Executives at Europe's Largest Bank Told to Try 'Hot Desking'

'Banking giant HSBC has confirmed that top managers in its Canary Wharf HQ have lost their offices and will have to hot-desk on an open-plan floor,' reports the BBC, noting it comes as the bank 'pursues plans to shrink its office space by 40% in a post-pandemic shake-up.'

Boss Noel Quinn said the whole bank was embracing 'hybrid working' and he would no longer come in five days a week. 'My leadership team and I have moved to a fully open-plan floor with no designated desks,' he said on Linkedin.

Up to now, senior managers have been based on the 42nd floor of the building in east London in their own private offices. But in future, they will be jostling for workspaces two floors down, while their old offices have been transformed into client meeting rooms and other communal spaces. Mr Quinn told the FT that the old arrangement had been 'a waste of real estate', adding: 'Our offices were empty half the time because we were travelling around the world...'

He added that most staff at the bank would be able to work part-time from home in future. 'A minority of roles can be done wholly remotely. We estimate, though, that most of our roles could be done in a hybrid way — and that includes myself and the executive team of the bank...'

Other firms in the sector have announced plans to embrace hybrid working as employees signal their desire to commute less. One big UK employer, the Nationwide building society, has indicated that it does not intend to force people to return to the office if they have been successfully able to work from home during the pandemic. It said about two-thirds of its 18,000 employees had been working from home for the past year.

Forbes has more context:
[HSBC's] Quinn wrote in a LinkedIn post, 'Having spent more than a year working from home, the last thing I want is to be stuck in an individual office when I return to the building.' The chief executive said, 'I want to have people around me, to reconnect with colleagues and friends and to be able to speak to them informally...'

Having a prime location in a prestigious city is highly expensive and a drag on earnings. If the costs of office space could be dramatically slashed, the banks would see significantly more free cash flow. The other driver is the acknowledgement that many people want to work part or full-time remotely for a variety of reasons. The last year served as a test case, which showed that it's possible to conduct business with a large segment of the workforce being remote...

HSBC is not alone in shedding properties in Europe. Lloyds Bank is also moving toward a hybrid model. This entails a 20% cut in office space over the next two years. The move was made after about 77% of Lloyds' 68,000 employees said they wanted to work from home for three or more days a week.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.