Working better together: EquiLend's 100-day return plan

Like many fellow chief executives and business leaders, my daily to-do list has recently been dominated by one key area of decision making: how and where our company should work in the coming weeks, months and years. These decisions used to be relatively easy, such as whether to move from the City of London to Canary Wharf for our U.K. headquarters (which we did back in 2015), or how much more square footage we would need in Manhattan to accommodate our growing workforce. 

COVID-19 has upended that. Now, financial institutions need to make serious choices about the future of their workplaces, and there is no cookie cutter approach that will work for everyone. We’ve seen J.P. Morgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon cancel all his future Zoom meetings as he plans for his employees to return to the office, while Société Générale announced an agreement with unions to allow all French employees to work from home three days a week, which it plans to roll out globally. 

Let me tell you first hand, it is a supremely difficult decision. All of the issues that must be taken into consideration, from safety first and foremost to preferences based on personal circumstances, are not easy. As a global company, we must also take into account regional differences. The speed with which normality is returning looks very different across Asia, Europe and North America. We are also very supportive of our staff who are parents and caretakers and need that extra flexibility. These factors all influence the decisions that EquiLend’s management team has been discussing. 

Throughout the decision-making process, I have kept three key things in mind that are deeply important to the ethos and culture that has seen EquiLend go from strength to strength over the last twenty years: innovation, a social environment and energy. 

As those who work at EquiLend, or the many clients we have worked with over the years, will know, we have a two-decade track record of innovation in the securities finance market. Our clients trust us to introduce technologies that will revolutionize their securities finance operations, generating efficiencies and cost savings. That drive for innovation is fueled by our office surroundings and the collaborative culture we foster. One of the striking features of our offices are the whiteboards dotting many walls. It is difficult to recreate the true whiteboard feeling on Zoom, despite the features available! 

One of the reasons I personally love the office environment was the ability to carry on innovation-focused conversations following a set meeting. That feeling of talking animatedly about a fresh idea walking down the hallway with a colleague post-meeting just isn’t the same as I step away from a virtual meeting to get a coffee refill! 

EquiLend also has always been a company with a tremendous social scene. We are lucky to have a fantastic group of colleagues who all appreciate socializing together. Without wanting to sound trite, it is truly what has made us a very tight-knit and successful team. As an organization, we sit at the center of the global securities finance market, and it is a role we take very seriously. Pre-pandemic, we hosted regular industry gatherings – I loved the ones on our Manhattan outdoor terrace – that brought hundreds of people from across the sector together in a social setting. It was one of the many ways we have stayed close to our clients and listened to their needs, which in turn has fed our innovation. You simply cannot replicate that virtually. And that is our lifeblood. 

And finally, energy. In many ways this is a byproduct of our innovation and social environment, but it is incredibly important. When we ideate and innovate, the process is infused with so much energy that it seeps into everything we do. The dynamic and interactive nature of our in-person collaboration fuels the energy of the entire organization, as do our social interactions with clients and partners. We harness the energy from the community of people in our industry to drive success and positive change. 

For these reasons, and many others, I fundamentally believe we work better together. Yet we also recognize the importance of providing an environment where our staff are best positioned to continue delivering the highest-quality products our clients are used to. Therefore, we have announced to EquiLend staff the following policies:

• Vaccinated colleagues will be welcomed back to the office from July 1 across all of our locations. We expect this to remain optional until early fall.
• Going forward, each staff member will be allotted 100 remote-work days each calendar year. It will be up to individuals to decide where they would like to work, when. We are very excited to have developed this unique approach, which will allow staff the flexibility to work from home a couple days a week, for a month or two at a time, or whatever combination works best for them.

With this hybrid approach, I sincerely believe we will retain the best of both worlds for our employees, who remain our greatest asset.