Like all Canadian FI’s, BNS started its plans late and badly. The word started get out that there were “changes” coming shortly after Brian Porter took over followed quickly by a senior executive purge. Then about a month later the real changes began. The first that we really knew was when the executive teams were culling VP’s with their golden parachutes including our VP.
The announced re-organisations were more like corporate pick-up sticks. The directors and managers did not know what was going on and paid shallow lip service to open communication and transparency. The way the teams were divided up made no practical sense and followed no logical pattern. Fear and confusion were the daily watchwords.
There was ZERO effort made by the Bank to plan for knowledge retention or continuity. The only consistent patterns were; longest serving staff and those staff who were going against the grain were among the first to be shed from the payroll. Team reorgs and consolidation were haphazard and chaotic. The whole environment was toxic with a strong current of angry desperation. People would trade employment lawyer business cards at breaks or lunches like bubble gum sports cards.
My reporting relationship changed multiple times during my last three years with the bank, my role never changed one iota. Only my final manager was pragmatically blunt enough to tell their team that they had no idea what was going on and advised that none of our jobs appeared safe. During the final months of my sentence with Scotiabank I saw offshore and domestic contract operations teams struggling to keep complex systems running with inadequate training and little to no support. The knowledge base had been eroded to the point where it could barely support itself.
I understand that the waves of random staff dismissals continue as of spring 2019 and that morale is still in decline. I would NEVER recommend BNS as an employer or a business after what I saw in my final years there.