Let's start with why we need to build the wall-- to stop the exportation of BNY Mellon jobs overseas! We have shipped thousands of jobs to India and now we are going to expand that further and focus more on Poland. These layoffs are part of the company's strategic initiative of "doing more with less," which means we pay less for people in India and Poland so we can reduce expenses by moving jobs there. However, it doesn't work. There are language, culture and time differences that make supporting US laws and business practices very difficult. There are all sorts of special labor laws in Poland that would shock Americans, and limit productivity. At some point, Charlie will find this out (unless he already knows and doesn't care), but it will be too late as all of the institutional knowledge will have been sufficiently purged. The sudden manner of these layoffs provide no opportunity for transition planning or execution.
Now the facts: Bit by bit the company has taken steps to reduce cost and hamstring remaining employees/managers. It has essentially eliminated based at home work arrangements and is discouraging work from home arrangements, despite the benefits to both employer and employee (less commute time and more work time, better work/life balance means happier there is an ironic dichotomy that you can't do the job from home, but you can do it in a foreign country. Here's hoping that the banking regulators take notice and shut this export down due to the safety and soundness risks.
In 2018, managers were "forced" to assign below expectations/unsatisfactory performance ratings to 10% of personnel. If you had 10 people all of who performed well, you still had to ding one, even if your worst-performing employee was better than 20 other people in another area (maybe there was some leveling in large groups, but it actually worked against good managers and in favor of bad managers because if you did eliminate or manage out bad performers, you didn't get credit for it).
In 2Q of 2018, Charlie consolidated everyone into one NYC headquarters (and is in process of consolidating in Pgh) with open space concept under the half-truth guise of collaboration, when it is really to save more money, despite numerous reports that open space has opposite effect, including today's fast company article: https://apple.news/APuDpK74vStGUR76I-ZHg2A
in 3Q of 2018, managers were "forced" to sign a one-sided agreement requiring anywhere from 30 to 90 days notice of departure or retirement (yet the company could terminate managers at any time for any reason before or during that period) if they want to get their bonus (no promise of amount or actual delivery as "employment at will" means employee is entirely at mercy of employer who can change rules if and when it desires). This locks in managers for what is to come next.
In 1Q of 2019, the layoffs begin. Managers are now "stuck" in a no-win situation. Remaining employees bear the worst as they have to pick up slack on top of existing workload. Everyone who wasn't impacted before knows someone let go due to the magnitude (note that the quarterly earnings report stopped reporting # of employees sometime in 2018--this had to be purposeful omission).
What's next? Charlie wants to reduce spans and layers, meaning reducing levels of management, which means more firing of managers or "demotions" to non-managing roles or collapsing of groups. So surviving managers get more responsibility, and others get demoralized or canned. Rumors of things in the offing include reducing severance (remember, no company owes you anything so it can decide 2 weeks per year is too generous), which will save more money on the next round of layoffs. Stay tuned for the annual proxy when we learn how many millions of dollars our CEO and top 5 paid execs get!! Meanwhile let the rest of them eat cake!!
On the bright side, BNY Mellon stock went up almost $1/share (2%) on Jan 15. I guess the Street is approving of the direction Charlie is taking. Poor Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Mellon and sons must be rolling in their graves at how their grand institutions have been wh--ed out for profiteering.