For as long as anyone can remember, banks paid more than the others. That has now changed.
During the height of last year's pandemic when young investment bankers were raising a furor about work conditions, banks responded with a tried and true reflex. They threw more money at them, and that includes the Swiss banks.
Credit Suisse, for example, raised a few Helvetian hackles with a so-called lifestyle voucher of $20,000 US dollars for its investment bank employees.
It is probably one of the last, if not the last, time. Even then, the highly disillusioned recruits were saying that they weren't going to be around for much longer. In the intervening meantime, even the most established and prestigious financial institutions are starved for the fresh investment bankers that are needed to bulk up their teams.
Disarming Honesty
Jane Fraser, who heads Citigroup, recently justified a heavily criticized bonus program with disarming honesty, saying simply that the job market had completely dried up.
But just opening a checkbook is not going to be enough anymore - in the U.S. or Switzerland. «Using a high salary to attract people doesn't work like it used to», says Stephan Surber, head of headhunting firm Page Executive (German only) to finews.ch. The large tech firms and pharmaceuticals in Switzerland are now paying more than the banks do for high-quality candidates, he says.
«Go to a bank, they always have money», the young Oswald Grübel was once told. Lest we forget, he rose to later head Credit Suisse and UBS. But tech companies won't let that happen now. They simply hire the best candidates straight out of university.
Stiff Competition
Banks also need gaggles of tech employees, but they are facing stiff competition from the likes of Google, Zalando and many, many others. Their increasingly inadequate compensation package is no longer just about the salary number. The incentives they can give do not convince anyone. The pandemic and the boom in home office work has brought about what has in retrospect has been a significant inflection point in the world of work.
No Loyalty
«The COVID-19 lockdown stopped the daily rat race in its tracks and many started thinking more deeply about their careers», Headhunter Surber observes.
Oliver Wyman, a consultancy, sees much the same thing, saying that employee loyalty dropped precipitously during «the resignation» but that the decline was apparent even before the pandemic. Still, the lack of an expected pay rise is still the main reason why new entrants quit their job - although the need for higher flexibility, a work-life balance, and a lack of basic fulfillment at work are also seen as clear reasons to resign. Given that, about 40 percent of those surveyed by Oliver Wyman had recently started a new job or were about to take the jump.
The pandemic has had much the same impact here. With months of practice at home, employees can now easily contact a potential employer at a moment's notice on Zoom. «We see this avenue being used very frequently», says Surber.
