Yahoo Finance Barclays Managers Warn Some Staff to Prepare for Five Days a Week in Office
(Bloomberg) -- Barclays Plc is among Wall Street firms weighing whether to require scores of workers to commute to company offices five days a week, as US brokerage regulators tweak rules for supervising work at home.
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A more stringent in-person mandate may only affect operations overseen by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be named discussing the internal deliberations.
The talks already are advanced enough that some managers have started warning employees to prepare to commute daily, one of the people said. Last month, Truist Financial Corp. announced a similar five-day policy that will soon impact some of its Wall Street staff.
Finra has announced a slate of changes that are set to take effect in coming weeks — the latest twists in how watchdogs are adjusting to the work-from-home era. When the pandemic erupted and forced much of the industry to log on remotely, authorities initially loosened rules requiring firms to constantly surveil staff. In the months and years since, regulators have adopted measures that they say allow firms to continue letting people work outside offices, if they take certain steps.
“The Finra rules are actually intended to give firms more flexibility, not less, and to allow registered folks to work from their homes,” said Kayte Toczylowski, Finra’s head of member relations and education, said in an interview on Wednesday. “There is no rule requiring registered persons to work from an office five days a week.”
Read More: Wall Street’s Five-Day Office Rules Aren’t Our Fault, Finra Says
Changes taking effect soon will require brokerages to list some home offices in regulatory records. New rules will also set up regimes for certain home offices to satisfy requirements for periodic workplace inspections.
Some firms might conclude that the additional compliance hurdles aren’t worth it and summon affected employees back full time. But not all may reach the same conclusion.
Executives at Deutsche Bank AG, for example, have been examining Finra’s requirements and expect that the firm can remain compliant with very limited impact on its work-from-home protocols, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.
Representatives for Barclays and Deutsche Bank declined to comment.
The majority of financial firms still let workers log on remotely at least part of the week. A survey in early 2023, showed that only 20% of financial-services companies required full-time office attendance. But since then, firms have taken more steps to tighten up their rules.
Last month, Truist told its investment-banking staff that they must work from the office every weekday from June 1. The bank will require other people commuting on a hybrid basis — most of its workforce — to go into the office four days a week starting later this year. The company’s “best work comes from being together,” a spokesperson said at the time.
--With assistance from Lydia Beyoud.
(Updates with regulator’s response in fifth paragraph.)
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