One Australian bank just gave employees a choice: Come to the office or take a pay cut

One of Australia’s largest banks has made it clear to employees that not coming into the office will have consequences.

In an internal memo on Thursday, ANZ Group said employees’ salaries will be cut if they are not in the office for at least half the working week.

Bloomberg first reported the memo. A spokesperson for ANZ confirmed the contents of the memo to Business Insider.

“Our hybrid working expectation has been made clear to our employees, including potential impact on future remuneration if employees don’t have an appropriate exception,” an ANZ spokesperson said. They added that the flexible working policy has existed for a number of years.

Thursday’s email to managers referenced a tool for tracking staff members’ attendance and how pay brackets would change for people not meeting the 50% in-office requirement.

Employees coming to the office less than 20% of the time won’t be eligible for salary increases unless they have an exemption. Those who come between 21% and 40% of the time could see their variable pay cut by up to 50%.

ANZ joins a growing number of companies mandating return-to-office and cracking down on those that skirt requirements.

In January, Britain’s biggest retail bank, Lloyds, said it would consider office attendance when deciding staff bonuses. The same month, JPMorgan Chase told its employees to return to the office five days a week starting in March, ending a pandemic-era work-from-home policy.

Outside finance, some of the world’s largest employers, including Amazon, Meta, and Walmart, have instructed employees to come in several days a week or face termination.

But not everyone is on the mandated RTO bandwagon.

Late last month, Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters said he would let his staff decide whether to return to the office.

“We work with adults, and the adults can have an adult conversation with other adults and decide how they’re going to best manage their team,” Winters said in an interview with Bloomberg.

“It’s working for us,” Winters said. “How other companies make that work? Everybody’s got their own recipe.”

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