Greg Palmer is joined by Jim Marous to talk about the future of work in banking -- will remote workers become the new norm?

Transcription:

Finovate showcases cutting edge banking and financial technology through a global conference series featuring short-form demos and thought leadership. Now the conversation continues on the innovate podcast.

Greg Palmer 0:22Welcome to the innovate podcast. Joining me today we have Jim Marous. You may know him from many different areas, but you probably know him best as a co publisher of the financial brand, owner and CEO of the digital banking report and host of the podcast banking transformed. We're going to be talking with Jim today about the future of work in the banking industry. Jim, thanks so much for joining me.

Jim Marous 0:43Hey, great to be on the show, Greg.

Greg Palmer 0:46I just read a paper of yours talking about the future of work in banking based on some research that you've done. Can you talk a little bit about your high level of what that report was all about and some of the key findings?

Jim Marous 0:59Yeah, we did this for the digital bank report was actually the first of several reports we're doing that was coined, the COVID impact report. So we realized that between February and May, things are in such great transition that it was really hard to do research and have it be applicable. By the time it got published, even if it just took three weeks to get it published. It was almost always out of date. So the future work was the first report we did it was sponsored by open text. And what was interesting about the future work report we did is we asked organizations finance institutions, people that worked for financial institutions, what has changed?

Jim Marous 1:37Well, number one, we found it we actually did it over a period of time Can we kept on updating the information was that as time went on, as you might expect, the negative impact the dramatic in your face impact of working from home, actually got easier for people to take advantage of. So the frustrations of distractions, working as a team. All these things, what was at the beginning of the COVID crisis, really major hindrances became almost easy to work with. So people adjusted, the adjustment that people made it very easy. But what we did find was that a lot of jobs did almost as well as not as well, from a work at home or work remotely environment, as it did in a work at the business place.

One of the biggest examples for a lot of call centers, so a lot of call centers when they went remote, they found out that, you know, there wasn't really a dramatic negative impact. And in fact, from a quality of life basis, it actually was a better impact from the standpoint of employee happiness, awareness, and the ability to actually get the job done. I believe TD Bank has already decided in the US that they're gonna give their employees the option of a work at home environment from a call center basis. You can come into work at some times where you can stay away from work. But it's really going to change the whole dynamic of what is the work at home. Or do they work remotely environment?

Greg Palmer 3:11Yeah, I just think that working from home dynamic is one that a lot of people really sort of struggled to wrap their heads around at the beginning. And I think banking specifically has been an industry that's been kind of resistant to this idea. You know, and you and a lot of people initially to your point kind of struggled, you have kids or family members in your work space. And now I think you see it, at least in some places, you start to see an ability for some people to start to return to the office. And so this question is,