COVID-19: New UK Government Restrictions

The following email was sent today to all Goldman Sachs employees in our London office by Richard Gnodde, CEO of Goldman Sachs International.

This evening the UK Prime Minister introduced further measures, with immediate effect, to slow the spread of COVID-19 across the UK population. These measures include enforced social distancing and self-isolation amongst family members in the home, except for shopping for basic necessities, exercise once per day, medical visits and travelling to and from essential work. In connection with this, the government has ordered the closing of all shops selling non-essential goods and prohibited the gathering of more than two people who do not cohabit.

As a firm, we continue to be committed to comply with government guidelines and take steps to ensure your health and wellbeing. Therefore, we reiterate our previous advice that only staff performing office essential functions are to operate from Goldman Sachs premises, otherwise they should be working from home. Please consider the following as you think about your working arrangements going forward:

  • Your divisional leadership should have previously confirmed if your role is one that should be considered an office essential function. If you are not working from home and still coming into the office, but have not heard from your divisional leadership yet, please contact your manager to discuss your work arrangements
  • As a reminder, if your role is one that is assigned to work in the office, or from a BCP site, and you are not comfortable doing so for personal reasons, please discuss alternative arrangements with your manager
  • For the remainder of our staff in the UK, they should continue to work from home until further notice
  • We appreciate this is a difficult time for you and your families, and want to remind you that the firm provides resilience support and counselling services globally, including options that are accessible 24 hours a day for our people and their dependents. In addition, please continue to visit the COVID-19 site on GSWeb for up-to-date guidance, answers to frequently asked questions and resilience resources.

Thank you for your continued support and hard work during these challenging times.

Richard