Bank Layoffs: Credit Suisse, State Street, Carlyle and more

Anyone within the financial industry that has "HR" as part of their title is probably less happy today than the people that are being fired en masse.

The worst part is that more than one major financial brand is mismanaging the entire process.

Case in point, while speaking on the phone with a Citibank customer service rep last week in connection with a reasonably significant problem, she broke down in tears and said she has no idea if she has any job security, if she is going to be fired next, and that half of her co-workers have no idea if they are about to be fired.

That was after Citi received a massive infusion from the government. I'm not a small customer of Citi. At least I wasn't when I spoke with the rep. After her message, I closed all of my accounts, and told everyone in my family to do the same.

Laying off people without destroying the brand is a particularly challenging problem, and most internal HR people don't have the support they need to address that issue.

Last week, Leadership IQ's Mark Murphy hosted a live webinar (at no charge) entitled : How To Manage Layoffs With Compassion...(and Without Crushing the Enterprise)

1000 senior HR execs attended. Too few from the financial industry. Those that were invited, but didn't tune in might have been too busy firing staffers, or simply disregarded the invite and would rather believe "we have internal HR people that know how to manage the layoff process, and have no need for 'outside experts."

I worked on/around Wall Street for more than two decades, and in senior roles (not creating toxic investment products, nor investment banking); and, in all due respect to those included in this message, the attitude "we know better, and don't need guidance' is the same attitude that helped create the debacle that the financial industry is facing.

Murphy's creds are well-documented, best selling author, speaker, TV commentator etc--and his comments/philosophy with respect to the topic of layoffs are not the ordinary jibber jabber that is typical to 'expert consultants.' His website is www.leadershipiq.com

An objective person that's overseeing HR issues for a major brand that's implementing across-the-board layoffs might say, "We should have a talk with this fellow..."

And don't expect those that are not part of the layoff pool to be jumping for joy and working like eager beavers.

According to LeadershipIQ study released today, the ones that remain are underperforming, because management forgot to consider how to manage. Nothing new there--all those folks with those golden MBA's never lived through a recession, or were never taught anything about crisis management, only taught about how to create logos and come up with great financial projections.