Three-Quarters of City Firms Reviewing Their Office Space Needs

With a rise in working from home schemes, and the positive feedback from organisations, 75% of city firms are reviewing the office spaces they are still maintaining.

The most recent CBI/PwC financial survey reveals that most banks and insurance firms are reviewing their office requirements and assessing their current spaces. According to the financial survey, 74% of companies are discussing whether or not they should repurpose or reduce the size of their office spaces.

After polling 133 financial services firms, 88% responded that the COVID-19 pandemic switched gears on working from home sentiments. The choice of remote working is now a highly valued option for workers. Contrary to the earlier positioning of the government to bring workers back to offices, most firms believe that over 90% of their workers can accomplish their jobs without being in their office.

Branch staff of high street lenders such as Lloyds Banking Group, Barclays, and Metro Bank have continued physically reporting to their offices throughout the pandemic. To that effect, they are essential workers. But the rest of these organisation's bank employees have been working remotely during COVID restrictions.

Meanwhile, other firms like the FTSE 100 fund manager, Schroders, have permanently installed work from home arrangements for all their staff. They are no longer required to return to their offices full time even after the crisis has passed.

Wall Street lender JP Morgan, on the other hand, cites the negative impacts of working from home. The firm points out that there is a small drop in productivity during Mondays and Fridays. They also worry for their younger staff who should be receiving hands-on mentorship. The company is looking at an upwards of 30% of their employees or almost 257,000 staff to work remotely.

The September CBI/PwC survey report stated that 71% of firms were investing in IT systems to ensure a better remote working experience. But the same survey also shows that city firms will make some serious cutbacks in light of economic uncertainty due to Brexit and Covid-19.

Metro Bank will be renovating it's free branch spaces by installing office desks. The company has found the remote working setup to be successful and would only have employees report physically two or three days a week.

Lloyds is experimenting with less costly ways of housing their employees. With over 90% of their employees working from home, they are considering changing their empty spaces in branches to be redesigned to rooms for their staff. Lloyds has also announced that they are cutting 865 jobs all over the UK in an effort to streamline parts of their business.