Bank Employees Are Playing Hooky En Masse

Despite offering workers a variety of incentives to return to the office, employees at financial institutions are simply ignoring new requirements to come into work on hybrid schedules, Reuters reported.

On average, employee attendance at banks is 47%, with companies averaging about a day less of actual attendance compared to expected attendance, according to a survey of 80,000 workers conducted by Advanced Workplace Associates (AWA). When hybrid companies demand two, two or three, or three days of attendance, employees only showed up to work for 1.1, 1.6, and 2.1 days on average.

“For employers, they need to understand the tide has turned,” Scott Dobroski, vice president of corporate communications at job-searching site Indeed told The Washington Post. Across all industries, six in 10 employees who worked exclusively remotely, alongside three in 10 hybrid employees, said they were “extremely likely” to look for other work if they were not offered the opportunity to work remotely, according to a Gallup poll released Aug. 31.

“When we came out of lockdown and regulations were relaxed, people tried coming into the office … and when they got there they found all they were doing was being on Zoom calls,” Andrew Mawson, managing director of AWA, toldReuters.

Employees are concerned with the elevated cost of food and fuel, and employees who are used to saving money on commutes are heavily incentivized to continue staying away, Reuters reported. Incentives like free meals, revitalized common areas and other amenities have been insufficient in luring them back.

Six in ten employees whose report that their jobs are capable of being done at home say that they would prefer to work in a hybrid setting for the long-term, according to Gallup. As of Aug. 29, office occupancy was just 43% across a survey of major U.S. metro areas, according to office security firm Kastle.

“We think that it’s going to continue to rise, but it probably is not going to go back to pre-pandemic levels in the near future, if ever,” Kastle Systems chairman Mark Ein told The Washington Post.

In August, 80% of people who searched for a job on job-search website Flexa, which lets users customize what type of work they are looking for, preferred “remote” or “remote-first” work, up 33% compared to March, Reuters reported.

“It is a high risk strategy for firms to be too directive [sic] in terms of telling people what they have to do,” Peter Hogg, cities director at property consultant Arcadis in London, told Reuters.

AWA did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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