- In recent weeks, the global custodian bank State Street has begun a phased return to work for an additional 20% of its staff, or about 8,000 workers.
- The firm has extended invitations to specific groups of employees in about 30 companies to return if they please, Lou Maiuri, State Street’s COO, told Business Insider.
- Maiuri walked Business Insider through how his global firm is doing it, and shared advice for other corporate leaders about how they can maintain safety in the office.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Wall Street has been largely bullish about the prospects of getting people back to work. The coronavirus pandemic, for its part, has been generally unwilling to play ball.
Since March, State Street has kept the vast majority — about 90% — of its 40,000-person global workforce home. That’s about 36,000 people.
In recent weeks, however, the firm has extended invitations to an additional 20% of its staff — roughly 8,000 more — to return to offices in 30 countries, Lou Maiuri, the firm’s COO, told Business Insider in an interview. These positions include traders, people who work in the firm’s tax department, and people performing functions that Maiuri described as “more critical.”
Based in Boston, State Street has an international network of employees spread around the globe, including the UK, India, China, and Japan. It’s one of the world’s largest custodian banks and asset managers, with $36.6 trillion assets under custody or administration and $3.1 trillion assets under management.
“We’ve been playing the long game,” Maiuri said, “and deploying technology and tactics to bring people back safely and recognize that you have to navigate through this.”
Meanwhile, public health experts’ hopes that the coronavirus pandemic would retreat at this point have effectively evaporated. Indeed, daily cases have risen by more than 500% between the beginning of June and end of October.
On June 1, new diagnosed cases worldwide numbered some 95,594, according to data from the Coronavirus Resource Center at Johns Hopkins University. By October 26, Johns Hopkins reported that there were 538,658 new diagnosed cases. Similar trends have been reflected in US-only data, too.
Some Wall Street firms have faced their own issues trying to bring some people back into the office. Earlier this month, Goldman Sachs sent some staff home from its London office after two positive Covid test results, as first reported by the Financial News.
At State Street, the firm has put into place rigorous guidelines to govern the return to work, like keeping employees in designated work zones and charging those who return to wear a contact-tracing device.
Maiuri walked Business Insider through how his global firm is doing it.
State Street is taking numerous factors into account
State Street assesses where and when it’s safe to get workers back to the office by considering dozens of “readiness factors.”
The firm looks at specific localities’ rates and hospitalization numbers, local governments’ PPE policies pertaining to masks and gloves, travel restrictions, or school and day care closures, to judge a particular area’s threat level.
If all of its criteria are met, State Street invites employees back, without the requirement for them to return, on the basis of whether they continue to follow the rules while at work.
State Street has also invested in contact tracing technology — a wearable device, which Maiuri called a “pebble” that employees can carry — to ensure that they are keeping their distance, and help assess who might be most at risk if one colleague develops an infection.
Maiuri said he’s using tech from a firm based in Poland called Estimote, which manufactures wearable contact tracing devices. Representatives for Estimote did not return a request for comment.
“When you leave the office, leave the pebble on your desk,” Maiuri has told employees. “I don’t need to monitor you when you’re outside of the office.”
A return to work doesn’t necessarily mean a return to a normal work schedule, though. Some firms, like JPMorgan Chase, have begun bringing workers back to the office on a rotational basis.
Maiuri said State Street is considering a long-term hybrid model, too.
The firm surveyed its workforce and found that 64% indicated they would be keen to have a flexible work model that includes a mix of work from home and the office post-pandemic.
Fewer than 8% of State Street managers said they felt that their teams had become less productive from home since the advent of the crisis, the survey also found.
‘Communicate, communicate, communicate’
Executives also need to be able to stand up to employees who aren’t adhering to safety protocols, like wearing a mask while at work, Maiuri said.
He shared an example of State Street’s reaction when he learned that some employees in China were “letting their guard down” in the office.
“We had to be agile and respond to that, and go back and urge people: ‘Listen, you’ve got to do this, or you’re going to lose your invitation'” to remain in the office, he said.
The pandemic is a rapidly-evolving situation and no one can accurately predict when or how it will end. So, Maiuri’s advice for corporate leaders is simple: “Communicate, communicate, communicate.”
“I can’t predict the future, but I can pretty much predict we’re not coming back to work the way we did pre-crisis,” he said, so one way that he’s tried to mitigate stress and be open with his team is by doing weekly calls with all of State Street’s employees.
Originally, employees expressed concern for State Street and their jobs, Maiuri said, but now, seven months into WFH life, many of their questions are pivoting to focus on: “When am I going to return? How am I going to return?”
But Maiuri isn’t confident that we’ll be out of the woods in the immediate future.
“I tell people all the time, I hope I’m dead wrong, but I think we will be sitting here next year…still navigating this,” he said. “I hope I’m wrong.”
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