Banks don’t want to inspect your home office, so they force hundreds of employees to come to work 5 days a week
Banks’ work-from-home rules are changing and some of the industry’s biggest companies want to bring employees in five days a week rather than compliance efforts—including regular inspections of workers’ homes.
During the pandemic, the brokerage industry watchdog, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), suspended regulations on workplace inspections to help banks allow their employees to work at home easier. The agency is now returning to pre-pandemic requirements for workplace monitoring, meaning some home offices will have to register with the regulator and have remote inspections at least every three years under a new pilot program.
Now, some banks are the most flexible with their work-from-home policies, incl Citigroup, Barclaysand HSBC decided that complying with the new regulations was not worth the effort, Bloomberg reported. Between them, the three banks are bringing thousands of their workers back to the office five days a week.
Citigroup said it would require 600 employees previously eligible to work from home to come into the office five days a week, although in a statement it said most of its employees could still work from home. away two days a week, per store. Barclays cited “new management policies” in a memo as part of the reason why it is bringing thousands of investment bankers around the world back to work five days a week in person. And HSBC’s 530 employees in New York may also need to change their remote working habits soon, said Mabel Rius, head of human resources for the US and Americas. Bloomberg.
Michael Roberts, CEO of HSBC US and Americas, speak Bloomberg that while the bank will comply with FINRA regulations, he wants employees to want to return to the office.
“What we don’t want to do is force people back outside of the order,” Roberts told Bloomberg in an interview.
Part of engaging in-person employees means listening to why they love coming to the office. Roberts said the bank has incorporated much of that input New US headquarters in New York City’s Hudson Yards, to “facilitate people’s return.”
“We will adjust to FINRA rules. We will make sure that whoever needs to be there five days a week will be here five days a week, but I don’t want to order people back,” Roberts said. “I want them to come back because they want to come back.”
Meanwhile, several other giants in the industry, including Bank of America And Goldman Sachsdirectly assigned tasks 5 days a week.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, perhaps the most famous CEO on Wall Street, has long time ago Criticize remote work. Last year, the bank instituted a mandatory return-to-office policy for senior employees, and Dimon said earlier this year that about 60% of the bank’s employees work on-site full time.
For its part, FINRA counters that its innovative policies are the reason banks have stricter work-from-home policies. The regulator said in a statement that some of its rules are no stricter than before the pandemic and that it has, in fact, adjusted some rules, including allowing remote workplace inspections. FINRA said those changes “give member firms greater — not less — flexibility to allow qualified registrants to work from home.
“FINRA has seen recent statements from firms stating that new, stringent regulations from FINRA will require them to return their workforces to the office full-time,” it wrote in the statement . “This is not right.”
A version of this story was first published on Fortune.com on May 25, 2024.
