Bank Employees Resign After Executive Demands Return to Offices Without Space for Everyone (theguardian.com)
- Reference: 0175530449
- News link: https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/11/24/0241229/bank-employees-resign-after-executive-demands-return-to-offices-without-space-for-everyone
- Source link: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/nov/19/starling-bank-staff-resign-after-new-chief-executive-calls-for-more-time-in-office
> Staff have resigned at Starling Bank after its new chief executive demanded thousands of workers attend its offices more frequently, despite lacking enough space to host them.
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> In his first major policy change since taking over from the UK digital bank's founder, Anne Boden, in March, Raman Bhatia has ordered all hybrid staff — many of whom were in the office only one or two days a week, or on an ad-hoc basis — to travel to work for a minimum of 10 days each month. But the bank, which operates online only, admitted that some of its offices would not be equipped to handle the influx... "We are considering ways in which we can create more space," an email sent by Starling's human resources team and seen by the Guardian said.
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> Starling has 3,231 staff, the vast majority of whom are in the UK with some also in Dublin. However, the Guardian understands that the bank has only about 900 desks, including 260 at its Cardiff site, 320 in its London headquarters and 155 in Southampton. The bank has a further 160 desks in its newest site in Manchester, where it has signed a 10-year lease to occupy the fifth floor of the Landmark building, which also houses Santander UK and HSBC staff... Some staff have already resigned over the "rushed" announcement, while others have threatened to do so...
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> The return to office announcement came a month after the Financial Conduct Authority [3]hit Starling with a £29m fine after discovering "shockingly lax" controls that it said left the financial system "wide open to criminals". That included failures in its automated screening system for individuals facing government sanctions.
Starling Bank issued this statement to explain its reasoning. "By bringing colleagues together in person, our aim is to achieve greater collaboration that will benefit our customers as we enter Starling's next phase of growth."
The article also notes that the U.K. supermarket chain Asda "has also toughened its stance, [4]making it compulsory for thousands of workers at its offices in Leeds and Leicester to spend at least three days a week at their desks from the new year."
[1] https://www.slashdot.org/~Bruce66423
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/nov/19/starling-bank-staff-resign-after-new-chief-executive-calls-for-more-time-in-office
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/02/starling-bank-fined-29m-for-shockingly-lax-financial-controls
[4] https://corporate.asda.com/20241105/a-message-from-stuart-and-rob-putting-ourselves-back-in-the-service-of-our-customers
Another moron CEO (Score:3)
He was probably trying to get people to quit. Either that or he is too dumb to realize a thousand people can't sit in a hundred desks.
Once these moron CEOs take over the company will never do anything except soak it's customers for more profits.
Re: (Score:2)
With four times the staff to the desks I imagine a lot are on remote contracts, a form of mandatory relocation fee will apply.
Otherwise just another quiet firing round. Asking people to freely double their hours with expensive commutes isn't going down well.
Re: (Score:2)
> With four times the staff to the desks I imagine a lot are on remote contracts, a form of mandatory relocation fee will apply.
> Otherwise just another quiet firing round.
Oh yeah. We few million observers can reeeally tell how “quiet” that firing round is. We can hear the screaming, from across the pond.
With four times the staff to the desks, I can only imagine how many morons he thought were going to actually believe his excuses. If someone is running a business and needs to fire people, then fire people.
These Idiot Games, need to end. We keep this up, and we’ll be walking into a fucking game show studio every Friday to play for our next paycheck, all
Re: (Score:2)
The only people who will be left in Starling bank will be absolutely desperate and incompetent. There must be plenty of top people leaving now, but I certainly wouldn't be hiring from there next year. There can't be any that are staying for loyalty and those with shares or options will be wanting to cash in what they before the crash. This is the kind of thing which really kills a company irrecoverably.
Re: (Score:2)
> The only people who will be left in Starling bank will be absolutely desperate and incompetent. There must be plenty of top people leaving now, but I certainly wouldn't be hiring from there next year. There can't be any that are staying for loyalty and those with shares or options will be wanting to cash in what they before the crash. This is the kind of thing which really kills a company irrecoverably.
I agree with most of what you say, but there's some bits I can't agree on.
Some people will be there out of pure convenience. For example, some people balance work and personal responsibilities, some have to WFH so they can care for family members (school run, elderly family member living with them etc).
Some might also foresee the eventual demise and are waiting for redundancy options.
I wouldn't disregard people just because they're there out of convenience, you should absolutely not turn down an applicant j
Re: (Score:1)
Most CEOs typically are psychopaths. They can be both entertaining and devastating as villains in Gotham tv series but no one wants to be a batman.
Re: (Score:2)
The (former) Moscow Hotel is asymmetric, the left and right sides being built with different architectural styles because the design included both options and it was intended for Stalin to approve one of them. Stalin put his signature on the design without further comment and nobody dared to ask which half was meant, so it was just built as approved.
The CEO of this bank isn't called Dzhugashvili is he?
Wow, this is a new level of stupidity (Score:2)
No matter how you feel about RTO mandates, I think we can all agree that anyone requiring people to come into the physical office should - at a minimum - provide an actual space to come into!
I was tempted to declare this as "peak" stupidity, but I'm sure some other CEO will top it soon enough.
Re: (Score:2)
> I was tempted to declare this as "peak" stupidity, but I'm sure some other CEO will top it soon enough.
Indeed. How can somebody so abysmally stupid get into such a position?
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> How can somebody so abysmally stupid get into such a position?
It's not so bad, it practically guarantees him a future appointment to Trump's cabinet.
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That is how I feel about the RTO mandate in my company. It has slashed a lot of office space in the last four years, which would cause me, without moving myself, suddenly a 300 miles (or 600 miles a day) commute.
Bank CEO can't calculate 3.6:1 contention (Score:2)
What sort of advert is that the bank's CEO hasn't reckoned the limitation of there being just over 1/4 the number of desks needed to satisfy his edict?
Re: (Score:2)
TFS lists a total of 895 desks.
There are 3,231 employees.
They are required to RTO for 10 out of 20 working days per month, which requires 1616 desks.
895/1616 = 55%.
Where are you getting 1/4?
Re: (Score:2)
It's probably not that simple, unless management is also handling/mandating the scheduling. Otherwise you have to allow for the possibility that more than 50% of the people might be coming in on any given day.
Although desk space for 75% of the staff is probably somewhat more than is actually needed.
Re: Bank CEO can't calculate 3.6:1 contention (Score:1)
1. Where are you getting the idea that the desks can be time shared? It doesn't say that in the article. The edict is based on the idea of collaboration which suggests having the maximum number of people in the office at the same time. 2. Suppose we accept your calculation that there are 55% of the required desks available with maximum time sharing permitted. Does it significantly change the point here?
What is actually happening (Score:1)
A lot of what low and mid tier bank workers do is analyst work. Find out specific facts about specific business, specific field, specific person, etc.
The order of work is usually top tier analyst making strategic decisions gives a strategic task to find out about specific large field. Senior analysts break it down into sectors, give it to mid tiers. Mid tier breaks it down into specific components gives it to low tier.
Current gen AI is much better than low tier analysts at their specific task. What before t
So, cretin CEO tries to shift blame? (Score:2)
After fucking up massively himself, it is suddenly all those home-office workers that are responsible, at least that is what he implies. And he did not even have the minimal smarts to make sure his asshole move actually worked. How do these morons get into such positions?
Bank math (Score:2)
Banks are so used to be able to 10X the underlying asset. Oh we need to create 10 million, just need 1 million for that.
Ask these people to arrange workplaces for 1000 people and they'll have 100 chairs. Then they write up their stupidity as an 'efficiency win' and get a bonus.
why resign ? (Score:2)
Log a health and safety whistle blower complaint - more money when they illegally fire you - yeah capitalism baby!
Seagull School of Management (Score:2)
Bhatia obviously graduated from the Seagull School of Management; turns up every once in a while to scream at everyone & shit on them from a great height.
But when you're in financial services in the UK, regulation is so poor & worker expectations so low, you can pretty much get away with anything & still make money.
"Bringing colleagues together" (Score:2)
No you want them to fuck off and not come back. Much cheaper than a redundancies.
NEVER RESIGN (Score:1)
that's their strategy to not pay severance hold the line no matter how uncomfortable it gets
Re: (Score:1)
Then they can pay more than the severance for the constructive dismissal. The bar for proving untenable working conditions is easily passed at tribunals.
One CEO gets it!! (Score:2)
‘If I scrapped working from home, I wouldn’t have any staff’
[1]https://www.telegraph.co.uk/ne... [telegraph.co.uk]
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/23/paul-smith-interview-candidates-leave-interview/
Similar story at BT (Score:2)
They have a "3 Together 2 Wherever" rule which is 'advice' right now but becomes 'policy' in the new year. The biggest push-back isn't from people who want to continue to work from home, most of us _did_ work in the office in the before-times after all. No, the biggest push-back is from people who are OK with the 3 days a week but want to know about corner cases:
What if I have a bad cold and could work from home but don't want to infect my colleagues?
What if there is literally nobody in my team in the same
Everyone attend office 5 days a week. (Score:1)
If you want to make your point: everyone attend office full time for a couple of weeks. I guarantee you that nonsense is over within two weeks.
Can you see the effect? Offices packed full of people? Networks crashing because of the overload? Nobody getting any work done? Infrastructure buckling under the strain of all the people needing transportation? People in overcrowded offices calling the authorities for building violations?
Yay misery! (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's make people miserable, misery and profits are causally linked!
Re: (Score:2)
> Let's make people miserable, misery and profits are causally linked!
Your a producer of psychiatric drugs, aren't you. I never realized before, obviously you're a counter cyclical industry and so we should all be investing in you now, and looking forward to the next few years.