Advertisement
Banking & finance
BusinessBanking & Finance

Singapore’s DBS to allow employees to work from home up to 40 per cent of the time as it adopts hybrid model

  • Singapore’s biggest bank said it would ‘radically transform’ its structure with a hybrid working model
  • Four out of five of the bank’s employees said they were able to work seamlessly remotely

Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
0
DBS, Singapore’s biggest bank, plans to let its staff work remotely up to 40 per cent of the time and adopt other more flexible working arrangements. Photo: Reuters
Chad Bray
DBS, Singapore’s biggest bank, said it would allow all of its employees to work from home up to 40 per cent of the time as it became the latest bank to reconsider its staffing model in light of its experience during the coronavirus pandemic.

Following a six-month examination by an internal task force, Piyush Gupta, DBS’s chief executive, said the lender would “radically transform” its structure by adopting a hybrid working model that allows employees to work remotely or in the office, creating more flexible work arrangements through job sharing and retraining 7,200 employees in data analytics, artificial intelligence and other emerging areas of technology.

“As the way we live, bank and work continues to change dramatically, we must address the magnitude of the disruptions before us,” Gupta said in a news release on Tuesday. “We will also accelerate our employee upskilling agenda at scale and ingrain the use of data-driven operating models across the bank. By implementing these measures, we believe that Team DBS will emerge as a confident future-ready workforce.”

DBS said four out of five of its 29,000 employees indicated they were able to work seamlessly remotely. However, the bank opted for a hybrid approach after employees indicated staying engaged and connecting with colleagues was challenging.

03:25

How Hong Kong’s new coronavirus contact-tracing app works

How Hong Kong’s new coronavirus contact-tracing app works

Sebastian Paredes, CEO of DBS Bank (Hong Kong), said on Wednesday that the company would maintain its workforce in 2021 and provide hybrid working arrangements “to better enable a flexible, productive and engaged workforce”.

Advertisement