Santander famously took a liberal approach to work-from-home compared with its peers.
While the likes of JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley called their employees back to the office, the Spanish bank touted its flexible work policies saying, “Flexibility is here to stay.” Its U.K. CEO even proclaimed that he took his job because it allowed him to live in and commute from Harrogate to the office in Milton Keynes (about 163 miles and three and a half hours of travel) on select days of the week.
But now, Santander is walking its WFH policy back in the U.K. by requiring its staff to be in the office 12 days a month—equivalent to three days a week.
The bank sent a memo to roughly 10,000 office-based employees last week, as first reported by The Times, noting that they had until the end of the year to comply with the new rule. The policy will affect those who work at Santander’s offices, not bank branches—including about 4,500 of those who work in Milton Keynes.
Santander currently asks its staff to work two days a week in one of its office locations.
The Spanish-owned bank is the latest among many companies to ramp up their return-to-office call, although it’s been relatively late in joining other banks. In 2021, when concerns around contracting COVID-19 were still fairly high, banks like JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley were among the first to call their employees back to the office in the U.S.
Santander’s WFH policies
For Santander, one of Europe’s largest banks and a champion for WFH and flexible work policies, the crackdown feels somewhat ironic. The bank set up its Milton Keynes headquarters in March 2021, about a year after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. At the time, it also announced that it was making flexible working arrangements as people had reaped “significant benefits” from it.
Santander’s staff clearly didn’t shy away from making the most of its flexibility policies, as its pre-pandemic office occupancy was at 60%—much lower than what central business district offices are seeing.
In May, Mike Regnier, the bank’s U.K. boss, said that he didn’t see daily in-office attendance as “vital.” He also emphasized the need for “good culture in the banking sector.”
“Had it not been for COVID, I wouldn’t have accepted this job,” he told The Guardian. “I wouldn’t have wanted to be away from home five days a week in London. That wouldn’t have been good for the family or for me.”
To be sure, Santander still offers flexibility in how staff use their 12 in-office days.
Just like other banking majors who called their employees back to work, Santander sees in-office attendance as “vital in supporting and developing our people, especially those at the earlier stages of their career,” according to the memo it sent out.
A Santander spokesperson told Fortune that the company “opted, even before COVID, for hybrid work, which allows [us] to take advantage of the best of both models: remote and face-to-face, based on flexibility, which is what teams value most.”
Is WFH ancient history?
Working from home was the norm a few years ago, but companies in tech, accounting, and more, have broken out of that bubble to redefine the extent of flexibility they would entertain.
Last week, Big Four firm PwC said it would track employees to make sure they were in the office or with clients, just like it tracks their billable hours. British smartphone company Nothing said it wanted its staff to be in the office five days a week after calling remote work incompatible “with a high ambition level.”
As companies try to bring back the old normal, employee pushback on RTO policies has become more rampant. Still, London leads the pack among global financial capitals in the number of employees working remotely, with just 62% of them going to the office at least thrice a week.
U.K.-based employees might be entitled to other forms of flexibility beyond remote work. The government is considering granting them the right to work compressed weeks, i.e., squeezing the regular number of hours into four working days.
Update, Sept. 9, 2024: This article has been updated with a comment from Santander.
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