The coronavirus pandemic has completely altered the dynamics of workplaces. Until a few months back, work-from-home meant no work and only an excuse to take a paid leave. But due to the pandemic, that notion is changing completely.
During the pandemic, many major corporations had asked their employees to work from home till December end. Only banking and financial institutions’ employees had to attend offices, but now major credit card companies have also asked their employees to continue remote working in order to prioritize employee safety.
Recently, American Express Chief Executive Officer Steve Squeri told his employees that they should continue working from home for the rest of the year. In a video message on LinkedIn, Squeri spoke about the company’s return to office plan.
“We still don’t know exactly when we’ll start coming back. We expect it will take several months in most locations. The key here is that returning to location will not happen all at once,” he said in an almost five-minute long video here.
Squeri said that the company would open buildings on a “location by location, floor by floor and colleague by colleague basis”, with the work environment expected to be “completely different” from what it was before the outbreak.
In a similar move, Visa Inc. has allowed the majority of its 20,000 employees to work from home for the rest of the year in light of safety concerns due to COVID-19, the global payments network’s CEO Alfred Kelly Jr. has said.
“The safety and well-being of Visa employees continues to be my top priority. As a result, I expect a majority of our workforce will continue to work from home through the 2020 calendar year,” Kelly said in a LinkedIn post on Tuesday.
Another reason for extending remote working for most of its employees is that the move will contribute towards decongesting transit systems and roads amid concerns about social distancing.
“We are fortunate the majority of Visa employees can work safely from home while continuing to support our clients effectively. Unfortunately, there are tens of millions of people who can’t work from home, for whom not showing up to work means not getting paid,” Kelly said.
Rival financial services company Mastercard Inc has also said that it will not ask employees to return to its worldwide corporate offices until they are comfortable that the sometimes fatal coronavirus is under control with vaccines or other measures.
The world’s second-largest payment processor is also looking at its real-estate footprint and considering consolidating offices, Chief People Officer Michael Fraccaro said.
“We expect in the coming weeks and months that more employees will continue to work from home than come into the office. And we are OK with that. We support that choice. We have stated upfront to all our employees, that it is their choice … we want them to make the decision on when they feel comfortable returning to the office,” he said.
The company employs nearly 20,000 people globally, with its main headquarters in Westchester, a New York City suburb. Mastercard owns that campus, which it purchased from IBM in 1994.
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