UK banks tighten up on work from home

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Lloyds Banking Group is launching a charm offensive including free food to win over staff required to spend at least two days a week in the office from Monday, as banks call time on the work-from-home era that became the norm after the Covid-19 pandemic struck.

The shift, timed to coincide with a typically busy month in capital markets after the summer lull, is part of a broader productivity push by Lloyds that has met with stiff resistance. But it is becoming the norm for the country’s crucial financial services industry to harden its stance against what some employers see as a productivity-sapping habit of remote work.

“We can only [be competitive] if we collaborate effectively . . . which is difficult, if a team are below strength on certain days of the week, or if some key people are only available at times when the majority are not,” Lloyds chief executive Charlie Nunn said in a staff briefing in July, according to a transcript seen by the Financial Times.

Last month, US bank Citi told UK workers it would start checking they attended the office at least three days a week. “We have firm expectations for office attendance and know that the majority of our employees are compliant with their requirements. As necessary, we hold colleagues accountable for adhering to their in-office days,” the bank said. HSBC also announced a tighter policy over the summer. “From October hybrid working at HSBC UK will mean colleagues spending typically three days a week in an office or with clients,” it said.

Goldman Sachs, whose chief executive David Solomon once described homeworking as “an aberration”, has asked staff to come in since lockdown measures were loosened in 2021. 

Lloyds’ broader efforts have generated a concerted pushback from some employees. An overhaul of the bank’s “compressed working” policy, which predates the pandemic and allows staff to work full-time over fewer days, has sparked a grievance from the Unite union. That grievance, published in August, received 3,649 signatures, which the union said was the largest ever in the financial services sector and represents about 5 per cent of Lloyds’ workforce.

Under the updated terms, new employees will be able to be work on this basis only on a temporary basis, excluding cases such as long-term illness, while the bank is encouraging but not mandating a move to regular working hours for existing employees, according to people with knowledge of union discussions.

“We need everyone in this together, working at pace, if we are serious about transformation and change,” Nunn said at the briefing in July. “Otherwise we are holding ourselves back,” he said.

By contrast, NatWest, Lloyds’ main domestic rival, allows some staff to attend the office just twice a month.

On jobs review platform Glassdoor, 46 per cent of Lloyds respondents said they approved of Nunn, compared with 86 per cent in 2022. Internal documents show the bank is aiming for a 90 per cent approval rating by 2025.

Sharon Doherty, Lloyds’ chief people and places officer, said the new arrangement provides “an enhanced range of flexible working policies for our people that will help us succeed in driving our ongoing strategic transformation plan”. The bank also says it is offering greater flexibility for customer-facing staff such as those working in retail branches and call centres.