Thread regarding Bank of New York Mellon Corp. layoffs

BNY Mellon: U-turns, unrest and a week to forget after home-working ban

Around the corner from the ‘Fearless Girl’ statue, BNY Mellon’s attempt to get staff back into the office was seen by many as a move that would be damaging for women

Access denied: a move to halt flexible working is likely to hit women's careers

Access denied: a move to halt flexible working is likely to hit women's careers Getty Images

By Chris Newlands

Updated: March 12, 2019 8:02 p.m. GMT

The timing could not have been worse.

Just four days before International Women’s Day and 24 hours prior to the iconic ‘Fearless Girl’ statue being brought to the City to help fight inequality in London’s financial district, Financial News revealed that BNY Mellon, the financial giant, had banned its staff from working at home.

BNY Mellon said the change had become necessary to “increase collaboration” and “enable faster decision-making” at the custody bank, but the move was quickly slammed as a backwards step that would penalise all staff who rely on flexible working, in particular parents.

Campaigners and HR professionals were quick to highlight the move would disproportionately harm BNY Mellon’s female staff at a time when companies are moving to swell the ranks of women they employ, while grappling with large disparities in what they pay their male and female staff.

Jo Swinson, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, who tweeted the original article last week, said: “I feel like sending a fax to BNY Mellon to tell them it’s 2019... or maybe a carrier pigeon?”

The backlash was so great that just two days later on March 6 Charles Scharf, the chief executive of the custody bank, sent a memo to his 50,000 staff across the globe telling them the ban had been embarrassingly reversed, or at least shelved.

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“We did not fully appreciate the level of impact this would have on those employees with existing arrangements,” he wrote in the memo seen by FN. “Given this, we have decided to immediately hit pause on implementing any changes to remote working arrangements.”

Before signing off the note as “Charlie”, the chief executive added: “While we work on creating consistent principles and a fair process, you have the option to revert to whatever practices were in effect in mid-November 2018. Thank you all for the feedback you’ve provided. What’s most important is that we make the right decisions, and if we need to rethink what or how we’ve done something, we will do it.”

It is safe to say he got a lot of feedback. According to a number of insiders at BNY Mellon who spoke to FN in confidence, employees reacted bitterly when first told by Scharf about the new ruling in December, with hundreds taking to the company’s intranet site to voice their anger at the ban.

One female senior executive, who works at the bank’s London headquarters near St Paul’s Cathedral, called the original move “draconian”, adding that she would have left the company had the ban remained.

“Flexibility is very important to me, vitally so. If I don’t have that then it would have be very difficult for me to stay,” she said. “I was very angry and disappointed. It’s good the ban has been put on hold but the company should never have put us through this in the first place. It has lost a lot of goodwill among staff over this.”

Disgruntled employees believe the mooted ban was a crude attempt by Scharf to further reduce headcount at BNY Mellon. Since taking over at the bank in July last year cost-cutting has been high on the 54-year-old’s agenda, and he has already moved to lay off employees, consolidate office space and overhaul executive pay.

“It just seemed like a cheap way to force people who rely on flexible working out of the company without having to pay them off,” said a male employee who also works at BNY Mellon’s headquarters in the City. “You get the feeling BNY didn’t care if they upset anyone. The point of it, I think, was precisely to upset people so they left voluntarily.”

BNY Mellon declined to comment on those claims.

Ominously, Scharf’s latest memo does not make it clear whether the ban has been permanently cancelled or just temporarily lifted; the company declined to comment further on that.

In his note Scharf said BNY Mellon will “take the next several months to reconsider [its approach]”, adding: “If we determine that changes to individual arrangements are necessary, we will work with each of you individually to ensure that you have ample time to transition to the appropriate arrangements based on your personal situation.”

Whether or not Scharf intended to specifically alienate the company’s female staff by telling all employees they needed to be at their desks full time, he succeeded in doing so.

It appears a clumsy and ill-thought-out move at a time when most of BNY Mellon’s competitors are working hard to diversify the pool of people they employ and are moving to close what have become yawning pay gap figures.

The U-turn should be applauded, and correcting dubious decisions does signify good leadership. But the ban should never have been introduced so crudely in the first place. In the same week the Fearless Girl came to London it was a highly embarrassing episode for the custody bank.

The statue will reside outside the London Stock Exchange for three months. I hope BNY Mellon’s U-turn will be more permanent

It was a link to this article

https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/bny-mellons-home-working-ban-is-a-far-cry-from-the-message-of-fearless-girl-20190311

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Link please?