“The role of the bank employee has become more or less a consultative one, because clients also have cost efficiency in mind, so the advice and the consulting provided by a bank employee helps them. On the other hand working directly with clients is a job that burns you out. Almost every front office employee has around 100 clients per day, which means there are 100 cases, needs, frustrations they have to deal with, which wear the employees down. They have to be professional and keep their smile, although the person they interact with may not always be very polite,” says Nevenca, who coordinates the human resource policies of the bank, which has around 6,000 employees.
The number of employees in the banking sector fell steadily over the last few years as a result of restructuring with a view to cutting costs. In October this year the number of employees in the financial brokerage sector reached 79,700, 2,800 fewer than in the similar period of 2008, according to data published by the National Statistics Institute.
“This is work that burns you out, it’s probably why many leave this field. Burnout is very common in the banking sector, plus the package of benefits offered to employees is not as attractive as 4-5 years ago. In 2011 in Bucharest personnel fluctuation was very high, almost as high as in the years before the crisis, but a particular feature was that they changed the sector, they no longer moved to other banks.”
In the first nine months of the year, personnel fluctuation at Banca Transilvania was 7%, but in Bucharest the rate was twice as high given that personnel migrated to other companies, to accounting or financial departments. Unlike in previous years, only 20-25% of employees who left found jobs with the competition.
“In Bucharest there continue to be opportunities, even if not in the banking sector, there are many sectors that employees left, even in the public sector or in entrepreneurship.
According to the HR manager of Banca Transilvania, banks will continue to restructure into 2012, perhaps not necessarily through layoffs, but by not replacing natural departures.
“We will not do restructuring, at least we are not planning to at the moment, but we will be very mindful of costs and of making our investments more efficient, including those in employees. We will not hire new people to grow, because we are not planning growth for next year, but we are focusing on the effort of implementing a new banking software, which imposes team stability.”
Nevenca Doca also says estimates made in the early days of the crisis on its duration were very optimistic. She explained that this has not been a speed race, but and endurance race, which will last at least until the end of 2012, but probably into 2013.
As for salary increases in the banking sector, the head of HR of Banca Transilvania says banking employees will not have higher salaries next year because bank’s results have not been very encouraging, either.
“I don’t think any of the 40 banks active in Romania intend to raise salaries. I know for sure that top 10 banks will not raise salaries. There is no longer great performance in the banking sector to justify performance bonuses. The financial results of the banking system 9 months into the year are negative, only a handful of banks made a profit.”
After posting record profits in peak year 2008 of over EUR1 billion (4.3 billion lei) the overall banking system recorded losses of nearly EUR200 million (RON860 million) nine months into the year, with the loss for the entire year likely to be even more significant.
However, the salaries of bank employees continued to rise in the past few years, to an average of nearly RON3,500 (EUR830) in net amount, up almost 20% against the similar period of 2008, according to data from the Statistics Institute.
“I don’t know of any bank cutting its monthly salaries, they preferred to cut certain perks, such as luncheon vouchers.”
Bank employees have lately been the best-paid employees in the economy, with their salaries being twice as high as the average salary in the economy.
Banca Transilvania will continue to implement programs to train employees in 2012 as well, after this year it completed two employee professional training programs financed with European funds for human resources.
“We will continue to do training, but this time we will focus on internal training because we have a team of trainers and we will do training for credit analysis and risk analysis. The new software that we will implement next year will require a very big effort on our part to train all colleagues. (EUR1=RON4.3011)
(English version by Daniela Stoican)