Investment banks and other leading financial service firms will never return to the office full time, Credit Suisse CEO Thomas Gottstein told the World Economic Forum in Davos.

"It's unrealistic, and it's not what employees want," Gottstein said, the New York Post reports. "We will never go back to the old 80% to 90% of people in the office."

Only 37% of Credit Suisse's bankers are now back full time in the office, following the past two-plus years of COVID-19 lockdowns, Gottstein said.

It is more practical for banks in large cities where a majority of employees commute long distances to permit workers to work from home on Mondays and Fridays, Gottstein said, and this is borne out by the statistics Credit Suisse sees among its own employees.

"If you look at the weekly statistics, Mondays and Fridays are pretty low," the Credit Suisse CEO said. "Then, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, they are back in the office — and I think that's here to stay."

With unemployment in the U.S. now at 3.6% and the labor market tight, the banking industry is competing for talent, prompting global banking giants such as BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and UBS, to give their employees more flexibility.

Goldman Sachs bankers threatened to quit earlier this year over demands they return full-time to the trading floor and the office. Only 50% to 60% of Goldman workers are currently working full time in the office, according to David Solomon, Goldman Sachs CEO.

For its part, Credit Suisse last year announced a "maximum flexibility" policy for its 13,000 Swiss-based employees, to leave it up to them when to work in the office.

The flexible, and in many cases required, work-from-home policies that businesses around the world adopted during the pandemic, may have changed workplace policies, if not forever, at least for the time being.

As Gottstein says: "In certain cities like London, where commuting is painful, people prefer to stay from home one or two days [so that] they don't have to commute.

"We are trying in a soft way to encourage people to come back, but it's counterintuitive if you push too hard."