Sunday, 2 November 2008
Computer problems could be terminal
Is anyone else having trouble accessing the system?” Once upon a time this was a fairly common and fairly innocuous question. It meant nothing more than the need for some sort of administrative procedure. But in the banking world right now, this question has become a whole lot more sinister.
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Computer problems could be terminal
2 November 2008
Is anyone else having trouble accessing the system?” Once upon a time this was a fairly common and fairly innocuous question. It meant nothing more than the need for some sort of administrative procedure. But in the banking world right now, this question has become a whole lot more sinister.
You see, the standard approach when someone is made redundant is for their access to the computer network to be cut off at the same time as they are sitting down at a surprise meeting with HR to hear the news of the end of their career. That way, when the poor ex-banker returns to his desk to pack his things in a cardboard box, he is not going to be tempted to copy all the bank’s confidential data from the server.
But, like most things that the IT department does, this procedure goes awry now and again. This morning, for example, one of the young guys in our leveraged finance group, Kenny, came in to find his user name and password were not working.
Kenny did the sensible thing and called up the IT helpdesk to report the problem and ask them to reset his password. The response he got was not what he was expecting.
“Access to this account has been suspended,” said the nameless voice on the other end of the line.
“But that’s my account. I need to access it to do my job,” said Kenny, confused. “Can you re-activate it, please?”
“Umm ... your account has been suspended ... on instructions from human resources,” said the nervous voice, presumably realising that he had already said too much.
“Oh” was all Kenny could think of to say, realising immediately what this meant. He remained lost for words for about 30 seconds before he got up and stormed into his boss’s office. Several four-letter words and the odd stack of papers flew for a few minutes before Kenny gave up and resigned to the fact that he had found out about his redundancy in a slightly unusual way.
Redundancy is a big issue right now for bankers. When a bank makes staff cuts, they don’t fire anyone, as you need to do something wrong to get fired. Instead, the people who lose their jobs are told that they are redundant. The un-encouraging dictionary definition of this word is “no longer useful”, but in employment terms it means that, although you might be quite useful, the job you were doing no longer exists.
And this is true for a lot of bankers. If banks are making 50 per cent of the loans they used to make, then they need 50 per cent of the staff. If the leveraged buyout market has evaporated, so have the jobs of the leveraged buyout team.
A lot of banks have announced redundancies and a lot are going to. So if you work in a bank your name may soon find its way on to a job cut list. This is not necessarily a bad thing: redundancy comes with a payout, usually linked to how long you have been employed. And so, for some, redundancy might be a nice way to sit out the financial downturn.
However, if you want to avoid being laid off, there are a couple of things you can do. First, get busy. Get involved in as many projects as you can. Volunteer to do tedious jobs that you would normally avoid. The more you seem to be doing, the less likely you are to lose your job. Getting rid of you if you are busy would mean that your boss will have to take on some of your work, and he’s going to want to avoid that.
Second, hit your boss with some kind of sob story. Someone you know has just lost their job, or you have lost all your money in the stock market collapse, or your favourite pet just died after wiping out your savings in vet costs. Or anything else that indicates how badly you need to keep your job. Not all bosses have a conscience, but some do and in choosing between you and someone else, their conscience just might play a role.
And finally, don’t come to work on a Friday. Pretend to be sick. Most job cuts are carried out on a Friday. This is meant to be better for staff morale. I think the idea is that if the job cuts happen on a Monday then everyone will spend the whole week gossiping about it and worry if they are next. Whereas, if the cuts take place on a Friday, the theory is that perhaps people will have forgotten about them after a fun-filled weekend. Whatever the reason, if you think you are on the list, Friday is not a good day to be in the office.
Oh, and one final thing. If you get a redundancy payout, put it in the bank. In a savings account. Don’t invest it in minibonds.
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