Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

Who decides who gets laid off?

As a non-manager, who picks who gets laid off from a team? Is HR telling managers which names they pulled or are managers told they have to cut 3 people and they choose who on the team gets cut?

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| 6083 views | | 18 replies (last September 16, 2020) | Reply
Post ID: @OP+16X5MxPR

18 replies (most recent on top)

Beyond the CEO being very clear about too many layers of management and too many managers with less than 7 direct reports, the rush to perform mid year performance reviews with a return to the 5 level ranking was to identify “needs improvement” workers.

In some groups, long planned changes are taking place and as they decide who stays in the new leaner structure, they are looking at performance over the past 3 years and even asking “partners” their opinions. When sales goals were abandoned, if you took it as opportunity to retreat to portfolio management and not grow business , you may find it come back to bite you. Even if you did continue to grow the book, some partners opinion of you may impact you.

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Post ID: @1ulc+16X5MxPR

Welcome to the Scharf dimension. Nobody has ever said that it would make sense.

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Post ID: @1uzb+16X5MxPR

@1ota+16X5MxPR and those skills would command market price rather than netting any savings.

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Post ID: @1qig+16X5MxPR

Someone who has not been with the bank 15 years is not down skilled. They in fact may have 10 years of experience at another bank, superior skills and other qualifications that actually make them a better choice.

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Post ID: @1ota+16X5MxPR

One of the big items Wells is using is your length of service with the company. If you’ve been with Wells for 15+ years, it puts you into another category. Wells is also trying to down skill it’s talent by letting experienced people go and filling in with younger/less experienced employees. Since they can’t “discriminate” using your age, they are using your length of service as a proxy. It’s not a perfect correlation. If you let an employee making $150k go and replace them with someone making $70k, it’s a big savings. Middle management will get destroyed in this round of layoffs. Sorry for the bad news

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Post ID: @1muf+16X5MxPR

@rtv+16X5MxPR can you clarify?

Are you saying the employees who were with the bank the longest got cut? Was there any correlation to location strategy and/or size of compensation?

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Post ID: @dzf+16X5MxPR

Leadership sets the parameters- are we cutting a number of people, closing a site, reorganizing a unit, eliminating a specific role, etc. HR helps leadership with selection criteria to meet the goal. For example, if the goal is to cut a site from 10 managers to 5, HR provides the rating process template. Leadership plugs everything into the template, does the ratings. Leadership decides who gets cut based on the ratings. HR vets and signs off. Then leadership moves ahead with the layoff process (WF calls it displacement).

Leadership can mean the CEO of the line of business, the two up manager, or anyone between. Multiple leaders may be involved or just one. Just depends on the situation.

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Post ID: @hkd+16X5MxPR

Managers do not decide. They asked for my input, I gave it, and the list of cuts had no relationship whatsoever to the info I provided. It may have been a coincidence, but in my group, it was length of service (overall, not time in the position). I ended up losing a strong performer, keeping some underperformers, and having most of the competent people find other jobs and quit, leaving me short staffed with only poor to mediocre team members (sorry...EMPLOYEES.)

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Post ID: @rtv+16X5MxPR

I think it depends. My last company, h/r told my manager that I was being cut. They (h/r) told me that my manager fought to keep me but it was a decision made out of his control so I had to go. I think it's the higher up chain. Chances are under Chuckie. But every company is different.

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Post ID: @lax+16X5MxPR

it depends... some is the manager... some is what you got on your mid year review... it all goes into an algorithm that the HR team uses to make a list... then they go through and raise and lower based on several factors such as age, disability, cost ... and then they go to the manager for review...
once they get approved or disapproved it is then sent into the salary continuation program where the papers are printed out and manually mailed. The reason that things have been slow and phased is that everything is manual right now and nothing is automated... they are working on automating the whole thing...

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Post ID: @ncq+16X5MxPR

Managers do not decide. I’m a manager and I have no idea what is going on. Wells Fargo really needs to state a timeline on when departments will find information out. If they cannot I do not see why they mentioned it at all. It was a big disservice to employees.

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Post ID: @gxh+16X5MxPR

It all depends. It could be managers, it could be directors, it could even be the CEO’s cat - it all doesn’t matter so as long as the layoff meets the corporate objective. I heard one company actually outsourced a company to lay-off people - sorta like Office Space but minus the interview process.

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Post ID: @plm+16X5MxPR

@jol+16X5MxPR, maybe this is good training for the show Survivor! Then have a better shot at winning the million dollars! Maybe this would make a good tv show with same theme too.

Now i know how those people feel on that show.

What is considered the bottom have , the 1 -2 rank?

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Post ID: @mte+16X5MxPR

What if you're too new to have a mid-year review? Will they just wait for the year-end review?

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Post ID: @qoj+16X5MxPR

It will be the managers who decide who goes and who stays. But how they actually do it, is based on the midyear reviews. Oh sure, you'll get a year-end review too, but if your mid-year is rated as below standards, the odds are short of you walking on water that you'll see no improvement in the year-end rating either. The actual decision to put you on the yank list will actually come down in November or thereabouts. They know who in advance is on the list for termination. Come January 15th or thereabouts, you can expect a phone call. It stinks for those on the receiving end of this, but the next round is going to be much worse for the survivors of round 1. There will be no let up, this literally will become like the tv show, Survivor as one or more of the remaining bunch are going to be voted off the Wells Fargo wagon sometime between mid-year and end of year, if not sooner. Just 1 mistake on anything will put you smack in the cross-hairs. The managers will be documenting everything. It's no way to run a business, but they aren't running a business, they are focused on streamlining as quickly as they can without disrupting normal operations - not likely they can succeed at that either, hence the depressed stock price. The market knows Charlies track record. This could be his waterloo.

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Post ID: @jol+16X5MxPR

HR decides nothing. They provide data to senior leaders. With cuts of this level, expect the actual decisions to be made by people within the top 4 or so rungs below Charlie, potentially with input from lower down depending on that senior leaders organization size and actual familiarity with their group’s functions.

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Post ID: @tro+16X5MxPR

Well it’s the managers who are responsible for the “rank” part of “rank and yank”, so they’re responsible as far as that goes.

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Post ID: @mxp+16X5MxPR

I hope it's the latter

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Post ID: @clq+16X5MxPR

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