Finance looks to the post-Covid work routine

For an indus­try built on a hard­core office cul­ture, bank­ing and finance has quick­ly adapt­ed dur­ing the Covid pan­dem­ic. As the sec­tor races back to “nor­mal”, can it retain some of the ben­e­fits of flex­i­ble work­ing?

Across sev­er­al finan­cial insti­tu­tions, those at the top of the C‑Suite are clear that remote work­ing isn’t right for the sec­tor; some have indi­cat­ed their inten­tion to have most employ­ees back at their desks for most of the week. 

Ear­li­er this year, JPMor­gan Chase & Co boss Jamie Dimon said work­ing from home “doesn’t work for those who want to hus­tle”. UK Chan­cel­lor Rishi Sunak, a for­mer employ­ee at bank­ing giant Gold­man Sachs, sug­gest­ed young people’s careers may be hurt by not being in an office.  

How­ev­er, with many banks in the US now push­ing back return dates due to the Delta vari­ant and some UK insti­tu­tions mov­ing more slow­ly than planned, for­mer Bar­clays Group CEO Antony Jenk­ins believes the sector’s “skil­ful lead­ers” must acknowl­edge three things to ben­e­fit from the lessons of the past 18 months. 

“Accept and acknowl­edge that the world has changed. Lis­ten to what your col­leagues say and iden­ti­fy what is crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant for each part of the busi­ness,” Jenk­ins says. “This is a learn­ing expe­ri­ence for every­one, so we need to be pre­pared to mod­i­fy as we go.”

Jenk­ins is now the founder of glob­al bank oper­at­ing sys­tem com­pa­ny 10x Bank­ing. He says the con­cept of work/life bal­ance in his indus­try was often dis­cussed before the pan­dem­ic but sug­gests things are dif­fer­ent now that “every­one has expe­ri­enced” this new fron­tier. 

“Less time com­mut­ing, more flex­i­bil­i­ty, less busi­ness trav­el,” he adds. “As economies rebound, employ­ers see the job mar­ket becom­ing more com­pet­i­tive. Those that offer flex­i­bil­i­ty will have the edge over those that don’t.” 

Finas­tra has put such flex­i­bil­i­ty into action. The company’s 9,000 employ­ees around the world can now choose to do two days in the office and two days from home, with the remain­ing work­day spent wher­ev­er they pre­fer, says Sharon Doher­ty, its chief peo­ple and places offi­cer

Office advantages

How­ev­er, research sug­gests that younger work­ers may be par­tic­u­lar­ly impact­ed by a lack of time in the office. They often learn on the job from more expe­ri­enced col­leagues and have been forced in some cas­es to work in cramped home-shar­ing con­di­tions. 

Find­ings from Robert Wal­ters – which recruits for the bank­ing and finan­cial ser­vices sec­tor – show 75% of work­ers aged 18–26 see the work­place as their num­ber one source of mean­ing and social con­nec­tion. A major­i­ty of Gen Z work­ers (54%) say they’re like­ly to leave their employ­er with­in 12 months if a work­place cul­ture doesn’t return.

Lamar Dal­las, 27, has been work­ing at PCB Part­ners for two years. He was work­ing at home two days a week before the pan­dem­ic but is now remote full-time. Dal­las says this has been a pos­i­tive thing, with the 10 hours a week he saves on com­mut­ing mean­ing he can reach his career goals faster. 

How­ev­er, even­tu­al­ly return­ing to his pre­vi­ous bal­ance would be best, Dal­las says.

“Noth­ing can beat going into an office, see­ing my col­leagues, build­ing that rela­tion­ship with them and meet­ing clients with a live inter­ac­tion. That’s the way busi­ness should be con­duct­ed.”

Many younger work­ers have told Simon Rod­er­ick, man­ag­ing direc­tor of finan­cial recruiters Fram Search, that they want to be in an office set­ting. That’s espe­cial­ly true for those just start­ing out in their careers. 

Rod­er­ick believes hybrid work­ing has the poten­tial to be “con­fus­ing and slight­ly chaot­ic” when it comes to sched­ul­ing meet­ings and col­lab­o­rat­ing. How­ev­er, “firms will need to give hybrid work­ing every oppor­tu­ni­ty, as those who per­fect this way of work­ing will have an advan­tage. They will be able to look fur­ther afield for skills and it may help those with child­care respon­si­bil­i­ties to bal­ance work and home life.”

The City is work­ing hard on diver­si­ty, he adds, so will wel­come the poten­tial abil­i­ty to tap into dif­fer­ent tal­ent pools. 

Time for change

Rod­er­ick has two decades of expe­ri­ence in finan­cial recruit­ment. In the future, firms will need to deliv­er a good office expe­ri­ence to attract the best tal­ent, he says, and must give care­ful thought to bal­anc­ing the inter­ests of all team mem­bers. 

“Days in the office will need real pur­pose and I think we’ll see them being used for teams to bond,” he says. “Per­haps lunch­es will take on more mean­ing. Equal­ly, the spaces teams work in will have to be more infor­mal and com­fort­able, with those firms who are able hav­ing more lifestyle-enhanc­ing ser­vices onsite.”

A lack of flex­i­ble work­ing could adverse­ly impact tal­ent attrac­tion, some sug­gest, while many believe that banking’s rep­u­ta­tion for over­work, tox­i­c­i­ty and burnout must now change. Indeed, recent research for Koa Health found 36% of organ­i­sa­tions in the UK finance indus­try say men­tal health is not a cul­tur­al pri­or­i­ty. 

Kevin von Neuschatz, group CEO at Stan­hope Finan­cial Group, says the change must be led from the top. The bank­ing indus­try has oper­at­ed with dra­con­ian work­ing mod­els for years, he says, and the Covid pan­dem­ic has forced through some long-over­due changes. 

“The rise of chal­lenger brands, Fin­tech com­pa­nies and flex­i­ble work­ing is already ush­er­ing in an era where grad­u­ates can learn and devel­op with­out being chained to an office desk for 14 hours a day,” he adds. “The old school burn-and-churn cul­ture is com­plete­ly out of step with the mod­ern world and at odds with attract­ing and retain­ing gen­uine tal­ent.”