How 6 Big Banks Are Dealing With Employee COVID-19 Vaccinations

UBS Group AG UBS is enabling its workforce who choose not to receive a COVID-19 vaccine to apply for a work-from-home opportunity.

What Happened: The Switzerland-headquartered bank has a global workforce of 70,000. Bloomberg reported CEO Ralph Hamers announced this new policy during a presentation at the Swiss Economic Forum on Thursday.

“We have 25,000 employees alone in the U.S. and thousands more in Singapore and Hong Kong, and every country has a different legal framework around what you can and can’t make mandatory,” he said. “The pandemic has delivered solutions to manage the risk of carrying the virus and passing it to your colleagues, and that is to work from home.

“We have already identified two-thirds of our jobs can continue to work from home and therefore we are developing a model of hybrid working,” he added, although he warned his employees that there “will be days where we want to come in and work in your teams physically.”

What Else Is Happening: UBS’ approach comes as the delta variant of the coronavirus renews public health safety concerns. Other major financial institutions are readjusting their policies regarding remote work and being required to come into an office.

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Bank of America Corp BAC has encouraged vaccinated employees to return to the office after Labor Day.

Citigroup Inc C is requiring its employees in New York City, Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia to be vaccinated before they are asked to return to the office on Sept. 13. The mandate does not apply to branch workers, but the company is encouraging vaccinations and all employees will be required to wear masks and be tested for COVID.

Deutsche Bank AG DB is requiring proof of vaccination before it will allow any employees, clients or vendors to access its new U.S. headquarters at 1 Columbus Circle in New York City.

Truist Financial Corp. TFC has postponed its originally announced return-to-office requirement from Oct. 1 to a date in November that has yet to be determined. Employees are not being mandated to have vaccinations but will be required to wear masks indoors regardless if they’ve been vaccinated.

Wells Fargo & Co WFC has planned to require its employees to return to their offices by Sept. 7, but postponed that date to Oct. 4 and then to Oct. 18. The company does not have a vaccination mandate for its office-based workforce.

Photo: Martin Abegglen / Flickr Creative Commons.