Just 14% of City workers consider the office to be their main place of work, according to a YouGov survey commissioned by Bloomberg.
Almost half (44%) of UK finance workers polled said they favoured a hybrid working arrangement, while 42% said their home was their main workplace.
When asked what they felt to be the ideal number of weekdays to work in the office, the most popular response was two, cited by 29.9%. A slightly smaller proportion (28.9%) said they felt just one day in the office was ideal.
The survey was published just as Office for National Statistics figures revealed that regular working from home has tripled since before the pandemic.
The TUC’s analysis of the ONS labour force survey for the final quarter of 2021 found that 22.4% of workers were working from home regularly in 2021, up from 6.8% in 2019 and 12.1% in 2020.
Hybrid working
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Responding to the survey findings, Lord Mayor of London Vincent Keaveny, who is an ambassador for the UK financial services industry, said that there was still a “broad consensus to get people back three to four days a week”. He pointed to roles such as trading “where hybrid working doesn’t work”.
A number of investment banks such as Goldman Sachs have put employees under pressure to come back to the office full time.
Financial services employers may need to rethink the role of flexible and hybrid working in their attraction strategies, however.
Bloomberg also found that – among workers in the sector who plan to leave – 56.4% quoted quality of life as the main driver for that decision. About 30% said working in finance had impacted their mental or physical health.
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