MILAN (Reuters) – Italy’s top insurer Generali is considering hybrid working – with staff spending time in the office as well working from home – in the post-pandemic era, its chief executive said on Thursday.
Banks and insurers globally are figuring out how to manage the return of staff to their offices after the coronavirus outbreak had forced groups to reorganise their work models, with most employees having been allowed to work remotely.
“The model will be hybrid. Our view is (that) a good balance would be 60% in the office and 40% at home. We also believe that it has to be organised,” CEO Philippe Donnet said, speaking at an online event.
Before the COVID-19 outbreak, Generali only allowed employees of some of its units to work remotely a few days a week.
The new model “cannot be based only on the (personal) choice of people,” Donnet added.
No one would be allowed to stay at home the whole time, while those who wanted to come into the office every day will be able to do so, he said.
The executive said Generali had started discussions on the matter with unions.
Italian bank UniCredit will allow its non-branch staff globally to work from home for up to two days a week on average once the crisis is over, it said last week.
Morgan Stanley’s chief executive officer said last month that if most employees were not back to work at the bank’s Manhattan headquarters in September, he would be “very disappointed”.
(Reporting by Gianluca Semeraro; editing by David Evans)
