AMP ditches offices

AMP Wealth Management New Zealand (AMP), is planning to exit its premises in the Auckland and Wellington CBDs and will move to adopt fully flexible working on an ongoing basis.

Wednesday, June 10th 2020, 9:17AM 4 Comments

This follows the successful move to fully-flexible working during the Covid-19 crisis and AMP said it aligned with “overwhelming” feedback from its employees who said they did not want to return to traditional ways of working.

AMP Wealth Management chief executive Blair Vernon said: “We have been working towards creating a truly flexible work model for a couple of years, so we’re seizing the opportunities and learnings over the last couple of months to accelerate our plans.”

He said AMP believed a return to traditional ways of working, given New Zealand’s experiences during lockdown, would be short-sighted.

It surveyed its people and they agreed – 70% said their ideal work setting was a combination of working from home and the office; 22% said they would prefer to primarily work from home; and 8% from the office all the time.

“The idea that you can only be productive or do work if you’re in an office has long been the source of endless debates, but as we’ve seen through Covid-19, the reality is that your place of work can literally almost be anywhere. Whether that’s an office building or your spare room with the right setup and technology enablement,” Vernon said.

AMP will seek to move into new smaller collaboration and meeting-based premises outside the Auckland and Wellington city centres. The office spaces will be smaller as employees “flex” more and spend less time working in a traditional office environment.

“This will also enable us to continue to respond to the needs of our clients and support them in a range of ways, from face-to-face, over the phone, in their workplace and online. The reduction in office space and travel requirements will also support our sustainability targets, building on our carbon zero accreditation and other initiatives like converting our vehicle fleet to electric vehicles.

“There’s still a lot to work through, but we’re excited about the positive changes we’ll be making in the coming weeks and months. It’s good for our clients, our business and most importantly our people. We think more businesses will be looking to make similar moves, and more employees will be looking to their employer to embrace diversity in its widest context and support their quality of life,” Vernon said.

Tags: AMP Blair Vernon

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Comments from our readers

On 10 June 2020 at 1:56 pm Skeptical said:
I mean, it sounds great and imagine a few different corporates will be moving similarly. All well and good for existing staff - I just wonder what happens when they bring someone new on board, training and building workplace relationships will be tricky.
On 10 June 2020 at 3:18 pm northcoter said:
Sounds great but there is usually a real driver behind the marketing spin. When you have shrinking market share and high fees (apart from default KS) cutting costs is a key lever and this seems cost driven.

@Skeptical given AMP's shrinking market share I doubt their are many new staff. It is not as if they seem to be developing much.
On 10 June 2020 at 3:26 pm Regress said:
One way to get the sale done...
On 12 June 2020 at 9:27 am Amused said:
As history has shown us nothing AMP ever says or does is going to make it a market leader amongst its competitors.

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