Real estate use “inefficient”
Deutsche Bank calls employees back to the office
February 16, 2024, 3:13 p.m
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Germany’s largest financial institution wants to see most of its employees at company desks again in the future. A stricter home office regulation is aimed particularly at management staff. Is the era of mobile working at banks coming to an end?
Germany’s largest bank is tightening the attendance requirement for its employees. This is reported by Bloomberg, citing an internal letter. From June onwards, managers at Deutsche Bank will have to be in the office four days a week, all other employees three days. The generous rules from the corona pandemic will then no longer apply. So far, the majority of employees have been allowed to work from home for three days, and members of management can freely decide where they work. A spokesman for Deutsche Bank confirmed the new regulation to the finance agency.
In the future, the combination of employees working from home on Friday and Monday will be expressly prohibited. However, a single home office day on one of the two days is permitted, a company spokeswoman explained to ntv.de. The reason for the new regulation is that the use of real estate is “inefficient” and the employees’ presence times must therefore be distributed more “evenly” throughout the week. The letter was signed by bank boss Christian Sewing and Rebecca Short, who, as a member of the board, is responsible for day-to-day business, costs and personnel.
With the stricter requirement for more office presence, Deutsche Bank is following the large investment banks in the USA, which ordered some of their employees back to their company desks months ago, some of them permanently. The US investment bank Goldman Sachs was the most consistent in saying goodbye to home offices. The 6,000 employees have been working in the office five days a week for around six months. Other Wall Street firms have also taken measures against working from home.
Back to the office, or bonuses gone
In September, for example, the American Citibank threatened its 12,500 employees in London with pay cuts if they did not appear at work in person at least three days a week. Citigroup’s UK offices were the first to inform employees that their attendance would be monitored. When you enter the offices, your employee ID cards are recorded digitally. JPMorgan has instructed management to come to the office every day.
The fact that German banks have so far given their employees more freedom is also due to the lack of staff. It is currently unclear how Deutsche Bank’s new home office regulations fit in with bank boss Sewing’s savings plans. According to statements from last year, office space in Frankfurt, among others, is to be reduced by 40 percent by the end of this year. Sewing’s goal is to reduce spending by a total of the equivalent of 1.7 billion euros over the next two years.
The pandemic upended working habits, and not just at banks. In many companies, almost the entire workforce moved to home offices within a very short period of time. Since the pandemic has subsided, they have been looking for the right presence strategy for the future.