Lloyd’s Tracking Monday Office Attendance
Lloyd’s of London is monitoring office attendance amid concerns that Mondays are still not busy enough. The 336-year-old insurance market tracks swipe card entry data of workers coming into its listed headquarters in the heart of the City, allowing managers to see when and how often people are coming into the office.
It comes amid growing concerns across businesses that workers are either flouting demands to come into the office more regularly or effectively extending the weekend by not coming in on Mondays or Fridays.
John Neal, chief executive of Lloyd’s, said of the swipe card monitoring: “We’re using it as evidential data. We know when people are here, when they’re not here. We know when people log on, when they log off. We know when people are doing emails, when they’re not doing emails. So we’re using the data constructively and thoughtfully. We’re not using it from a discipline point of view.”
City bosses are increasingly keeping a close eye on swipe card data amid a rise in so-called TWaTs, an acronym for those who only go into the office on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.
Some businesses have gone as far as to use the data as a basis for disciplining individuals for failing to comply with office attendance or work location policies.
Big Four accounting giant PwC last month warned its 26,000 employees that their working locations will soon be tracked and shared with career coaches, following rival EY’s decision to begin monitoring turnstile data earlier this year.
Magic circle law firms Clifford Chance and Slaughter and May have taken similar surveillance action as part of a crackdown on office shirkers.
Lloyd’s, which was founded in a 17th-century London coffee house to insure ships and their cargoes, expects most of its workers to come into its office at least three days a week.
It has pushed for more brokers and underwriters to resume trading face-to-face after Covid lockdowns forced the marketplace to move to electronic trading done remotely.
The corporation does not set the hybrid working rules for the 50 insurance companies or 380 brokers that operate within its centuries-old specialised marketplace. Its policies apply to its direct employees.
Mr Neal, who took charge of the insurance and reinsurance giant in 2018, said that he’s seeing the “right behaviours” from Lloyd’s Corporation employees and there has been no “need to be forceful”.
Speaking to The Telegraph last month, Mr Neal said that Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays were close to pre-pandemic norms while Mondays are “two thirds” of the way there.
In 2023, Mr Neal told the Financial Times that he wanted to “get Monday back” and for traders to return to the underwriting room four days a week. He stressed the importance of face-to-face price and policy negotiations between underwriters and brokers, as has traditionally been done at Lloyd’s at each insurers’ box on its trading floor.
Bruce Carnegie-Brown, outgoing chairman of Lloyd’s, has warned that employees are unlikely to resume working five-days per week at its office on Lime Street, nicknamed the “inside building”.
In an interview with the Daily Mail in April, Mr Carnegie-Brown said that getting Friday attendance back to pre-pandemic norms was a “lost cause”.
However, he noted that office occupancy levels were already “pretty low” on Fridays before the pandemic.
A Lloyd’s spokesman said: “Like any employer with a physical office space, we collect pass entry and exit data to ensure building security. We retain our position of Lloyd’s Corporation staff working with their line managers to ensure they are performing their work duties both flexibly and in the office.”