Thread regarding Bank of New York Mellon Corp. layoffs

Get rid of all principals with one or less direct report. Especially the ones at QVS

get rid of chuck

It occurs to me that the majority of layoffs in recent years are largely due upper management's mis-management of the company and that the affected BE / redundant staff getting let go are merely collateral damage. So unfortunate that greed can take on a life of it's own. My advice is to seek employment elsewhere as soon as possible. The company is a sinking ship. Not only will you be happier to be away from the toxic environment there, you might just be able to smile a bit more.

They could ask for volunteers, which might even improve morale.

Eliminate artificial BE quota, just because thats the right thing to do.

And implement the plan quicker, to reduce the pain.

Honesty and transparency, please.

Still not the best situation, but these are some things BNY could do much better.

Fire! No sub payments, no severance - but fire every single "name only" principal. Ridiculous that a company this size can have a cohort of directors and principals with no staff beneath them and get paid high salaries. The number of vice chairmen in that company are 1 too many. There should be CEO, President, 5 Executive Vice Presidents responsible for the revenue producing businesses. Everyone else is a worker-bee. Too many chief and not enough working Indians! There should not be a chief of this and vice chairman of that ~ BNYM is a laughingstock. While you are at it, bring people on the board of directors who ACTUALLY KNOW what a custody bank is and what it is NOT! Too many friends of friends on that board - it looks and smells like a JP Morgan reunion. Read the proxy - connect the dots, too many connections with each other leads to group think! If you want to succeed you need to behave and think alot more differently and hold the CEO's feet to the fire. Why is the CEO being compensated for mediocre results? One more thing - separate the CEO's position from the Chairman of the Board. The CEO needs to report to someone too! - I recommend Gerald Hassel be brought back as Chairman. I would have recommended Carter Bacot, but he's not available.

Everything can be fixed with WOW points.

If I were in upper management, I'd be very upset to have BNYM on my CV. I would look for a new job ASAP.

1. Replace all C-level with long-term visioned cadre.
2. Halve the Director level cadre.
3. Audit HR's policies and processes.
4. Replace "HR reps" with employee focused ambassadors.
5. Perform quarterly "Management Reviews" and whip / sack those with negative ratings
6. From savings in 2, 4 and 5 pooled to increase staff wages & bonuses.

@GSIR LOL. Thank you for your question. I really needed to laugh. Infact I am going to share this question with my colleagues who feel the same way I do about BNY. "Ideas to improve" Priceless! LOL!

Let me tell you exactly what you are dealing with. I know a brilliant young lady who is working with program greenfield to get her applications migrated over to the new environment. She knows these applications better than anyone else. She certainly knows those apps better than the greenfield team knows them. She recently discovered a conflict that would cause a problem with the applications unless they were migrated over in a certain way. She was worried the applications would become unstable/unusable in the new environment if they were migrated using the procedure that was handed down to her. So she offered up an alternative migration plan, and she was immediately shot down. She was actually told “I need you to shut off your brain and to do it the way you were told to do it. The way that THEY want it done”.

THAT is the culture at BNYM and this is what is at the heart of the problem. The company does not trust its most brilliant people to make the best decisions that are in the best interests of everyone. You don’t care if it’s done right, you just want the perception that the goal was met so you can tell the higher up manager that YOU did it. The expectation is that when “so and so” says jump, you are supposed to ask how high to jump. You’ll never achieve anything productive as long as that type of environment continues to exist. True leadership is not a one way street. There are few true leaders at BNYM. There are plenty of sub par middle managers that feel insecure because they know they are not effective anymore. They play this pathetic game of “perception is reality”. They paint this rosy picture to upper management that goals are being met and everything is functioning normally, and its all because of them. In reality, there are serious problems that are swept under the rug, or blamed on some innocent employee who eventually gets a bogus BE rating because of it.

Think about this: You have a situation where middle management knows they are being targeted for cuts, and at the same time there’s a quota where X amount of employees must be rated below expectations for each review period, and your longtime head of HR (Monique) is long gone, so now there’s no one to police the performance ratings to ensure they are being done objectively or fairly. So what do you think is gonna happen here? Middle management “pins the blame on the donkey” in an effort to save their own a–. They seek out and find the next employee that can take the blame for the shortcomings and failures of the middle management, and they pin the BE performance rating on them so that the quota is met. The outcome is that you loose the best people who have been keeping the company afloat. What you are left with is your sub par managers that don’t know squat about squat. The company is trying to eliminate or downsize middle managers. In reality, it’s everyone else that will really be eliminated, because the managers are managers, and perception is reality.

Management is burned out, jaded, can’t really make decisions, can’t lead, can’t inspire, can’t listen, can’t objectively and fairly rate someone’s performance based on actual measurable results, and they can’t accept decisions being made from anyone below them on the org chart because it makes them feel threatened or irrelevant.

That’s your issue in a nutshell. Not all managers at BNYM are bad. There are still good ones. But they are few and far between, and I’m sure a good percentage of them want out.

If you are looking for 2 or 3 simple bullet points that will somehow magically fix all of this , well you’ve come to the wrong place.

The problems at BNYM are very deep and complicated because the culture is fundamentally broken, and it has been that way for some time now. No quick fix for that, sorry.

This OP’s question is ridiculous The environment is toxic. In short get rid of Chuck & everything this dump currently does..... do the opposite.

We get it, the company is downsizing. The point of this board is to try and manage the anxiety of not knowing whether or not you're going to be next.

Here's an idea:

If I was the new head of HR , ;) , I'd just own it and give power back to the employees and give employees the option of raising their hands if they want to be laid off instead of relying on office politics and what not.

Reading through these posts, I'm sure people would happily take a package and wouldn't hold much of a grudge afterwards given that it was on their terms and timeline.

This would allow some of these employees that spent decades of their lives behind the walls of BK, a lot of them shareholders too, to leave with respect. I mean it's still leaves them without a job, and it s—s because its a hassle on the person to find something new… but some of these folks are ready for retirement or are legacy employees with pensions and 401k's so they'll be fine.

I have other ideas but I don't want to digress from this post should it get upvoted.

tl;dr - LET PEOPLE RAISE THEIR HAND IF THEY WANT TO A PACKAGE, A LOT OF THEM ARE READY TO LEAVE ANYWAYS.

change or "rotate" middle mgmt in all the groups. should break up a lot of "boys clubs" and politics… at least on the short term. I'd include HR on this as well. Frame it as a "learning experience" and a way to diversify people's skill set.

Be committed to trying to keep good employees like they did years ago. Stop mandatory BE

Seriously? You are having toxic politic environment and asking how to correct it? Probably start to do better background check on a people you are getting red off. Or may be have a red flag on BE when instead of facts it just say common phrases and if you found something which not rely smell good start managers check and check on environment department working in. I personally know high level professionals who was working 20+ years and who was separated because of their management.

Invest and promote your most talented employees. The company would rather hire from the outside for senior positions, which ends up costing more and less likely to have that level of commitment that someone of 20 years might have.

Seriously, you’re barking up the wrong tree.

@10SLGSlR-sde okay so you have nothing then lol

Pathetic. Seems you've come here gathering last minute bullet points to add to your performance plan. How about you have a real conversation with your team for feedback that is prevalent to that line of business.