Minutes highlight scale of BoE’s Covid-19 redeployment

Some staff were overwhelmed with work while others had little to do
Bank of England
The Bank of England
Photo: Juno Snowdon Photography

Minutes of the Bank of England’s April board meeting shed new light on the massive programme of staff redeployment the central bank was forced to implement as the Covid-19 epidemic broke out in the UK.

Almost all of the bank’s 4,500 staff were forced to work from home, despite the need to keep critical financial infrastructure running and launch several crisis-fighting facilities, some of which had never previously been tried.

Remote technology “held up well”, say the minutes, which were published today (June 2). However, the large volume of communications put pressure on bandwidth, meaning initially conference calls were limited to audio. As of the April 3 meeting, around 10,000 conference calls were happening each day. Cyber security resources were redeployed to focus on the risks from remote working.

The sudden nature of the virus outbreak meant some of the BoE’s work became an urgent priority – such as designing and launching new liquidity facilities – while other aspects were deprioritised or made impossible by remote working.

The minutes highlight how some staff were overwhelmed with work while others had little to do. Jonathan Curtiss, the BoE’s co-executive director for people and culture, established a “clearing house” in a bid to balance out supply and demand for staff.

All banking operations except those requiring physical note exchange or gold movements became remote and the “vast majority” of market operations also moved to remote systems.

“Risks were being monitored carefully, given that staff were having to work remotely at the same time as introducing new facilities,” the minutes say. “A playbook was being developed for bringing operations back onsite in response to an incident.”

The real-time gross settlement system was moved to operate remotely, requiring some staff to be transferred from the ongoing project to develop a replacement system. The minutes say there may be delays to the project, though in April it was unclear what impact the redeployment would have on the timelines.

The minutes note that board members expressed concern over staff wellbeing. Dido Harding said working from home could be both “lonely and intense”, while Frances O’Grady said it would be important to reassure staff who might feel left out from the crisis-fighting work.

Governor Andrew Bailey has been filming weekly video messages to boost morale and maintain communications. “The bank was also looking at the longer-term effect on individuals of being cut off from the bank, refreshing its wellbeing offering, and above all keeping a good flow of communications at all levels,” the minutes say.

Deputy governor Jon Cunliffe said there was a risk in any crisis that senior management’s attention would be diverted from long-term goals. Curtiss’s clearing house for staff was designed to meet the need not only for immediate priorities but also for keeping the bank’s longer-term goals on track as much as possible.

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