Remote Working: Planning For Beyond The COVID-19 Pandemic

Challenges and opportunities posed by remote working, navigating the EU (and global) regulatory considerations for financial services firms

Executive summary

COVID-19 has had a transformative impact on traditional office workspace arrangements. Despite some initial (very welcome) improvements to the COVID-19 outlook in Europe, future variants and mutations of this present virus or indeed new (prolonged) pandemics could mean a more frequent return to increased restrictions on working from offices or even a return to recurrent and rolling lockdowns.

As has become evident during the pandemic, a number of these restrictions have differing arrangements, including within the same jurisdiction and often segmented vaccination status and/or job role notably for those categorised as "key workers". In large parts of the EU, these restrictions coupled with a prolonged shift to remote working across sectors, notably in financial services, are reshaping the role of the