After three months of cancer treatment, C.S. Venkatakrishnan is relishing his return to the office.
(Bloomberg) — After three months of cancer treatment, C.S. Venkatakrishnan is relishing his return to the office.
“Personally, I have experienced the joy of being back in the office, of being able to interact more casually with colleagues,” the Barclays Plc chief executive officer said in a Bloomberg Television interview Thursday, his first since completing treatment for non-Hodgkin lymphoma earlier this year. “It’s improved my productivity and its improved my frame of mind. So I’m very happy to be back.”
During his three months of treatment, Venkatakrishnan worked from home, an enforced absence that he says crystallized the advantages of being in the office.
“I always knew that there was a benefit of being in person and being around the office,” he said. “And now I’ve experienced it because its one thing when you’re in Covid and everybody’s away, its another thing when you’re sick and you’re alone but everybody’s in the office.”
He said Barclays was committed to investing in its offices, noting the bank has just built four new trading floors in its Canary Wharf skyscraper and “built a wonderful campus in Glasgow,” he said. “So we do like to have a presence across the UK.”
Still, that’s not to say his bank has any plans to ditch hybrid work entirely.
“There are many benefits that have come from hybrid working, which we should all use and we should capitalize on,” Venkatakrishnan said. “The flexibility and the acceptance of flexibility, which is I think the most important thing. So we want to keep that and we don’t want to dispel it.”
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