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HSBC is considering a global mandate to force employees back to the office at least three days a week, as the bank seeks to reconcile a patchwork of policies across its sprawling operations.
Chief executive officer Georges Elhedery has discussed a group-wide return to office policy with executives across the bank’s businesses, according to people involved in the deliberations, with some managers expressing frustration that many employees are still mostly working from home.
Discussions are ongoing and no decision has yet been made, said a person familiar with the talks. HSBC declined to comment.
HSBC, which employed 211,000 full-time equivalent staff at the end of last year, is an outlier among large global banks, most of which have already introduced more stringent hybrid working requirements in a drive to get employees back into the office.
At HSBC, policies about how often employees are expected to be in the office have so far been determined by the senior management for each different line of business. HSBC UK has already told employees they are expected to spend at least 60 per cent of their time either in the office or with clients, or risk having their bonus cut.
If adopted, the new rules would align HSBC with other UK lenders such as Barclays, which introduced a minimum office attendance requirement of three days a week earlier this year.
But they would stop short of the harder line approach adopted at Wall Street banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, which have demanded that all staff go to the office five days a week.
Other companies beyond the financial sector are also curbing their working-from-home policies. UK department store John Lewis has asked some of its commercial team, spanning designers and buyers, to work three days a week in the office, in stores or with brands and suppliers to improve collaboration. The changes do not apply to its parent company, which also owns the Waitrose supermarket chain, and has a flexible working policy in place.
At HSBC, senior bank executives have been eager to return to pre-pandemic work life and bring employees back to the office but the mandates have contributed to a desk shortage that runs into the thousands.
Hybrid working was initially seen as a positive by HSBC’s former chief executive, Noel Quinn, who said a reduced property footprint would cut 40 per cent from its global head office costs.
The bank announced in 2023 that it would leave its headquarters in Canary Wharf and move into a building with about half the space near St Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London.
HSBC originally planned to move all employees into its new headquarters in 2027, including approximately 500 staff located at Queen Victoria Street, according to a person involved in the plans. It also planned to downsize its Mayfair office, which houses HSBC’s private bank and is among its most expensive leases, by giving up several floors.
But HSBC may end up keeping those offices as it tries to find desks for thousands of employees, the person said. The bank is also in the process of further job cuts, which will help reduce the number of desks needed, they added.
HSBC is also considering renting office space in Canary Wharf at 40 Bank Street, an option that has raised eyebrows internally after the bank’s announcement that it would leave the area.
“Having cut the umbilical cord, you kind of want to go,” said a senior executive.
Additional reporting by Laura Onita in London
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