With the year drawing to a close, another large financial services company is planting a flag in the ground on the future of post-pandemic work for employees.
American Express AXP Amex Flex showed its more than 63,000 employees on Monday. The plan has three core planks for the company's workforce: virtual, onsite and fully hybrid.
Offsite workers will be in the office 2 - 5 days a week, and be limited to those roles that need to be in the office or to workers who want to back in full-time. Hybrid workers will be in the office 3 days a week on average. And fully virtual workers will not be required to be back in the office. Which team decides the best schedule for everyone.
Amex's new working model goes into effect on Jan. 25 at the earliest and comes after the company conducted extensive research about how employees preferred to work.
Our traditional way of working has changed. The office is no longer the only place where most coworkers can effective get work done, as we have proven throughout the last 18 months. We want to build on the progress we ve made working remotely, including how we became more agile and efficient, gained greater flexibility to manage our professional and personal lives, and leveled playing field for colleagues across band levels and locations, says American Express chairman and CEO Stephen J. Squeri in a blog post explaining the new plan.
Amex's friendlier approach to post-pandemic work life runs somewhat counter to other big banks.
JPMorgan JPM and Goldman Sachs GS have been the most aggressive about wanting employees back in office. Meanwhile, Deutsche Bank's DB employees have begun to transition to its eye-catching new headquarters in New York City.
Perhaps one of the more open-minded institutions — other than Amex — is Citigroup C under its CEO Jane Fraser. The new CEO has said employees need to be in the office at least two days a week, but has allowed workers to choose their own schedule.
The number of dads that came up and said, It s so neat because I can work from home and therefore I can get to the kid s school play, Fraser said in a recent Bloomberg BusinessWeek interview. Fraser added output from employees has remained solid despite the hybrid work environment.
It s refreshing because you get rid of some old anachronistic cultures or ways of doing things and unleash this energy, Fraser said in the interview.
On 23 Oct 2015, both Smith CEO Jane Fraser and American Express Chairman and CEO Stephen J. Squeri will speak at Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit on Oct. 25.
Brian Sozzi is an editor at Yahoo Finance and anchor of the large. Follow Sozzi on Twitter BrianSozzi and LinkedIn.