I work in the mortgage/home lending dept. When the layoffs were announced many of my coworkers were obviously panicking because with all the changes they’re making to home lending it wouldn’t be a surprise if they started laying people off.
Not only did it take nearly a week for management to even address the layoff rumors, they’re telling us the rumor started from a quote taken out of context from an interview Shrewsberry did months ago... Seriously? It took me 5 seconds of googling to debunk that. Many articles state the exact date and event where 2020 layoffs were mentioned. Did management forget google exists when they tried passing this lie?
Secondly, Wells is a massive bank whose main goal is to earn money through investors. I may be totally wrong here, but to me layoffs are a sign a company isn’t doing well. When companies aren’t doing well investors take their assets elsewhere. If the layoff rumors truly did come from a misconstrued quote why wouldn’t Wells try to immediately set the record straight to save face with investors? Instead the news made headlines across multiple sources with no attempt from Scharf or other execs to clarify Shrewsberry’s quote.
(I guess it can also be argued that announcing layoffs would be beneficial to investors in the long term as a sign the company is trying to increase profits. But if that’s what’s going on here it still doesn’t make any sense why management would blatantly lie to us peons. Maybe as an attempt to save what little morale we have left?)
What’s even worse is that my colleagues who were panicking about being laid off are completely accepting of management’s explanation. I guess I shouldn’t be asking how stupid management thinks we are because it’s clear some people will believe whatever they’re told even if it can be disproven with a minute of research and an ounce of critical thinking.
I’m sincerely hoping the layoffs won’t come to our area. So many of my coworkers will have their livelihoods crushed with no fallback plan all because of this lie management is trying to shove down our throats.