Staff have resigned at Starling Bank after its new chief executive demanded thousands of workers attend its offices more frequently, despite lacking enough space to host them.
In his first major policy change since taking over from the UK digital bank’s founder, Anne Boden, in March, Raman Bhatia has ordered all hybrid staff – many of whom were in the office only one or two days a week, or on an ad-hoc basis – to travel to work for a minimum of 10 days each month.
But the bank, which operates online only, admitted that some of its offices would not be equipped to handle the influx.
“We are aware that in some office locations we may not be able to accommodate 10 office working days per month for everyone right now. We are considering ways in which we can create more space,” an email sent by Starling’s human resources team and seen by the Guardian said.
Starling has 3,231 staff, the vast majority of whom are in the UK with some also in Dublin. However, the Guardian understands that the bank has only about 900 desks, including 260 at its Cardiff site, 320 in its London headquarters and 155 in Southampton.
The bank has a further 160 desks in its newest site in Manchester, where it has signed a 10-year lease to occupy the fifth floor of the Landmark building, which also houses Santander UK and HSBC staff.
The announcement led to a flurry of complaints from staff on the company’s internal Slack messaging channels, with many highlighting the lack of desk and parking spaces, as well as disruption to their work-life balance.
Some staff have already resigned over the “rushed” announcement, while others have threatened to do so. One staffer, who has handed in their notice, told the Guardian: “I’ve worked for Starling for years, and have done my job effectively while working almost entirely from home.
“Being asked without warning to take on the time, expense and life disruption of returning to the office for half of the working week is not something I can personally understand or accept, so I made the decision to resign.”
One aggrieved staffer posting in Slack, with more than 100 likes, said the changes had been “rammed down everyone’s throats despite their legitimate concerns”.
They also accused Bhatia of trying to create a “bland grey corporate hellscape filled with dead-eyed zombies who care about nothing more than doing the bare minimum, clocking off and collecting a paycheque”.
Bhatia hit back in a company-wide email, saying he was “surprised” to hear that the policy was unexpected, and that he had spoken about getting staff back in the office two or three days each week “over the last few months”.
Bhatia said “the leadership team has been thinking for some time about how to operationalise this because we share a conviction that working in the office is important for creativity, collaboration, problem solving, performance and engagement”.
The online bank, founded in 2014 by Boden and backed by Goldman Sachs, has grown rapidly from 43,000 customers in 2017 to 3.6 million in 2023. Over that time, its workforce increased from 279 to more than 3,200.
The return to office announcement came a month after the Financial Conduct Authority hit Starling with a £29m fine after discovering “shockingly lax” controls that it said left the financial system “wide open to criminals”. That included failures in its automated screening system for individuals facing government sanctions.
Starling’s new policy puts it among a growing number of companies attempting to get staff to return to the office more often, after the pandemic caused an explosion in home working.
Goldman Sachs became one of the first major employers to get employees back in five days a week in 2023, setting a precedent for companies such as Amazon, which has asked staff to return full-time from January.
The supermarket chain Asda has also toughened its stance, making it compulsory for thousands of workers at its offices in Leeds and Leicester to spend at least three days a week at their desks from the new year.
Starling said in a statement: “Starling recently formalised a longstanding practice in which colleagues were encouraged to work in their local office for two to three days a week. By bringing colleagues together in person, our aim is to achieve greater collaboration that will benefit our customers as we enter Starling’s next phase of growth.
“People managers are able to provide additional support to colleagues with wellbeing and other personal needs. Those with fully remote or flexible arrangements in place already remain on those terms.”
