Wall Street’s rigid culture bends to growing demands for flexibility

NEW YORK — When Tom Naratil arrived on Wall Street in the 1980s, work-life balance didn’t really exist. For most bankers of his generation, working long hours while missing out on family time wasn’t just necessary to get ahead, it was necessary to not be left behind.

But Naratil, now president of Swiss bank UBS in the Americas, doesn’t see why the employees of today should have to make the same trade-offs — at the cost of their personal happiness and the company’s bottom line.

Employees with the flexibility to skip “horrible commutes” and work from home more often are simply happier and more productive, Naratil said. “They feel better, they feel like we trust them more, they’ve got a better work-life balance, and they’re producing more for us — that’s a winwin for everybody.”

Welcome to a kinder, gentler Wall Street.

Much of the banking industry, long a bellwether for corporate America, dismissed remote working as a pandemic blip, even leaning on workers to keep coming in when closings turned midtown Manhattan into a ghost town. But with many Wall Street workers resisting a return to the office two years later and the competition for banking talent heating up, many managers are coming around on work-from-home — or at least acknowledging it’s not a fight they can win.

Flexibility is a new mantra at many major banks, which are shifting to more days at home, hours that adjust to suit family needs and reworked office spaces, in a break with industry tradition that has long emphasized face-to-face relationships built over grueling hours and punishing workloads.

UBS, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, HSBC and BNY Mellon have all announced flexible work plans. Even JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s biggest bank and a hybrid-work holdout, expects that only about half its employees will ultimately be in the office five days a week. The bank’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, wrote in his annual shareholder letter April 4 that he believed 10% of JPMorgan’s roughly 271,000 employees could eventually work from home.

“Although the pandemic changed the way we work in many ways, for the most part it only accelerated ongoing trends,” Dimon wrote.

But he didn’t sound particularly happy about it, ticking off a list of “serious weaknesses” of virtual work, including slowed decision-making and a lack of “spontaneous learning and creativity.”

“While it’s clear that working from home will become more permanent in American business, such arrangements also need to work for both the company and its clients,” he wrote.

But increasingly, work schedules also have to work for workers.

“It’s all about the talent — how do you retain it, how do you attract it,” said Naratil of UBS. The bank rolled out its plan in March to allow 10% of its 20,500 U.S. employees to work remotely all the time and offer hybrid schedules for three-quarters of its workers.

“Talent will move, and it’s not only about a paycheck,” he said.

Citigroup has its 65,000 U.S. employees in the office two days a week and has held workshops for managers and employees on remote collaboration. Globally, most roles will move to a minimum of three days a week when it is safe to do so, the company said. Wells Fargo started bringing back most of its 249,000-person workforce in mid-March with what it calls a “hybrid flexible model” — for many corporate employees, that entails a minimum of three days a week in the office, while groups that cater to the bank’s technology needs will be able to come in less often.

BNY Mellon, which has nearly 50,000 employees, is allowing teams to determine their own mix of in-person and remote work. And it introduced a two-week “work from anywhere” policy for people in certain roles and locations. “The energy around the office has been palpable” as the staff eagerly map out their plans, said Garrett Marquis, a BNY Mellon spokesperson.

Moelis & Co., a boutique investment bank, has strongly encouraged its almost 1,000 staff members to come to the office Monday-Thursday, but with added “intraday flexibility” over their hours, said Elizabeth Crain, the company’s chief operating officer. That might mean dropping children off at school in the morning, or taking the train during daylight hours for safety reasons, she said. The new approach fosters teamwork and enables employees to learn from one another in person, while also giving them more control over their schedules.

Crain said everyone is much more flexible. “We all know we can deliver,” she said.

Crain, who has worked in the financial industry for more than three decades, recently committed to something that would have been unthinkable before the pandemic: a weekly 9 a.m. session with a personal trainer near her office. She said she hopes breaking out of the confines of the traditional workday sends a message to employees that they are trusted to get the job done while making time for their personal priorities.

“After two years, haven’t we all changed?” she said.