Société Générale SA will allow its French staff to work remotely for up to three days a week. Just recently, Deutsche Bank AG also came up with a flexible remote work plan among other large international banks.
Société Générale has signed an agreement on the remote work plans with its domestic union representatives. According to Frédéric Oudéa, Chief Executive Officer, Societe Generale (in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Thursday) this move will,
“help us to further improve the attractiveness of Societe Generale as an employer.”Frédéric Oudéa, Chief Executive Officer, Societe Generale
In the U.S., most lenders like JPMorgan Chase & Co and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are looking at return to the office in the coming weeks.
“We will not come back to something similar to before the pandemic. We will adapt our way to work, and I think it’s the right balance.”Frédéric Oudéa
ING Groep NV is taking a similar step and wants to allow employees to work from home for about half the time basis location, labor laws and other factors’ as expressed by Steven van Rijswijk, CEO, ING Groep NV in an interview.
“We started to experiment with that but quickly had to let go because the second lockdown started. We will resume those experiments as soon as we can. We do believe that in the future people will work more from home obviously than they did in the past.”Steven van Rijswijk, CEO, ING Groep NV
80% of ING’s staff is working from home while some are gradually returning to offices in Australia and Asia while Swiss private bank Lombard Odier plans to maintain a system of rotation at the workplace.
“We won’t go back to being the same organization as we were before. We will have more work from home, and probably more virtual interactions than we had before.”Patrick Odier, Senior Managing Partner, Lombard Odier
Outside France, the return of SocGen’s employees to office will vary depending on the evolution of the pandemic in that region.
European lenders such as UBS Group AG and HSBC Holdings Plc are paring back office space while they plan on new ways of working going forward.
Lenders in the U.S. are wanting to bring staff back to the office in order to preserve their corporate culture, as vaccination rate is the highest in the U.S. right now.
While the whole world is looking at new or improved ways of working going forward, the plans are highly dependent on the industry and region. Every country and even states/cities are coming up with new hybrid or remote models to suit their circumstances and wants the best. With time we will see more evolution as new remote work plans emerge.
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