HSBC asks managing directors to work in office four days a week

The push back to the office is fueling a shortage of desks.

HSBC Holdings Plc is asking all managing directors to work in the office for at least four days a week starting in October, as the UK bank joins other financial firms pushing more staff back to the office.

The London-based bank told senior managers “to set the tone from the top” as “in-person interactions are essential to how we lead and deliver for our customers,” according to a memo seen by Bloomberg News. A spokesperson for the bank confirmed its contents.

In office work refers primarily to work in the bank’s offices or with customers and also includes visiting other stakeholders and attending conferences, offsites or equivalent, the memo stated.

Five years after the global pandemic fueled an unprecedented boom in remote work, bank executives have become ever more vocal in their insistence that workers should return to the office. JPMorgan Chase & Co. in January told all its employees to return to the office five days a week.

The push back to the office is fueling a shortage of desks. HSBC is preparing to move into a new London headquarters next year, but executives are grappling with a more severe desk shortage than anticipated, with a projected shortfall of 7,700 desks, Bloomberg reported earlier this year.