Bank of America tells most employees they no longer have to complete health checks before going into work starting Monday, leaked memo shows (BAC)

• Bank of America this week provided employees with new guidance for returning to the office.
• Starting Monday, most employees will no longer have to complete a health assessment.
• CEO Brian Moynihan expects vaccinated employees to return to the office in September.

Bank of America told employees this week that it would no longer require staff in most US states to fill out health assessments to go into their offices starting on Monday, according to a memo seen by Insider.

“You no longer need to complete the Bank of America Health Assessment before coming to work in your offices each day, regardless of vaccination status,” the second-largest US bank told employees on Wednesday.

That excludes employees working inside the firm’s offices in California, Nevada, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Washington, where employees must continue to log a daily health assessment until further notice because of state and local requirements, the memo said. A spokesperson confirmed the contents of the memo.

Bank of America, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, had roughly 212,000 employees as of June. The firm cited rising vaccination rates in the US and within the company, in accordance with guidance from medical experts, to support its new stance.

The move underlines the incremental approaches firms are taking to bring staff back to the office. Wall Street has been grappling with how to draw employees away from their homes as most big banks and asset managers have had their global workforces working at least partially remote for more than a year.

The firm has not set as early a date for a full return to the office as some of its Wall Street peers. Bank of America CEO Officer Brian Moynihan has said he expects a “more normal operating posture” with more vaccinated employees returning in September after Labor Day. Wells Fargo told employees last week that US staff working from home would start returning to the office on September 7, Reuters reported last week, citing a memo to employees.

Bank of America has been requesting that employees voluntarily disclose their vaccination status, Insider previously reported.

“We are a work-from-office company that may be in center cities. It may be in suburban office space. But we are a work-from-office company,” Moynihan said in April during the bank’s annual shareholders meeting. “We’ve been clear with that.”

The bank also said in the memo that employees were not permitted to hold or attend internal or external in-person events or large meetings until September 30, unless its global events team or the firm’s chief administrative officer, Andrea Smith, approved such an event.

Sending employees home last year and guiding them through remote work for months was new territory for global firms. Last year, the bank had public missteps involving the communication of work-from-home policies and leaked comments from senior employees pressuring people to come in.