Maybe it was the employee who tuned into video meetings while lounging on a backyard sun deck. Or perhaps it was one or two working from home who routinely called colleagues still in the office to check their mail.
While banks quickly tackled the logistical challenges of setting up employees to work remotely amid the pandemic, they are still figuring out how to solve some of the other types of challenges that cropped up.
The need to work out the kinks is especially acute for banks that take pride in being among the industry’s best places to work. They are grappling with how to maintain a spirit of teamwork despite a dispersed workforce, to coach managers on addressing the issues that can arise and to deal with perceptions that home-based employees might not be working as hard.
“It also showed us as managers that we weren’t trained to do it; we weren’t really trained to meet the needs of remote workers,” said Mark Bodin, president of Savings Bank of Walpole in Keene, New Hampshire.
Many bank executives — particularly those at
But a year and a half into offering such flexibility on a larger scale, banks are continuing to weigh how and whether to make the arrangements a permanent fixture. They are hiring consultants to hone their policies, setting deadlines for assessing their work-from-home programs and evaluating whether any tweaks are needed. In short, they are moving from emergency reaction to long-term planning.
“In terms of workforce issues, in terms of lots of other things that we identified as objectives, we have to be able to do this strategically,” Bodin said.
‘A voyage of discovery’
Like other banks around the country, Savings Bank of Walpole rushed its 90 employees home in March 2020. But by early 2021, the bank began laying the groundwork for a more thoughtful approach to remote and hybrid work arrangements, Bodin said.
The $606.4 million-asset bank, along with two sister institutions operating under the umbrella of New Hampshire Mutual Bancorp, brought on outside help: the regional accounting and consulting firm BerryDunn.
The firm helped New Hampshire Mutual develop a training program for managers, guidelines on attire, etiquette for video meetings and workspace requirements for people doing their jobs at home, said Bodin, who is an executive vice president at the mutual company.
The process also touched on elements of the workplace that are harder to define. “A big one is how do you engage people working from home in the water-cooler chats, the things that just happen in the hallway. How do you keep people involved in that?” said Bodin. “It was a voyage of discovery.”
As of September, about a quarter of the mutual company’s 500 employees were working in some kind of remote or hybrid arrangement. Bodin said he expects it will end up being around 80 to 100 as the pandemic continues to ebb.
The experience has helped executives at the company think differently about office space, not just in terms of reducing it. New Hampshire Mutual recently added an office for about 20 customer service reps about five minutes away from its main office, a location it would not have considered before the pandemic, Bodin said.
Culture concerns
Origin Bank in Ruston, Louisiana, had some familiarity with remote work prior to the pandemic. Before 2020, about 30 of the bank’s 680 employees were working from home, mostly in the mortgage department, said Ashlea Price, its director of operations and strategy.
Today, about 100 employees are taking advantage of the remote option, which Origin now refers to as “teleworking.” The $7.3 billion-asset bank had called it “telecommuting,” but changed the label to drive home the idea that home based employees are, in fact, working.
“There is a stigma to remote employees that they are not working as hard as people in the office,” Price said.
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The work-from-home policy is not set in stone. Managers are planning to assess the remote arrangements in February. At that point, Origin will look at turnover and ask managers to evaluate remote employees for performance and potential burnout. Employees at home may not always set clear boundaries around work, Price noted.
The bank’s culture also is a top priority. “Our concerns were, and still are, employee engagement and culture,” Price said. “We didn’t want people sitting at home and not engaging with their team and managers.”
The effort to spur engagement has included monthly calls to at-home employees from the bank’s chairman, president and chief executive, Drake Mills, as well as other executives. The calls proved popular and office-based employees began asking why they weren’t included, said Linda Tuten, Origin’s chief people and diversity officer. They were then added.
“We continue to be fluid and I think that’s what we have to do,” Tuten said. “We have to recognize what's going on with our employees.”
While Origin’s executives could decide to end the experiment with hybrid and remote work, Price believes the arrangements will last. Employees appreciate the flexibility, and the bank is able to recruit talent more widely. It recently hired a software specialist based in North Carolina, the first person hired outside the bank’s geographic footprint, which covers Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.
“I personally think that remote work is here to stay because there are so many people who enjoy it,” Price said.
‘Test and see’
As executives pondered the future workplace at Peapack-Gladstone Bank, they quickly decided they would not offer full-time remote work.
“We really based that on being able to be collaborative,” said Brydget Falk-Drigan, chief human resources officer for the Bedminster, New Jersey, bank. “We all agreed that that's just really hard to do permanently on a remote basis.”
Instead, the $5.8 billion-asset Peapack-Gladstone developed a hybrid policy under which employees are required to come in at least three days a week. It started with a phase-in period between July 4 and Labor Day.
The bank had some concern about losing employees who might want a fully remote option, she acknowledged. “But that is why we instituted the graduated return to work.”
In December, executives at Peapack-Gladstone intend to assess whether to continue offering the three-days-a week option, Falk-Drigan said.
“To put it out there full time and then have to walk it back, I think, is worse than if you said, ‘We are going to test and see,’ ” Falk-Drigan said. “That way, everybody is committed to making it work.”
Retention will be key
Vista Bank in Dallas had no employees working from home before COVID-19 hit. But the pandemic demonstrated that the arrangements could work and that employees valued them, said Auden Herrera, chief operations officer for the $1.3 billion-asset bank.
So, in fall 2020, Vista executives began discussing which groups of employees could serve as a beta test for remote work. The test ended up including six employees from the finance and the Bank Security Act teams. The reasoning was that those two groups have no direct customer interaction and oversee activities that can be measured.
The test laid the foundation for a bankwide policy that was formalized in March.
The policy sets expectations for employees, such as the need for a quiet workspace and the ability to take breaks. It also clarifies the technology provided by the bank, such as phones and computers. But it is not one size fits all, Herrera said. “We’re empowering our employees and our management teams to identify to what extent they want to offer the work-from-home program.”
As of mid-October, 10 of the bank’s 158 employees were taking advantage of the program, Herrera said. The bank is still measuring productivity. But it is not the only yardstick Vista is using to gauge whether remote work is here to stay. “The success of your work-from-home program is easily measured by employee satisfaction, as evidenced by retention levels. Only time will tell how that works in our industry,” Herrera said.
‘We have to get on the bus'
When Machias Savings Bank in Maine called its 293 employees back into the office in July, it allowed them to choose between returning full time to their desks or working from home some or all of the time, said Danielle Caricofe, chief human resources officer for the $1.98 billion-asset bank.
But if they wanted the latter, they had to sign a yearlong agreement that sets clear expectations, Caricofe said. The agreement requires employees to maintain their productivity and designate an official workstation, among other things. Working from home also cannot be a substitute for child care, she added.
About 25% of the bank’s employees have signed on to work from home, Caricofe said. Most come into the office at least some of the time.
In addition to its focus on staff expectations, Machias Savings has been training managers to oversee remote employees, Caricofe said. “One of the big questions we get is, ‘What about productivity? How are we going to know if they’re working or productive?’ My answer to that is, ‘How do you know your people in the office are working and productive?’”
To gauge whether the new arrangements are working, the bank is conducting an engagement survey this fall. The survey includes questions specifically for in-office and hybrid workers, Caricofe said.
The survey may lead to changes, Caricofe said. But she does not see an end to hybrid and remote work.
“It’s the way of the world and we have to get on the bus,” she said. “If we don’t figure these things out, we are at risk of losing some valuable talent and at risk of not being able to recruit valuable talent, because this is an expectation for a lot of people.”
