Macquarie Plans Hybrid Work to Be Permanent for U.S. Staff

(Bloomberg) -- Macquarie Group Ltd. told its staff in the U.S. that they can adopt a permanent flexible schedule, and asked unvaccinated employees to wear masks in the office, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The Australian investment bank hasn’t set a minimum for the number of days its U.S. employees have to be in the office, leaving that to individual teams and businesses, the people said, asking not to be identified as the details aren’t public. About 16% of Macquarie’s global workforce of around 16,500 are based in the Americas. 

The lender has stopped short of making vaccines mandatory, asking staff to follow the mask rules in the cities where its offices are, the people said. Macquarie is “strongly” encouraging vaccination and providing time off when required so that employees can get jabs, according to a spokesperson based in Sydney. Vaccination rates in the bank’s home country are lagging the U.S. and U.K.

Macquarie’s move to articulate a permanent hybrid work model for employees mirrors peers including Citigroup Inc. and HSBC Holdings Plc., while top executives at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley have called for almost a full return, with some flexibility. The rules on mask-wearing for the unvaccinated comes after firms such as Barclays Plc moved to keep those U.S. employees at home.

Wall Street banks have been grappling for months about the safest way to bring staff back to offices, and the spread of the delta variant is interrupting a much-hyped return post-Labor Day for many. 

Wells Fargo & Co., which has more employees than any other U.S. bank, last week delayed its return-to-office plans by two weeks to mid-October. Technology companies including Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook Inc. have pushed back their return-to-office plans to January.

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