Thread regarding Bank of America layoffs

@esru+1pzJEKyf - brilliant - well said!! (and thank you)

As a former B of A customer, it’s kinda funny to see the same executives who closed my branch and told me that I could just do everything online totally make an about face and insist that it’s impossible to work online.

I guess “digital only” is just something for long-suffering customers. So glad I switched banks!

The 2 / 6 weeks are there to allow our associates to take more than two days off in a week. We allow this because we value our associates and their well-being. We are committed to being an excellent place to work.

As such, we are committed to Workplace Excellence. We have listened to our associates and understand how important it is to YOU being an "In the Office" company. If you cannot meet 4 / 6 weeks due to paid time off than you're taking too much paid time off. Remember, we are a "Pay for Performance" company so, if you cannot commit to Workplace Excellence, we cannot commit to up to a 2% pay increase.

• Clueless BofA exec

@awfw+1pzJEKyf

Nope, myWork hasn't ended. I work closely with someone who is myWork. Was told it gets brought up every couple years by HR. This person doesn't have a hardship or medical accommodation. Unless you consider having to sit in traffic a hardship as that was the complaint made to me if he had to come into an office.

You’re missing the point. They’re not looking at Workday. They’re doing a badge swipe report. If you don’t have 3 out of 5 days you make the report.
If you were on vacation your manager has to answer for that. Then they can look at Workday to verify.
It doesn’t matter how many hours you enter into workday for days off.

MyWork was ended when CB said it was over. She said it on every quarterly meeting for about two years. She only stopped saying it when she got exiled to France.

MyWork was not ended despite many people thinking otherwise. It was significantly reduced and people were moved back to office as a way to force attrition, and it worked to get people to leave without severance. It's still available for hardship or medical accommodations.

@7ffj+1pzJEKyf they are excluding from RTO reporting Thanksgiving week and the last 2 weeks of December.

Do we have to go in office today if we are off day after Thanksgiving? I thought someone who received the Workplace email said Thanksgiving week is exempt.

How do mywork employees continue to get to work from home when the mywork program supposedly ended years ago?

I'm seeing a noticeable uptick in other employees no longer helping out or willing to work with you on an issue. Instead get sent to a process input that is designed to spin you around in circles getting nothing done. Before people were willing to stay on past 5pm even to help you out. Morale seems to be running low.

Are folks seeing more people on the floor now that big brother is in full effect? It’s still quiet on some of the floors in Charlotte. Would love to see widespread revolt of this stupid forced “collaboration “

If bank wants me to swipe my badge 3 times a week at the office, I will. I live about 15 minutes away - so not a big deal for me. I will go there at some point during the day long enough to get my checkmark.

I feel bad for people who moved further away, etc, who don't have such an easy time making the checkmark happen. I checked with my manager and asked about the expectation. I understand that it is 3 badge swipes (days) per week. My manager confirmed.

So, I'll go, swipe my badge, and leave. My productivity and morale left 2 or 3 years ago. It's AMAZING and pathetic how long you can get by here doing the absolute BARE MINIMUM! LOL!

A lot of people are hoping for layoffs and getting severance. I don’t think they understand that this is not the time to be wishing for that.

In a healthy economy, there would be lots of other jobs outside the bank. You could secure severance, find another job quickly, and almost double dip on two incomes for a bit. The economy is not great right now. With inflation, and mortgage rates over 8%, it’s a tough time for everyone.

Right now, there aren’t a lot of available jobs. Do you really think that people would be staying at the bank if they could leave? If you do end up getting laid off, and even if you were lucky enough to get 52 weeks of severance, it could take 2-3 years to find something else. How many people have been applying to jobs and not hearing back?

My recommendation for people who are unhappy: be proactive and look for another job, and be careful of what you wish for. Don’t wait to get laid off. I know many out-of-work people with “open to work” LinkedIn profiles right now who are struggling, with some being out of work for nearly 2 years now. Severance won’t cover 2-3 years of unemployment.

Post from TheLayoff.com

oh wow.. Its time for malicious compliance now. Do not go the extra effort to come in additional days to the office even if it benefits the team..

WF counts paid time off as an office day as long as you enter 4 hours or more into their time keeping system. We should do the same. Enter 4 or more hours of time off in workday (vacation, sick, holiday, FLMA, etc) and it counts as badge swipe on the reports.

They can do away with the d-mb 4 out of 6 weeks hitting 3 days in office metric and make it a requirement every week because time off doesn't count against you.

E/E Person,

aware employees that do care? are you shoe shiner? good luck with it. come back to this thread after 6 months.

Tick tock.

Love tap so you know they have the data. This will come at us in layers before they decide to fire you. How many layers is the question.

Based on the lack of people in office today it's having the reverse affect. worse I've seen it in a while.

Doesn't your employer have the right to set workplace standards and expectations that you agree to when you take the job? Maybe I am missing something here, but if I owned a business and my employees decided that they did not want to comply with stated expectations, and instead were publicly and vocally pushing back, you better believe they would be shown the door at the earliest opportune moment. Hopefully it wouldn't hit them in the a-s while exiting......Grow up!

*No I am not in HR or a manager

Hey BAC Execs,

Can you please layoff anyone that refuse to get in compliance by Jan 1st, 2024 and award employees that do care?

Next please do an audit on myWork folks.

BTW This email is 2 years too late!

Thanks, E/E Person :-)

I will just say, I have already decided to find another job. But I will drag this out and get paid. Now the only question is, how long can I drag this out. They will not get any productivity out of me going forward.

They should make holidays, vacation days, etc count as in-office days to help with the already reduced employee morale

Whoever approved this letter for release should be fired. It leaves a lot of open holes that any basic employment lawyer could use in a wrongful termination lawsuit. For example, the lack of clarity on how sick and vacation days are viewed. If a person takes off say a Monday and then is in office Tuesday and Wednesday, WFH Thursday and Friday, and is cited for being in violation, then it clearly assumes that vacation days only apply to WFH days, which is an absolute contradiction to basically every employee law written and clear path for BoA to find themselves in a court room, on the front pages of the WSJ, and even further down the list of employee choices to come work for (hint - you’re not that high on the list to begin with). This is the type of garbage that ruined their credibility with the public in the GFC,

If you want 3 days, then fine. I personally think that’s fair and have no problem with it (even though you get twice the productivity out of me when I don’t have to commute). But for God’s sake, have someone who knows what they’re doing write the guidelines, and then have them cleared by legal and regulators before releasing! You missed a couple of huge holes here, and if used against someone like me, will be used against you (and you will lose badly). You MUST be clear about stuff like this! Grey area opens doors to perceived unfair business practices and potential targeting. You get any hint of that type of press coverage, and you will not recover.

The handbook needs to be revamped with clearly defined standards and eliminate that refer to LOB gray area that allows the LOB leaders to pick and choose who they will target for "violations"

I received the email and I've been doing 3 days a week since March of 2022. I just so happened to have 2 weeks out of the 6 week period that I took off 3 days of vacation. I"m not at all concerned about it because everyone knows vacation and sick time will trip you up on this reporting.

On a side note, I did hear that no "counting" will be done on the week of Thanksgiving or the two weeks at the end of the year (in case you want to take advantage of that and not come in at all).

It's very suspicious that an employee can show up on the report due to utilizing vacation or sick time. Really, as long as it is entered in Workday the approved time off should be omitted from reflecting at non-compliant prior to any action being taken. It essentially equates to being penalized for using one's benefits.

How does it say in one paragraph that there may be reasons for not being in compliance and in the next paragraph state that if you do not sign the acknowledgment by a certain date that you will be subject to disciplinary action? Isn’t that placing many folks into an admission of doing something wrong or being disciplined for not admitting something you didn’t do. People have gotten on the list by being on vacation or sick.

It’s a cop out. I didn’t even get a call from my management line. Another one of those glaze blanket to execute things that don’t take into consideration the whys of the behavior. The only metric the firm should be maximizing is production. If an employee is producing (easily trackable) then why sc--w with the mojo. Just so they can come in to an office with no purpose than be isolated to fake corporatism talk. Basically instead of leading a new excellent workplace we are just “going” back to the way things were. Doesn’t sound like innovation or inspiring at all.

@2cpp+1pzJEKyf Agree, since we are being held accountable, there should be a dashboard we can view to track our compliance and ensure our swipes are being counted. The "Workplace Excellence" policies should also be documented in the associate handbook.

I would like to see the badge swipe report how can we can trust them?

How are they having people attest with you can’t even find any written official policy in HRConnect or GPS…. Suspicious.

Are they checking VPN usage? I heard senior managers are granting long term exceptions for reasons outside of the obvious like breaking your leg, etc. Telling the associates to badge in so they stay off the report so you know it is not HR approved.

A temporary WFH situation can mean many things. I have a former teammate who was able to work from home because he fell off his bicycle, broke his right leg which prevented him from driving (but didn’t prevent him from working), and his doctor wrote him a note, excusing him for about 8 weeks.

I got that notice today and I was going maybe 2-3 days a week to the office. However, my peers doesn’t even show up to the office and they didn’t get the notice. I received verbal warning from manager and was told next time is written up with HR meeting.

Anyone put that they have a short term or long term issue?

Just know that they’re using this as the first step in reducing headcount since they overcorrected for COVID/no layoffs and the ‘great resignation’. Most businesses in the bank do not have layoff money, so enforcement of the office is the way they’re singling out the population that will be put on a list for being vetted starting in Q1 2024.

Yep, yesterday. I typically was doing 2 days because 99% of what I do can be done from my home office (which is a he-l of a lot nicer than the 1970’s dump off I’m in). That’s fine though. Come 5:00pm, BoA does not exist in my life anymore, whereas before I was putting in 60+ hours a week from home (check the VPN / email stamps). No more. Haven’t seen a raise in nearly a decade, and the best bonus I had was the first one for coming over, despite all of the jargon back then that all turned out to be lies.

I got mine today. Options for the required acknowledgment are basically “I agree to adhere”, “I have a temporary situation over the next few weeks approved by my manager”, “I have a longer term issue that prevents me from adhering”. Maybe there was also one option that you are simply refusing.

@owv+1pzJEKyf The total number of days in the office does not matter, it's all about hitting three days in a calendar week. If you come in 2 days one week and 5 days the following week, the week you came in two days counts as a ZERO and the week you came in five counts as meeting the requirement for one week. You're at a 50% compliance level even though you came in a total of 7 days and the person that did 3 days each week that went to the office a total of 6 days is at 100% compliance.

There is no extra credit for coming in more than 3 days in any given week and you get zero credit for not hitting three days. Therefore, if you can't make it in for 3, (sick, vacation, business travel, etc) save your gas money a don't come in at all because you're not getting credit for the effort.

Hope this clears up some confusion. The measurement system sounds rather ridiculous when you explain it but it sure beats commuting 5 days per week.