HSBC's Office Attendance Hits 80% At The Spiral

There have been many theories on how companies can entice employees to return to the workplace, one being to create a welcoming environment for them. Fierce advocates of remote work tend to scoff at that advice but at least one company’s experience suggests otherwise.

HSBC inaugurated its new US headquarters at The Spiral yesterday, an office building in New York City’s Hudson Yards neighborhood, marking its largest US relocation to date.

The bank started to relocate staff to the new office in Februar and since then employee attendance has jumped to 80%, said Michael Roberts, CEO of HSBC in the USA and the Americas, at the opening ceremony, according to Reuters.

Attendance was 40% before the pandemic at its former site in Bryant Park, Roberts said at the ceremony that was also attended by New York Mayor Eric Adams and former mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Developed by Tishman Speyer and designed by Bjarke Ingels Group in collaboration with Adamson Associates and structural engineer WSP Cantor Seinuk, The Spiral is a 66-story office tower that opened last year. Its attributes include outdoor terraces with changing plant species as the building rises to the changing natural light,  as well as environmentally friendly features, including 13,000 square feet of outdoor space. M Moser Associates designed HSBC’s interior office space to incorporate various environmental and smart features.

HSBC also held a “chair fair,” asking employees to weigh in on their favorite furniture, and a “workspace fair” for traders to choose their desk configurations, Mabel Rius, the bank’s head of human resources in the US, told reporters.

The massage chair proved to be particularly popular, she said.