No meetings outside working hours, but also Fridays without Zoom. There Citigroup’s new CEO, Jane Fraser, continues to stand out for the initiatives aimed at changing bad working habits, exacerbated in the last year by the Covid emergency which has led to the swarming of meetings via Zoom.
Fraser, who replaced Michael Corbat as CEO earlier this year to become the first woman to lead a large bank, banned video calling among bank employees on Fridays and encouraged the holidays in an effort to combat workplace malaise caused by the pandemic. Fraser has renamed the last day of the work week as the “Zoom-Free Fridays,” according to an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg. In addition, May 28 will be a corporate holiday, renamed “Citi Reset Day”.
Citi staff are also encouraged to avoid scheduling meetings outside of what used to be normal business hours before the outbreak of Covid-19.
“I know that, from your feedback and my experience, the blurring of the boundaries between home and work and the inexorability of the pandemic workday have put a strain on our well-being,” Fraser writes in the memo. “It is simply not sustainable”. Fraser had already distinguished herself on her first day on the job by announcing that Citi will be in zero emissions of harmful gases in its financial activities by 2050 (the plan to achieve this goal will be put in black and white in 2022).
A year of Covid with work that becomes an obsession H24
Covid stress is rampant in many workplaces with unprecedented excesses in terms of hourly commitment. Last week CNN reported that junior bankers of Goldman Sachs they work an average of 95 hours a week and sleep a maximum of five hours a day.
Then there is the question smart working with some companies ready to continue granting it even after the pandemic and others who see it as negative. Goldman CEO David Solomon described working from home as “an aberration” and “not a new normal” and wants his employees to return to the office as soon as possible. Jamie Dimon, CEO of Jp Morgan, is also of similar ideas, in particular for the new entries. Banking should be learned in the field by working side by side with more seniors: “You don’t learn much sitting at home,” asserts Dimon.
On the opposite side Ford Motor that told 30,000 employees that they can work from home even after the pandemic is over. Other companies are looking to bring more people back to the office, including summer interns, after finding it harder to instill corporate culture using video-calling communication.