Santander increases its RTO mandate and burdens its UK CEO with a 160-mile job

The Spanish bank promoted its flexible working while firms like JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley called their employees back to the office, saying “flexibility is here to stay.” The UK CEO even explained that he took the job since it allows him to live in Harrogate on chosen days of the week and commute from there to Milton Keynes (about 262 kilometers and a three-and-a-half hour drive).

But now Santander is relaxing its home office policy within the UK and requires its employees to be within the office 12 days a month – that’s three days per week.

The bank sent a memo to about 10,000 office employees last week, as first reported The timesthat they’ve until the top of the yr to implement the brand new rule. The rule affects those that work in Santander offices, not bank branches – including about 4,500 of those that work in Milton Keynes.

Santander currently requires its employees to work two days per week at considered one of its office locations.

The Spanish bank is the newest of many firms to extend the variety of employees returning to the office, even though it is joining relatively late in comparison with other banks. In 2021, when concerns about COVID-19 contagion were still quite high, banks like JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley were among the many first to call their employees back to the office within the US.

Santander’s WFH guidelines

For Santander, considered one of Europe’s largest banks, which supports home office and versatile working policies, the tough approach seems somewhat ironic. The bank is headquartered in Milton Keynes in March 2021a few yr after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. At the time, the corporate also announced that it might introduce flexible working arrangements because people had received “significant benefits” from them.

Santander employees clearly weren’t afraid to benefit from their flexibility policies, with office occupancy rates at 60% before the pandemic – much lower than in central business district offices. see.

In May, Mike Regnier, the bank’s UK boss, said he didn’t consider each day office attendance to be “vital”. He also stressed the necessity for a “good culture in the banking sector”.

“Without COVID, I would not have taken this job,” he said the guardian“I wouldn’t have wanted to be away from home in London five days a week. That wouldn’t have been good for the family or for me.”

Of course, it still offers employees flexibility in arranging their twelve days within the office.

Like other major banks which have called their employees back to work, Santander considers office presence to be “vital to supporting and developing our employees, particularly those at an early stage of their careers,” an organization memo said.

Santander representatives didn’t return immediately AssetsPlease leave a comment.

Is home office a thing of the past?

Just a couple of years ago, working from home was the norm, but firms in technology, accounting and other industries have broken out of that bubble and redefined the extent of flexibility they will afford.

Last week, Big 4 firm PwC said it might monitor employees to make sure they’re within the office or with clients, just because it monitors their billable hours. British smartphone company Nothing said it wanted its staff to be within the office five days per week, after calling distant working “incompatible with high levels of ambition”.

As firms attempt to return to the old normal, worker resistance to RTO policies is growing louder. Yet London leads global financial capitals when it comes to the variety of employees working from home, with only 62% of them going to the office at the least 3 times per week.

UK-based employees could also be entitled to types of flexibility aside from teleworking. The government is considering giving them the best to compressed working weeks, that’s, reducing regular working hours to 4 working days.