The banks on the frontline of the work-from-home battle

financialpost.com:

As many professional workers have settled into now well established hybrid work patterns, banks and other financial services companies have stood out in recent weeks for the battles they are still having with staff.

Several lenders have upset employees by demanding they return to the office more days a week, with workers complaining of draconian measures, such as monitoring their attendance and threats of disciplinary action for non-compliance.

A stark divide has also opened up between some Wall Street lenders, some of which — Goldman Sachs Group Inc., for example — require bankers to be in the office five days a week, and their European rivals, which are more relaxed about working from home.

“It’s only my team leader who is required to be in five days a week, but the message is clear that we should all do the same,” said one banker at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in London, which has asked its 2,000-odd managing directors to be in the office full time, while more junior staff can spend up to two days at home.

“This is coming straight from the top and everyone knows the implicit rules.”

At the other end of the scale, staff at the United Kingdom’s Natwest Capital Corp. are expected to work in the office just twice a month, with 95 per cent adopting a hybrid approach and staff coming into the office on average once or twice a week. Rival British bank Lloyds Bank PLC requires staff to be in only twice a week.

Research by Scoop, which tracks hybrid working, shows 93 per cent of British finance companies offer the perk compared with 87 per cent of their U.S. counterparts.

Drilling down into the data on banks, 18 per cent of lenders globally offer full workplace flexibility, where staff can be at home five days a week; 50 per cent