Barclays tells staff to come into the office more

Barclays has tightened its work-from-home policy with staff now required to come into the office for an extra day a week.

The bank is the latest company to make changes to its flexible working policy that has been largely in place since the Covid pandemic, saying it recognised the importance of staff collaborating in the same place.

A memo was sent to 85,000 Barclays employees that said they would now need to come into the office three days a week instead of two.

Front office or client-facing staff, including investment bankers, are already required to be in the office five days a week.

Barclays has had a hybrid working model in place for some time.

“We recognise the benefits of balancing flexibility for colleagues with the importance of working together to collaborate in our physical locations,” a spokesperson for the bank said.

“Our minimum time in-office requirements vary between business areas depending on the nature of work and needs of the business.”

Barclays’ tighter working-from-home rules, first reported by the FT, come after JPMorgan announced staff would be required in the office five days a week from March.

Earlier this year, Lloyds Banking Group said office attendance would be taken into account when deciding bonuses for senior executives.

Lord Sugar, star of the BBC show The Apprentice, said on Thursday he wants to see all workers back in the workplace.

The 77-year-old said he thought the problem was a lot of young people “just want to sit at home”.

“I’m a great advocate of getting them back to work, because the only way an apprentice is going to learn is from his colleagues,” he said.

Lord Rose, the former boss of Marks and Spencer and Asda, recently told the BBC that home working was part of the UK economy’s “general decline” and employees’ productivity was suffering.