Citi decides that most of its employees will be able to work from anywhere during the last weeks of the year

Citigroup informed most employees that they can work from anywhere during the last two weeks of the year, as the US bank’s CEO, Jane Fraserbucks the trend among rivals to return office workers to their desks full-time.

The measure applies to those in hybrid roles, or those who already work remotely a couple of days a week, and workers have been told they must remain in their country of work to take advantage of the benefit, according to people familiar with the case. The bank gave staff a similar option in August.

Fraser has offered most employees the ability to work remotely at least some of the time on a permanent basis, and most Citigroup employees are expected to be in the office three days a week. The CEO has said that Wall Street’s insistence on a full-time in-person return to the office feels old-fashioned, she argued in an interview with Fortune last month that workers will “vote with their feet” on such policies.

“There’s a lot of value that you get out of being together and some more of the spontaneity of that and the collaboration, the learning,” Fraser said at the time. Still, he told her, “our junior bankers, they don’t have to be in the office late at night if they’re working on a deal. Once you have done the work collaboratively together, you can do it at home. We know if they are doing a good job or not.”

Fraser said most shopkeepers tend to work from the office five days a week, though they have the technology to work from home if they need to catch a kid’s play at school or run home on time. lunch to see his family. Meanwhile, call center staff are spending more time at home, she said.

“They will come if they need training,” Fraser said. “If they are underperforming and need a little coaching from their manager,” they can do it and then go back to working from home again, she said.

remote work experiment

Office occupancy levels in the New York metropolitan area have reached their highest post-pandemic levels in recent weeks and are approaching 50%, according to card reading data from Kastle Systems.

Still, working parents across the country are increasingly regretting juggling return-to-office requirements with rising levels of influenza, Covid-19, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). A busy travel season around the Christmas holidays is expected to further complicate that picture.

“Working from home in knowledge jobs like banking is new, so everyone is learning from this experiment,” said Lynda Gratton, professor of management at London Business School and author of Redesigning Work. “Seeing it as an event, just for the summer or Christmas, makes sense. It creates discretionary time during a period where people really value it and gives leaders the opportunity to test the impact in a low-stakes way.”