Flexibility at Lloyds Banking Group
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The drive to introduce new ways of working at Lloyds came from a desire to
better meet their customers’ needs and requirements. The bank also understood
the positive effects this could have for the organisation and its employees. Within
the first year of the programme’s inception in 2012, a 3% rise in income and
revenue was experienced.
The organisation undertook a study to understand how much of their space
they used effectively – they discovered that they were only making use of 60-
80% of their office real estate at any one time. The time that Lloyds employees
spent travelling between offices was also on the increase, which was substantially
increasing costs for the organisation and negatively impacting employees’
productivity due to reduced time within effective working environments.
Through the WORKwise programme, the organisation has introduced flexible
working practices in 20% of its office estate and now includes more than 18,000
employees. The benefits of this include significant cost saving in relation to real estate.
In 2013 the organisation sought to expand the scheme in order to continue with
reduced desk demand in London. The organisation was looking to remove a
further 1,000 desks from its London real estate over the next two years in order to
achieve a further £10m of savings related to space.
No Travel Week – one week of each month employees of Lloyds are encouraged
to avoid travel unless it is ‘business critical’. The programme was introduced in an
attempt to reduce the environmental impact of the organisation and to change the
business travel culture. Lloyds actively promote alternative technologies that enable
people to work in a more agile manner that in turn reduces travel requirements.
This programme has helped to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that Lloyds are
responsible for by more than 25%.
Prediction
Building walls: separation and control: There is a risk that
regulation, compliance and risk will constrain banks in their
ability to innovate and be creative. But banks can and should
challenge the assumption that regulation stifles innovation.
The global financial crisis, along with stifled product development and mis-
selling scandals has created an atmosphere of distrust and supervision,
separation and control. As the regulators refuse to clarify the effect of
regulation on the workplace, we believe that many banks will be inclined
to take the conservative, safe option and put physical barriers up in the
workplace, stifling innovation. However, we think that innovative banks will
use a more intelligent interpretation of the new regulation. This will create
the necessary segregation through technology as much as possible, still
allowing themselves to create flexible and open work environments. Banks
which do not work around this will struggle to attract the right talent.
13.
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The future of the financial workplace
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September 2014
