How can we bring employees back to the office, when the phenomenon of teleworking, for those professions that can do so, has become commonplace since the pandemic? This is the headache that many international companies face. The question being a source of intense reflection, the American bank Citi may have found the solution in the United Kingdom, and is playing between the carrot and the stick.
With 240,000 employees worldwide, including 12,500 in its offices in London, Edinburgh and Belfast, the company, which has “firm expectations in terms of office attendance”, intends to reduce the bonuses of employees who do not come In its head offices at least three days a week. Bloomberg had also revealed in early August that Citi was going to put a “data sweeping per person, per day and per place”. Time clocks have also been installed and employees are required to present their badges to show that they are present. While this is a general measure, the mechanism is particularly targeted at employees who are absent regularly, “repeat offenders”.
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But this monitoring process is not new in the banking sector: other companies like Lloyds, HSBC, JP Morgan have stepped up their efforts to bring their staff back to their premises. A study by accounting firm RSM UK showed that 33% of companies allow their employees to work remotely outside the UK. The phenomenon has been described as “working from the beach”.