Goldman Starts Electronically Monitoring Employees In Battle Over Office Attendance

After a Thursday report that Goldman Sachs bankers are threatening to quit over a requirement that they report to the office 5 days a week, a new report reveals the lengths to which management is now going to convince their staff to comply.

According to Business Insider, Goldman has ratcheted up the pressure – and is now electronically monitoring who’s coming in and out of the office, according to multiple sources.

Those who refuse to come to heel face disciplinary action, starting with a call from a manager or team leader, or being marked as out of the office.

Four current Goldman staffers told Insider that the firm is taking attendance by monitoring swipes into and out of its offices, including at its 200 West Street headquarters. A recent report from the New York Post, citing posts by Goldman employees on the workplace forum Blind, said some managers are also using spreadsheets to keep tabs on which teams are in the office the most. -BI

“They’re definitely watching the swipes,” said one Goldman investment banking analyst based in New York. “If you aren’t in more than three to four times a week, you’ll get a call from the business unit leaders reminding you of the expectation to be in the office.”

According to another employee, and asset-management analyst, his entire unit was told at a meeting that they were being tracked, and could be penalized for late attendance.

“We were told that from now on, every time we scan into the office, it’s going to be tracking when we are coming in,” said the anonymous employee, who added that Goldman wants people to swipe in between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. or face consequences.

“If you’re not in by that time, it doesn’t count that you were scanned in for the day,” said the analyst. “It definitely is an uneasy feeling. Knowing you’re being tracked kind of feels like you’re going back to high school and they’re taking attendance.”

Last month, CEO David Solomon called long-term stay-at-home working conditions “an aberration” which the firm would seek to “correct as quickly as possible” – a policy that some junior bankers initially scoffed at. Solomon told Fortune Magazine, however, that “The secret sauce to our organization is, we attract thousands of really extraordinary young people who come to Goldman Sachs to learn to work,” adding “Part of the secret sauce is that they come together and collaborate and work with people that are much more experienced than they are.”

That said, as the New York Post reported on Wednesday, a group of Goldman Bankers have reportedly threatened to quit based on complaints on the company’s internal messaging board, Blind.

Junior bankers at Goldman Sachs are threatening to quit over demands that they show up to the office five days a week as the pandemic wanes — and some gripe that their bosses have been quietly checking attendance.

What’s more, a few of the workers have even bandied about the “b word” – “bullied” – claiming that their bosses have browbeaten them by quietly checking attendance and using these records to penalize employees who don’t do a sufficient job of showing face.

One anonymous source griped that the policy flies in the face of management’s insistence that it has been trying to put its “people first”. Another went even further, lambasting managers armed with attendance spreadsheets as “f***king b*llshit.

“In GS, the top management says it’s employees choice but internally they track which team has most in office attendance,” one Goldman employee wrote on the corporate message board Blind, which verifies users’ place of employment with the help of their company email accounts.

“It’s f**ing bulls**t from top management saying they are people first,” the miffed Goldman underling added. “In our team meeting, manager showed us the excel where the MDs are tracking which department has not met in-office commitments,” the staffer wrote, referring to the high-level managing directors.

Apparently, when managers determine that a junior employees’ attendance hasn’t been sufficiently high enough, they use their unofficial “attendance sheet” to “bully” that employee into showing up.