A while ago there were rumors of cutting it to 1 week per year of service. Anyone hear anything?
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We had a senior leader tell us that "Reputational Risk isn't as big of a consideration today as it has been in years prior".
I guess that means that if you run a shady operation, then people are not suprised when you do shady stuff.
Citi, Chase and BAC are all at 2 wks per year of service... BAC and maybe Chase up it to 3 wks per year for every year over some number (like 20 or 25 yrs)... however both BAC and Chase are subject to a cap/maximum. BAC it's one year of severance max, not sure about Chase's max.
I doubt this is where WFC will want to stand out among its peers.
Makes sense. Fire managers in year one with 2week/yr. fire the minions year 2 at 1week/yr
There used to be a pension plan. It went away when Wells bought Wachovia. Any old-timers remember the big announcement?
What DOES Chase provide?
What is Chase provide for severance? If we are aligned with them, it won’t change.
Given the scale of the needed lay offs, they can’t afford NOT to change the severance plans. It generally costs a year of pay per employee and don’t forget... we lost a year of cost savings in 2020 due to COVID lay-off cancellations.
There will not be mass lawsuits as the current severance is beyond generous... 60 days of paid R&R, bonuses from 2020 paid and then 2 weeks per year severance. Nobody in their right mind would sue even if that were to be cut in half.
UMMMM....anyone remember when they ended the profit sharing? No standalone announcement. It was one lined buried in a non relevant/related Teamwork story. The same with the change from team member to employee. It will just happen one day and that will be that.
Anyone who has worked for Wells Fargo very long should know not to use the words “never” or “always”.
Last time they reduced severance packages, they buried it in the small linear windows at the top of Teamwork’s that you have to swipe through and then click on to read. It was out there for one day.
It’s not like they sent out an email, or made it a standing hard-to-miss story.
Give a small amount of money to a foodbank: Pay for TV commercials and talk about it in Townhalls.
Reduce employee benefits: Bury it in small print and give make employees go digging for it.
There may be reputation impacts to changing severance in 2021, but not legal ones. Read the fine print. WF can change the way it's calculated at any time. It's a gift, doesn't "accrue" like PTO.
As someone noted below, it happened before without an announcement. Just updated the terms in the employee handbook, and that was that. (And it didn't make the papers, no bad publicity whatsoever.) Then they proceeded to lay off thousands of employees over the next few years. I'd be shocked if they DIDN'T reduce severance sometime next year.
There are always announcements when the book is updated. They don't just update it and not tell anyone.
@eic - when is it going to be reduced? Updated when the new employee handbook comes out for 2021? It hasn’t been updated yet so was curious if effective Jan 2021? Last time they reduced it from 4 weeks to 2 weeks per year there was no announcement or anything. I wouldn’t expect any formal email from our “transparent” leadership this time around either and people will 1) find out by checking for updates to the handbook or 2) simply discover it when they officially get noticed
I work with consulting team hired by WF to look into this and many other separation facets. It is definitely going to be reduced in 2021. WF does not care about optics/perception. It's all business and cost cutting.
Reputation Risk, now that is funny! They most definitely can change the severance period in 2021.
My guess, and this is merely a guess, is that the company may reduce severance benefits, but if so they will wait to do it until after the bulk of the currently planned layoffs. I wouldn't be shocked if the change was made in 2022. There is some liability and reputation risk associated with slashing severance benefits and then firing thousands of people, and they'd want to avoid that.
Given the scale of lay offs, they cannot change it or they would have mass lawsuits on their hands, it will be the same and won't change,
If they do, can we throw a fit like the high rollers who initially had the 401k match taken away and get the original policy reinstated???
Take things by grain of salt until you actually hear it from an official source. Didn't hear anything of that nature.