Citi, Barclays, HSBC ramp up full-time return to office push

Major banks Citigroup (C), Barclays (BCS), and HSBC (HSBC) are pushing for more workers to return to the office for five days a week, according to Bloomberg. Yahoo Finance Reporter David Hollerith outlines each bank's latest RTO (return to office) mandate for a number of employees and their pivots from previous work-from-home (WFH) corporate policies.

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This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Video transcript

Well, we want to turn now to the financial sector.

A number of banks are shifting the rules around remote work.

That's according to a report out from Bloomberg here with those details, Yahoo Finance's David Holler, David Shana, Citigroup, HS BC and Barclays Bank have each se sent word to uh more of their staffers in recent days um asking them to return to the office five days a week.

Now, Citi has, has been, has asked about 600 more employees um to uh change its policy and to return to the office.

HS BC has asked about 530 Barclays in their in their case is asking um thousands of of their uh staffers in the investment bank across the world.

And that's according to Bloomberg.

So this is notable, this is a notable change given that uh these are banks that are known for having more flexible work from home policies.

And one major part of this uh reason for these, all these memos and change in policies has been uh a rule from uh what's the US S main uh watchdog on uh brokers, Finra Fi A is reinstating a policy that it had sort of sunset it during the pandemic, um which is going to be uh asking uh for period workplace um inspections.

Um And that's going to, that, that sort of creates a sticking point to where uh these banks can either kind of register work from home offices or, or uh their employees offices in some cases, um or they can ask the workers to come back in um now because they're periodic, um banks don't really want to mess with this.

And, and as, as Bloomberg has reported, it's become a bit of a situation where they, they'd prefer to be safe than sorry and also could end up costing them a lot more if they were ha ha had to deal with all these uh work from home offices.

Um It's also interesting given that uh you know, bank in particular is an area where uh the return to work uh working remote um sort of topic since the pandemic has been pretty divisive.

Um JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs have both been notable leaders and uh returning back to the office.

Um In other cases, smaller firms have, have been able to attract more talent uh by essentially using work from home policies as um an extra perk.

So this is an area that's always kind of changing, but it goes back to the fact that there are so many different kinds of jobs in financial services and even in banks.

Um And because of that.

You know, you have the situation where some are highly regulated and therefore it's much easier for them to be managed in office.

Yeah.

Look, I, I, I'm old enough to remember when the perk was, hey, you don't have to wear a suit every day.

And that was one of the talent acquisition type of strategies that they put out there.

So, it's been interesting to see how this is continued to navigate uh be navigated among the banks with return to office.

A heavy topic of contention among the employee and employer relationship.

David, thanks so much for breaking this down.

Appreciate it.