EY is urging its junior staff to get back into the office more often to sharpen the softer skills that industry executives believe will become increasingly important as the use of artificial intelligence grows.

The Big Four firm has not made any formal changes to its working from home policy, but confirmed that partners are reminding younger consultants about “the importance of meaningful time spent together” in the office for their personal development.

The consensus in the industry is that interpersonal skills are becoming a key part of the job, with AI equalising the technical work and data that firms can produce. Senior partners believe that how staff present that work and interact with clients will determine which firms win new business, and argue that those skills are best learnt in person from more experienced colleagues.

“This change we’ve seen in the last few years where people have set up their lives to be … at home a lot is just not the route to success in the world of AI,” Sayeh Ghanbari, EY’s UK head of consulting, told the FT.

She added that, with AI increasingly doing more of the routine work, human consultants will “have to be good at what we’re really good at, which is to be human. To build a career in consulting and develop all of those human skills … you cannot do that through so much remote work”.

A spokeswoman for EY said that although the firm would not be changing its “longstanding approach to flexibility”, spending more time with colleagues in the office can “strengthen how our people develop their skills, build relationships and serve our clients”.

Echoes across white-collar Britain

Leaders in other white-collar industries have made similar arguments for in-person working. Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JP Morgan, has long said that younger bankers need to be in the office to learn professional judgment from their seniors, while Satya Nadella, chief executive of Microsoft, believes the rapid rise of AI has made working at the office “even more important”.

The banking sector has moved furthest in that direction, with Santander tightening its hybrid working rules for UK office staff and Lloyds ordering employees back at least two days a week.

The pandemic cohort problem

The big accounting and consulting firms noticed that the generation of school leavers and graduates who joined during the pandemic were slower to develop the softer skills than previous cohorts of new starters, who had not been forced to work from home.

In response, firms have put on training sessions to show junior workers how to present work and speak with clients. More senior staff, who may have lost some of their sharpness while working from home, have also been encouraged to attend.

Even so, most firms remain reluctant to update their hybrid working policies while rivals are still offering flexibility, and hybrid working remains entrenched across much of the UK workforce. For now, EY’s message to its juniors is encouragement rather than mandate: the office is where careers in the age of AI will be built.