American Express said more than 40% of its U.S. employees have opted to work remotely on a full-time basis, double the number from before the pandemic.
The credit card giant is upgrading offices and outfitting workspaces with new technology to help manage the shift and to enable “virtual and in-person colleagues to work together,” Chief Executive Steve Squeri said in a letter to shareholders on Tuesday.
American Express has been one of the few financial firms to embrace remote work, with the majority of U.S. staffers saying they plan to come into the office just two days a week even after the pandemic subsides. The firm has begun encouraging employees in its New York headquarters to start returning to the office and plans to do so in other locations across the U.S. in the coming months.
With many companies adopting a similar stance, American Express is seeing a continued recovery in corporate travel, Squeri said. The lender is a behemoth in the world of corporate cards, which business people use to book trips on their company’s dime.
“We see the increase in hybrid and virtual work across the business world changing the future of corporate travel,” Squeri said. “As more people work remotely — some of them in locations outside of their home-office locations — there will be a greater need to travel to the office for periodic meetings with their teams or to visit their clients located in other parts of the country.”
The company had more than 22,000 U.S. employees as of the end of 2020, the latest year for which Amex has reported workforce numbers.
American Express on Sunday announced it would suspend operations in Russia and Belarus, joining a chorus of U.S. financial firms denouncing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.
“The world has yet again entered unprecedented territory with the crisis in Ukraine and the devastating human suffering we have been witnessing,” Squeri said. “As we monitor the rapidly worsening situation in Ukraine, our values continue to guide us.”
