BUFFALO, N.Y. (WBEN) - How will M&T Bank adjust to a work culture that may be more willing and able to work remotely?
The company on Wednesday unveiled its Tech Hub at Seneca One Tower where approximately 1,500 employees will be housed and tasked with creating new technologies over the next several years to help the company and clients. Company leadership said remote work will still be an option for its employees.
"We'll never go back to exactly the five days a week that we were doing before," M&T Bank Chairman and CEO Rene Jones said. "We're better together. We find we're better together as employees solving problems for our customers. Predominantly, we'll be back. But my sense is there will be a lot more flexibility as to where and how you work."
Jones said there may be some days where employees will work from home.
M&T Bank announced their plans for the Tech Hub several months before the pandemic hit the United States and affected everyday life.
"We think that place still matters," M&T Bank Chief Information Officer Mike Wisler said. "We think that space as a part of place still matters. To make the kind of difference that we make in our business in our kind of work, collaboration and collision and proximity matter a ton."
M&T Bank plans to have roughly 100 workers transition to the Tech Hub next month. Jones thinks the initial vision of what the Tech Hub was pre-COVID will come to life by the fall.
"This is a place where you're going to want to be," Jones said. "You're going to want to collaborate and connect with other individuals. Think about Seneca One in and of itself. We've talked a lot of people coming back to work...the tower itself, people come to live here. There are 115 apartments that people are occupying and, in some sense, they're already at work. I think this tower is going to be something that is a test environment for how we might work in the future."
