Cash, less screen-time or days off are all remedies employers are administering to weary, overworked staff who are often shouldering personal burdens from the pandemic. Will it help office hours from bleeding into their personal lives?
Coming into the second year of the pandemic, financial services players are looking at different ways to support employees, strained by the double load of working from home and from their own personal corona-linked circumstances.
Complaints about 100-hour weeks from a group of young Goldman Sachs employees led CEO David Solomon to vow to protect (behind paywall) their weekends by keeping Saturdays work-free. Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser also sought to set boundaries while working from home: she banned internal Zoom conferences on Fridays (employees will take calls from clients).
Fraser also prescribed an additional company-wide holiday meant to let staff recharge their batteries. Although these efforts aim to treat staff fatigue at its root, it isn’t clear how these measures reconcile with the 24/7 reality of Wall Street, or that of a wealth manager accustomed to responding immediately to demanding wealthy clientele.
Stretched Vs. Extra Mile
Solomon’s recorded response to his junior bankers sounds like a far cry from a CEO committed to improving their working conditions: «In the months ahead, there are times when we’re going to feel more stretched than others,» he noted, according to «The Guardian».
«But just remember: If we all go an extra mile for our client, even when we feel that we’re reaching our limit, it can really make a difference in our performance.» Solomon’s comments highlight the tension between banks’ expectations in view of full deal pipelines, and worker’s willingness – or ability – to meet them.
Old-Fashioned Cash
Other financial services players are more brazen in their response, opting to hand out cash incentives over attempting structural changes to the workday.
Both Apollo Global Management and Credit Suisse have offered workers more money. Apollo offered some of its associates up to $200,000 retention bonuses, «Bloomberg» reported this week. Although more moderate by comparison, Credit Suisse’s $20,000 one-off payment follows the same «band-aid» tactic.
Regardless of the approach employers take, their efforts show that to some degree they acknowledge the grueling nature of their relentless work culture. McKinsey recently flagged a dramatic worsening in mental health due to the pandemic. Hopefully, we will see more sustainable corporate measures, addressing mental health issues in the future.
