No Zoom on Friday! Citigroup’s Bankers Have Their WFH Prayers Answered
Citi’s move to limit Friday Zoom calls and promote regular working hours is long overdue. It’s better not to wait for harried staff to explode in public.
The home office.
Photo: Bloomberg
It took a year of the pandemic but finally one of the world’s biggest banks has acknowledged the huge toll that working remotely is taking on its staff. Jane Fraser, Citigroup Inc.’s chief executive officer, wants to ease Zoom fatigue and go back to regular working hours. That tells you how bad things have got — at investment banks and at large businesses generally.
Citi employs more than 200,000 people globally and its attempt to address the problem should persuade other big companies to rewrite their WFH manuals. This is a long overdue attempt to tackle the common feeling of endless work days and constant surveillance. It’s also a recognition that this pandemic probably won’t disappear any time soon, and that office culture will be changed for a long time — perhaps permanently.