Featured in Forbes Business Council
Written by Alaa Pasha, CEO of Maptician
When financial giants like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs tightened their return-to-office requirements last year, the goal was to rebuild culture and cohesion. But the reality has been less inspiring. Across the industry, firms are seeing that rigid attendance policies are driving away precisely the people they most need to keep.
A study on return-to-office brain drain analyzed more than three million professionals across finance and technology, showing the risk clearly: Organizations that imposed strict attendance rules experienced higher turnover, longer hiring cycles and lower engagement. For a sector built on human expertise and client trust, losing that experience is not simply a people issue—it’s a business-continuity issue.
Unlike my earlier piece focused on law firms, here I’d like to draw on new research on the tech and financial-services sector, where the dynamics, risks and workforce realities are fundamentally different.
What follows are five actions I think every financial-services leader should consider to preserve talent while still meeting the need for collaboration and accountability.
1. From Location To Coordination
Flexibility is not about choosing between home and office; it is about creating coherence across both. I find that the most progressive financial-services leaders are redefining flexibility as coordination: aligning when teams are together, where collaboration happens and how the workplace supports those moments.
Technology now allows that coordination to be managed intelligently. Platforms that integrate scheduling, seat booking and utilization analytics can show exactly how a firm’s real estate is being used, who overlaps with whom and where bottlenecks occur. Instead of blanket policies, leaders can make evidence-based decisions that balance presence and productivity.
When flexibility becomes data-driven, employees experience structure without rigidity and choice without chaos.
2. Purposeful Presence Builds Culture
Culture is not rebuilt by counting badge swipes. It is rebuilt by giving people a reason to be in the same room. Tools that visualize occupancy and meeting patterns can help firms plan collaboration days intentionally, ensuring that when employees come in, they intersect with the colleagues and mentors who matter most.
The impact of this kind of flexible planning can lead to spontaneous mentorship, faster decision-making and the sense of belonging that rigid schedules rarely deliver. Proximity without purpose creates fatigue; while purpose with flexibility creates energy. Technology can provide leaders with the visibility to design for the latter.
3. Protecting Expertise And Equity
The financial services industry depends on continuity. Losing experienced professionals—particularly women and mid-career specialists—disrupts client relationships and slows execution. The earlier-cited research on return-to-office mandates found that inflexible schedules disproportionately drive out these groups.
I find that technology-enabled flexibility can mitigate that risk. Predictable collaboration windows, transparent scheduling and equitable access to space help all employees plan their weeks and their lives. For firms measured by client confidence, retaining institutional knowledge is both humane as well as strategic.
4. Measuring What Matters
For decades, workplace decisions were guided by intuition: more desks meant more productivity. Now leaders can quantify the relationship between space, engagement and cost. Utilization dashboards reveal which offices or departments are over- or under-used, how meeting density correlates with performance and where to optimize your footprint.
This visibility transforms real-estate strategy from guesswork to governance. Firms can reinvest savings from underused space into technology, training or employee development. These are the kinds of improvements that compound value rather than inflate expense.
5. The Future Workplace Is An Ecosystem
Financial-services firms are not returning to the old normal; they are designing a new operating model. I predict that offices will increasingly function less as daily destinations and more as cultural infrastructure—spaces that host collaboration, community and client engagement. Technology will provide the connective tissue linking these hubs to remote and hybrid work.
The leaders who get this right will stop debating policy and start managing performance. They will use workplace analytics the way they use market data: to allocate resources intelligently and respond to trends before they become risks. Flexibility will no longer mean uncertainty; it will mean control through insight.
A Smarter Equation For Work
The evidence is clear. Firms that cling to mandates are losing talent and paying for unused space. On the other hand, firms that embrace data-driven flexibility are gaining stability, culture and cost efficiency. The difference is not only in attitude but also in instrumentation.
The future of work in finance will not be defined by where employees sit but by how effectively organizations orchestrate. Flexibility done right is not a retreat from discipline; it is the modern expression of it.
