ING to Target 50% Work-From-Home When Pandemic Distancing Lifts

(Bloomberg) --

ING Groep NV plans to allow staff to work from home half the time when governments lift social distancing measures to fight the pandemic. 

“We will resume working in a hybrid mode,” said Steven van Rijswijk, the Dutch bank's chief executive officer. “We aim to have people spend approximately 50% in the office and 50% at home. I'm looking forward to that to be honest.”

Companies around the world have seen their plans to bring staff back to the office derailed by the spread of the Omicron variant of the virus. U.S. banks have been among the biggest advocates of working from the office, while lenders in Europe have sought to use flexible working as one way to keep their employees motivated.

“We have seen with the Omicron variant that more people start to work from home again,” van Rijswijk told reporters on Thursday. “There were lockdowns or partial lockdowns and for ING, this led to approximately 80% of the people working from home.”

ING “experimented” with hybrid working in mid-2021, with the partial return to the office “actually perceived very positively,” said the CEO. Still, the ability to work from home depends on an employee's location, employment conditions and the type of work that they do, he said.

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