NatWest gives RBS a complete renovation including carpets, sofas and cafes | The Royal Bank of Scotland

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It was a long-standing reminder of former Royal Bank of Scotland boss Fred Goodwin: the blue and yellow carpets allegedly hand-picked by the disgraced banker, who was blamed for the bank’s impending collapse more than a decade ago and was later stripped of his knighthood. .

But NatWest — which scrapped the toxic RBS group name last year in hopes of moving on from scandals of the past — has done away with the old, by shredding carpets, ditching office phones, and installing Zoom meeting rooms, as it usheres in a new era of turbo-hybrid work due to the Covid crisis. .

In London, offices that once dominated its 10 floors at 250 Bishopsgate in the city are now surrounded by pastel sofas, quirky lamps and hundreds of electrified cupboards filled with charging Chromebook laptops for visiting employees. Café-style meeting rooms are separated by elegant soundproof curtains, and anyone looking for a break from annoying colleagues can retreat into individual barriers for privacy.

The all-new interiors of the post-pandemic NatWest offices, co-working at 250 Bishopsgate in the City of London. Photograph: Martin Goodwin/The Guardian

NatWest’s office transformation is part of its effort to meet the needs of the new hybrid worker who will split his time between home and office starting next week. This trend has forced businesses across the city to think of their desks as more than just a place for a computer and a chair, and to invent what will draw employees away from the comforts of home, even as the pandemic hits.

The bank has spent millions of pounds fixing the desk under its current chief executive, Allison Rose, but admittedly the cost pales in comparison to the excesses of Goodwin, who has been criticized for crippling the RBS and leading to a £45 billion government bailout during the banking crisis in 2008. And this time it’s about adapting to a crisis, not inadvertently causing it.

Most of NatWest’s 64,000 employees will return to their desks on Monday for the first time since March 2020. But only 13% will require being in their office five days a week, while one in three will be able to live and work anywhere in the UK and go to the office. Only two days a month.

“This is an opportunity to define a new way of working,” Rose said, explaining that the pandemic has “shattered some myths” about needing to be in the office five days a week to be productive.

Fred Goodwin, the former head of the Royal Bank of Scotland, has been stripped of his equestrian title. Photography: Danny Lawson/PA

Rose is not alone: ​​2021 has been punctuated by announcements from city companies offering flexible job opportunities, including HSBC which plans to cut global office space by 40% as it takes advantage of new mixed working arrangements. Meanwhile, Deloitte said its 20,000 UK employees can decide “when, where and how to work”, while PwC said it only expects employees to spend at least 40% of their time with colleagues – whether in the office or abroad. in customer visits.

All of this was part of staying relevant, Rose said, as well as retaining employees, who might be eager for better digs and could be poached by any of the bank’s competitors. “We are in competition, [but] Not just with the banks. We are in competition with private equity firms, fintech and Google.

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“If you want to retain that talent, you want to give them the flexibility to work in a different way. And really talented people have a lot of choices in terms of where they can work and how they can work.”

But other major banks, particularly on Wall Street, are less concerned about the potential preference among workers for working from home. In the US, Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman told his New York employees that anyone who feels safe going to a restaurant should return to the office this month, while Goldman Sachs chief David Solomon called remote work an “aberration”. Which does not fit with the Bank’s “innovative and collaborative apprenticeship culture”.

Unlike NatWest, all 6,000 Goldman bankers are expected to return to their desk in Plumtree Court from Monday as it increases office capacity and eliminates social distancing between offices. Short-term perks like free food and gelato – widely seen as a lure for reluctant Goldman bankers all summer – have been scrapped as the bank tries to return to the old normal.

The new interior design of NatWest’s offices in the city. Photograph: Martin Goodwin/The Guardian

NatWest’s more relaxed approach may be due to the lender’s own journey since the financial crisis. It sharply trimmed the riskiest investment bank, which accounted for nearly 40% of its operating profit in 2006 before the financial crash, but has been taking losses for years. The Royal Bank of Scotland has gone from being one of the largest banks in the world, with operations in 43 countries, to a less risky British bank that is still 55% owned by the UK state and operates in 25 countries. It is hardly in competition with its former rivals on Wall Street.

Rose has accelerated the shift away from RBS’ more perilous past, even changing the bank’s name last year in one of the most sweeping changes to date. While she has been more cautious than most of the bank’s previous chief executives, Rose is clearly making her mark ahead of the bank’s potential return to full private ownership, with the government hoping to sell its remaining stake by 2025/26.

Even Coutts, which sits under the NatWest umbrella and is known for its plush offices at 440 Strand in London’s West End, is moving toward a hybrid arrangement for its wealthier clients, with plans to conduct three of four quarterly check-ins online after the pandemic is over.

But Rose insists that office culture will continue, playing down broader concerns about how remote work will destroy city centers and the ecosystem of shops, cafes and restaurants that depend on them.

She said, “We will pretty much occupy all of our buildings, but it may not be by the same people all the time. So if someone shows up three days a week, that doesn’t mean the office will be empty for two days a week.”

“Likewise, I think the ways of doing business have changed and so it’s really important that we continue to evolve.”

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