Credit Suisse CEO Thomas Gotstein said Monday that the bank’s employees will never return to full-time office work.
“It’s unrealistic and not what the employees want,” he explained. In an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the chief executive said the bank was “trying to encourage people to come back, but it ends up counterproductive if forced.”
Gotstein added that he would never go back to the times when most employees were in the office and that the mandatory rate is currently around 60%, but actual figures show that only 37% of Swiss bank workers are physically in the office.
The CEO of Credit Suisse joins growing voices in Europe who have supported flexible work policies to attract and retain new employees in companies. In fact, several European companies such as BNP Paribas, BBVA and the Swiss group UBS have already made changes to their remote work policies, allowing employees to work from home.
“We will never go back to the old numbers of 80 to 90 percent of people in offices,” Gotstein said.
The official also mentioned other factors to this new reality: “In certain cities, such as London, where the commute to work is complicated, people prefer to stay at home one or two days a week.”
“Looking at the weekly stats, we see that on Mondays and Fridays we have very few people in the offices, while on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays the number is much higher. I think this is a trend that is here to stay,” he concluded.
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