Swiss investment bank UBS has told staff who don’t want to receive the Covid-19 vaccine that they can apply to work remotely, Bloomberg reported.
The financial industry has taken a varied approach to vaccination, with some banks such as Deutsche Bank requiring vaccination as a requirement for entering their buildings.
UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank with about 70,000 employees worldwide, has taken a more flexible approach.
“We have 25,000 employees alone in the U.S. and thousands more in Singapore and Hong Kong, and every country has a different legal framework around what you can and can’t make mandatory” with respect to vaccines, CEO Ralph Hamers said at the Swiss Economic Forum in Interlaken, Bloomberg reported.
About two-thirds of staff are eligible to work remotely, Hamers told the forum. However, traders, among others, are part of the remaining staff for whom remote work would be “really difficult,” he said.
“We have already identified two-thirds of our jobs can continue to work from home and therefore we are developing a model of hybrid working,” the CEO said, according to the news service.
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