Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, the annual office return warning, usually issued around Labor Day, has become something of a rite of passage for bankers. The early-September holiday that unofficially marks the end of summer in the U.S. has become a benchmark in 2020 for banks trying to adjust to their initial return to the office.
As the year has progressed, the holiday has become a time for banks’ front offices to tout the benefits of in-person collaboration, with some of the more proactive banks following New York City guidelines and simply dropping the requirement that employees show proof of COVID vaccination.
Last year, banks issued cryptic “warnings” about attendance rules, or “instruction letters” that threatened disciplinary action against employees who ignored them.
If office hardliners were looking for a way to get employees back to their desks, they might have found it. Industry regulators began temporarily relaxing workplace oversight early in the pandemic but that is set to expire in the coming weeks, and even banks with a reputation for flexibility are ringing the final bell for the school holidays.
Citibank is asking about 600 U.S.-based employees who were eligible to work remotely to return to the office full time, the bank said in a statement to Bloomberg on Thursday.
Starting June 1, Barclays will require thousands of employees in its investment banking division around the world to either come into the office or travel to meet with clients during working hours, citing “new regulatory policies,” according to a memo seen by Bloomberg on Thursday.
““Being together in the office fosters innovation, collaboration and a stronger culture,” Cathal Deasy and Taylor Wright, co-heads of Barclays’ investment banking division, wrote on Thursday, adding that group heads can allow employees to work flextime occasionally if needed.
“We remain committed to flexible working and recognize that there will be times when working from home is necessary,” Deasy and Wright wrote.
Meanwhile, HSBC is discussing location options with its roughly 530 New York City-based employees (about half) and is working to allow as many employees as possible to work from home, Mabel Lius, the bank’s head of human resources for the US and Americas, told Bloomberg.
“We will adapt to FINRA’s rules and allow anyone who needs to come in five days a week to come in five days a week, but we don’t want to tell people to come back,” Michael Roberts, CEO of HSBC’s U.S. and Americas, told Bloomberg. “We want people to come back because they want to come back, they feel productive and they feel happy.”
HSBC doesn’t appear to be suffering from a shortage of office goers.
“Right now, our overall attendance rate is at 80 percent,” Roberts said of the New York office opening on Thursday. It’s also a positive that HSBC officially opened its new Hudson Yards offices on Thursday.
The bank began redeploying staff at its New York branch in February and has since doubled its New York office attendance, Roberts told Bloomberg, according to Reuters.
“We’re running out of space fast and, in fact, we just acquired additional space in this building,” he said.
The bank plans to relocate its traders there in June, Reuters reported.
To satisfy FINRA rules, some bank employees’ home offices must be registered as “residential monitoring locations.” The regulator launched a pilot program in July to remotely inspect those locations every three years, according to guidance on its website.
“There is no rule requiring registrants to work in an office five days a week,” Kate Toczyrowski, FINRA’s head of member relations and education, told Bloomberg.
Regulated businesses can continue to allow employees to work from home as long as they comply with the rules, she said, adding: “We understand this is a process that will take time.”
But for some banks, the costs of compliance may outweigh the benefits to the company of employees working remotely.
Deutsche Bank executives, for example, are using FINRA’s guidelines as a guide and expect the bank will be able to comply with them and that the impact on its remote-working policies will be limited, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.
But Deutsche Bank was also one of the few banks to tighten its office-working requirements this year, and from June Managers must come into work four days a week, while other staff must come into work at least three days.Additionally, the bank is prohibiting employees from working remotely on Monday after working remotely on a Friday.
Truist will also require its investment bankers to work in the office every day of the week starting June 1, and its hybrid employees (the majority of Truist employees) will have to work in the office four days a week. It starts this fall.
Despite this, FINRA’s Toczyrowski said banks are moving to enact in-house regulations that go against the spirit of the guidelines.
“FINRA’s rules are really intended to give firms flexibility, not restrictions, and to allow registrants to work from home,” she told Bloomberg.
