(Skip to the end for Q&A. Audience was mostly Tech)
Elevator music.
Operator says meeting will begin shortly.
A different operator talks about support. Hard to understand his accent.
Meeting starts 10 minutes late.
Happy New Year.
Can people hear us?
We're getting reports that there's no audio. Fred, can you hear me...
It looks like people can't hear me.
Hopefully people are catching up.
Again, Happy New Year everyone.
2021 cannot be a repeat of 2020.
Fred, people are pinging me like crazy. My screen is lighting up like a christmas tree. Is everything ok?
Happy New Year everyone.
Location Strategy - we had to pivot to get everyone productive at home.
Stressful and uncertain year. We have a new leadership team.
Don't want to do recognition because we might leave somebody out.
We want to talk about D&I.
AK lives in Minneapolis, near Floyd riots. "It was in our backyard".
Minneapolis not a D&I friendly city.
Chuck starts to talk.
Talks about new D&I leader.
D&I has tentacles into all parts of the organization (he actualy said "tentacles").
Become a "D&I Ally"
Mike talks. (I have no idea who "Mike" is. He didn't say much).
AK says "I thought I was pretty wo.ke".
Some other guy says, he's dissapointed in the press and in what some WF people have said. People are afraid to speak out. Best to assume people didn't mean anything bad if they say something.
Lot of new terms, like "unconcious bias". Things might be there that are unintentional. We have a ways to go to get better as a company.
Chuck again.
6S strategy and expense reduction. People need to connect the dots and avoid costs in our ecospace.
We're the only company using some kind of printer, according to HP (WF is proud of this, I guess).
Strategic decision to change on-site support models, moving to "dispatch" style.
Had to move significant stuff out to people WFH due to COVID. Computers, monitors, etc.
Greater need for us to partner with our partners to get stuff done.
We need to utilize our stuff to the greatest degree possible.
People had to work 12 to 16 hour days to deal with WFH/COVID challenges.
They are re-deploying and refreshing old computers that would have been discarded in years past, but that still have life.
All things considered, people did well in 2020.
Some other guy talking that I don't know. Talks like he has golf balls in his mouth.
Tr.ump said we knew something about COVID in 2020? (what? hard to understand.)
Tripled the amount of work, without trippling the number of resources from 2019.
Had a full-day outage, no secondary system to fail users over to. We now have a secondary system.
BYOD. I get that there's a lot of emotions about that.
We want to align with industry standards.
When their contract comes up, they lose their phone and have to use their own. Very few exceptions.
Contract end dates in 2022 are going to be this year, not waiting until 2022.
We need to deliver during tough times, and be laser focused on our priorities.
Blackberry upgrades coming. (what? how does that align with BYOD? Or is that just for executives?)
We're tracking who has what. Even to the point of who has a cable.
Somebody on an open-mic starts typing and drowns out the guy who was talking.
People have figured out how to work from home.
Some other guy named Bill talks.
More "6 S" stuff..........
Reorg at end of 2020. Managers.
Agile. (puke)
Talked about individuals doing a good job.
New datacenter stuff.
Trading floor has been like musical chairs with people moving.
More "Agile" (more puke)
Lost his train of thought.
Lots of statistics.
Some guy called "Detee". (Never heard of him)
Even with COVID, we need to keep the lights on.
329 branches closed recently.
Over 1100 branches closed due to COVID. Some will reopen.
Working with our partners in India to deliver better customer service.
Trained them to do our jobs is the best way to say that (he actually said that).
More COVID talk, and shipping equipment out to WFH. Lot of 50 foot patch cords went out.
Audio drifted off a b–challenges regarding vendors and locations of employees.
Had to transition stuff from Philippines to India. Superstars stepped up and did a tremendous job.
Important for us to keep doing our work the "right" way.
A re-org happened and some people moved to where they can be more engaged.
Another different guy.
2020 was a high capacity year because of COVID.
More statistics. Pretty much a repeat of what was already said.
(I took a break to go pee and get some coffee...)
Back now. Some other mealy mouth guy is talking.
Focus on quality.
He wants to thank everyone. (you're welcome, I guess...)
He was blabbing aimlesslly and got cut off by AK.
Appologies for technical difficulties at the beginning of the call.
Golf-ball mouth spoke up and wanted to recognize Holly's Birthday yesterday (refering to a tech glitch in emal that went global).
Not the fault of the person who sent the email.
Made it onto twitter, social media, etc. Also sent to thousands of fax machines.
Company is putting a positive spin on it.
Stock media images of people are mostly pre-COVID, so we need updated ones showing people wearing masks.
Q&A:
What caused the email flood? It was a glitch in a 3rd party product. Thank god it was a happy message, and not something negative or confidential. Could have been really bad. Not the fault of the person who sent it.
Some new executive hired. He sent out a video. Lots of leaders don't understand stuff, but they think this guy does. They'll let us know how it goes.
Layoff News: they apologized for overlooking this. WFR's focus on becoming more efficient. Mostly "loss of leadership roles".
People chose to leave, and sometimes we don't fill that position so as to control laying somebody else off. Decisions not made lightly.
Leadership has your back (exact quote).
Efficiency numbers are public information, and Chuckie doesn't like our numbers.
Need to follow and accelerate our strategy. Automation, simplification, self-service. We need to reduce the amount of money that WF needs to spend to earn a dollar. Be "Agile" (puke).
We may reach a breaking point, and will have to prioritize what work gets done. You need to come to work, do your best and put in a good day, then forget about it and don't get burned out. Don't stress out about things you can't control. Be positive.
There was a lot of internal negativity about the "Happy Birthday Holly" situation. It didn't bring out the best of some people.
Has COVID/WFH changed our strategy? No. It's accellerated it. (Followed by tech mumbo jumbo). We're aligned with the direction of our external peers on Wall Street. Big problem is that a lot of families have just one computer, and kids need it for school, both parents might need it for work, etc, all at the same time.
Most people are not travelling. We know this from getting the location of employees cell phones. (I question the accuracy of this - I leave my cell phone on my desk when I am not working).
Another town hall in Feb. We should be able to share more info then.
Social distancing when we're called back into the office? The company has not made definitve plans yet. People will come back into the office in a phased manner. Still a lot yet to be decided. Watching to see what other companies are doing. Thinking 3 days in the office, 2 days at home is on the table. Won't send people back to the office until it's safe to do so. We don't know if people will be required to be vaccinated first.
2020 was survival of the fittest. We're not proud of that, and want to do better.
As leaders we need to be approachable and people need to feel free to come to us. We need to know whats on peoples minds. Our doors must be open.