UBS wants to see its employees back in the office more often, and there's talk

Flexibility is under threat at UBS. Since March, the bank has tightened its remote working rules: employees must be in the office at least three days a week, including Mondays or Fridays. To enforce this directive, the bank recently introduced a digital tool that calculates each employee's on-site attendance rate based on badge visits.

In concrete terms, the dashboard displays a monthly target, with a 20% margin to account for absences or vacations. Those who don't reach it are kindly invited to make up for it over the rest of the year. And there's no room for complacency: every employee, as well as their superior, has access to the statistics. "It's not the monitoring that bothers me the most, it's the atmosphere it creates," one employee told the Tages-Anzeiger. "You check every week to see if you're in the green."

The goal, according to UBS, is to foster collaboration and productivity. But the bank promises: there's no question of affecting bonuses if some employees don't meet the required attendance rate. "Except no one really believes it," sighs one employee.

The measure comes as 3,000 job cuts have been announced in Switzerland following the acquisition of Credit Suisse. For one bank employee, one thing is certain: "In this climate of uncertainty, these tools do not help to reassure."