86% of employees won’t consider a five-day office role, so why are employers moving away from flexible working?

Core-Asset Consulting's Rachael O'Neill (Director, Investment Operations and Accounting & Finance) asks what the future is for flexible working in the financial services industry.

Core-Asset's predictions 

At the start of the year Core-Asset Consulting made a series of predictions about the direction of the finance and professional services industries in 2025. One of the areas we looked at was flexible working. As we approach Q4, it’s a good time to look again at the market and see how things are progressing.

One prediction we made was that financial and professional services companies would adjust the balance between flexible and office-based working, pushing for more attendance. Industry surveys suggested that:

• over 75% of financial-services leaders planned to encourage greater office attendance
• more than a third were aiming for four or more days in the office.
• However, 58% of leaders also acknowledged that hybrid working offered a competitive advantage.

That last position was open to interpretation, being pro flexible-working only in the sense that it makes them more attractive than competing employers, rather than on principle, and indicating that they could move towards more office attendance when the market allows it.

Employees, on the other hand, were more openly in favour of flexibility. Core-Asset Consulting conducted candidate research in December 2024 that found the following:

• 61% preferred hybrid arrangements
• 24% favoured fully remote working
• 14% preferred working full-time in the office
• 86% were unwilling to consider roles requiring full-time in the office

What changes have we seen in 2025?

This year we have seen banks tightening attendance rules, as expected:

• In January, Lloyds Banking Group announced that they might dock senior bankers’ bonuses if they failed to attend the office at least two days a week.
• Barclays raised its required attendance from two to three days a week in the office
• In May, Blackrock told senior managers they need to be back in the office five days a week, following the lead of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan
• In August, HSBC rowed back on plans to quit Canary Wharf, after a shortage of desks was triggered by company policy changing to require all managing directors to be in the office for at least four days a week from October 2025.

Bucking the trend is Citi, where chief executive Jane Fraser has remained committed to the hybrid working model, allowing most staff to work remotely for two days a week. But Fraser’s stance is about giving the bank a competitive advantage in attracting staff, rather than on principle, so Citi may be open to change as competitors chase improved collaboration from increased office attendance.

Looking big picture, it seems that the shift towards office attendance in London has stalled. Transport for London data shows that tube traffic is stuck below pre-COVID levels, and appears to have flatlined at around 12% below 2019 levels. A study by the British Chambers of Commerce in August said that 10% of businesses had seen staff quit their jobs because bosses refused to meet their WFH demands.

In May academic research found that Britain is the work from home capital of Europe, with UK employees working from home an average of 1.8 days per week, compared to 1.3 days in the rest of the world. The UK workforce claims to be determined on this, with 58% of white-collar workers saying they would quit immediately or start looking for a new job if they were forced to go to the office five days a week.

Running contrary to the British public’s preferences is the concept of the ‘infinite workday’. This is the idea that flexible working has stretched the working day, with technology enabling early morning and late night messaging and meetings, while punctuating the entire day with distracting pop-ups. People working from home often struggle to put a clear start or stop to their working day, and might actually have found their work-life balance better when there was a commute to separate them psychologically from home to office.

What next for flexible working?

We are likely to see pressure on the recruitment market as employers and employees pull in opposite directions for flexible working. A CIPD report in July found that 1.1 million employees claim to have left a job in the last year due to a lack of flexible working, and this was particularly the case for younger employees.

The health of the economy and availability of jobs will determine the extent to which workers can take a stand on flexibility and pick and choose jobs based on it. A slowdown in the hiring market would force candidates to take whatever is available, regardless of required office attendance, which would move the balance of power in favour of employers seeking to enforce stricter rules.

As a recruitment agency we are seeing clients increasingly move towards office attendance, telling candidates that vacancies require more days in the office than official company policy demands, showing the direction they want to move in. Our boutique clients have always been five days in the office, and across company size we have found that candidates are willing to sacrifice flexible working to accept a role with the right company.

Strategy around office space will be further developed, and the HSBC example shows how challenging it can be to forecast the infrastructure demands of higher attendance. We are likely to see further real estate investment and office redesigns, as well as the complex calculation of expensive urban real estate compared to the financial benefits of in-person collaboration and training, as well as the talent loss associated with office attendance rules more stringent than employees will accept.

The competitive positioning established by firms that maintain balanced hybrid working options will remain an influential factor. The benefits in recruitment and retention of providing a more generous WFH policy than competitors mean that we are likely to see leaders continue to offer some degree of it, especially as flexible working can be framed as a diversity, equity and inclusion lever.

Read more of our insights in the 2025 Salary Guide.