out for the company,” Johnson said. “I think on Wall Street that’s kind of always the balance.”

And part of looking out for the company means looking out for the in-person work environment, at least according to Dimon.

For Cappelli, the sit-down dining options, including a pub, suggest that employees should actually spend time with each other. That, he said, sends an even stronger message about what JPMorgan wants than the building’s hours.

“I think the reinforcement of, ‘We want you together to collaborate and talk to each other’ — I think that’s a much bigger signal.”

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