By Anayo Nwosu

The current economic situation of bank customers that makes it difficult or almost impossible for them to drop idle deposits for their account officers or to even repay their bank loans is like a rat poison to many bankers.

Bank owners or executive management are getting very impatient with bank employees’ low performance on set deposits and profit targets and have decided to curtail their expenses on salaries of staff they have categorized as value eroders or laggards.

This is the time to remember your banker friends in prayers as their seemingly long flap is no longer the size of their brokus.

The reality check is here and that which most bankers had feared most is now upon them. Sack now stares them in the face.

If you are a banker, I encourage you to read and internalize this piece. It is in your own enlightened self interest to do so.

A visit to my friend’s poultry farm taught me a lesson of my life.

My friend is also my bank’s customer.

While taking me round his poultry farm, my friend showed me his broilers and other species of his other birds.

He kept emphasizing on how well fed, healthy and well maintained his poultry was.

He said that he loved the old layers more because they laid enough eggs which sales generated the cash flows he so much needed to service his bank loan. Other fowls were being grown and sold at maturity.

He revealed that he segregated the hens or old layers into three categories:
i) those that just started laying eggs;
ii) the ones at the peak of their efficient egg laying and;
iii) those that were either tired or could no longer lay eggs as they used to.

The third category (i.e tired old layers) were earmarked for sales or will be killed, processed and supplied to restaurants and other buyers.

My friend told me that each bird in his farm would one day be sold off or be eaten by him.

Is the fate of the old layer any different from the career of many bankers?

Every banker, if he or she does not resign or retire voluntarily, would be shown a way out one way or the other.

Even bank owners are often sacked by regulators these days.

Is it not wise to study what happened to others and read the signs of times and mitigate the effects when the unexpected happens?

Dear banker, be smart and perceptive, watch out for the following sack-preceding signs:

1. When you have a score of below 40% in the last your two appraisals. It is a sound HR practice to ease out 20% of the worst performers regarded as laggards.

2. When as a branch manager or head of marketing or strategic business unit (SBU), you have been posting losses for up to 4 months. It will be a miracle if you remain at your post after the 6th month.

3. If by an act of omission or commission you superintended a unit responsible for a bank’s loss of income arising from reversals, wrong postings or avoidable expenses. Those who booked bad loans are tagged in this category.

4. If your immediate boss feels threatened by your potentials especially if you had acted when he or she was on leave and had impressed the management by your performance or carriage. Your days are numbered.

Your boss would plan for your exit because you are deemed as his/her perfect replacement.

Many insecure bosses would always run you down before management until you are sacked. If you escape with a transfer to another location, you are lucky.

5. If during a bank-wide performance review meeting, more than one influential member of the executive committee pick you for shredding.

Count your days if they say you are rude, unprofessional and uncooperative. You have been discussed and you most likely will make the next sack list.

6. If you feel, and are convinced that your boss wants to see how you look when you pull off your apparels, and you are not ready to play ball. The lust would soon turn to irritation and unwarranted annoyance. Your sack would be quickened if your performance scores are low.

7. If, as a guy, you are dating or perceived to be interested in a lady your boss has been scheming to have. If you are not sacked summarily, you may be transferred to a remote location.

8. If you are deemed too old and dispensable, just know that the time to quit is near. This is after you have worked in virtually all the departments of the bank and are parked in one not-too demanding function.

Sometimes, you see yourself answering to an inaudible calls only to hear, “I was not talking to you” from your colleagues.

9. If the bank’s leadership believes that you are not to be trusted with sensitive information. Have they narrowed down a major leak or gossip to your side? Your rival colleague might have sold the news to management to do you in.

10. When you have lost seniority to two sets your juniors without any reason known to you. That you have not been sacked is that management has been looking for a plausible reason to carry out your sentence.

All through my banking career, I have seen very bright stars dim; rapidly promoted staff stagnated and hounded out of the bank.

I have also seen yesteryears laggards become the new kids on the block. It’s like a yoyo.

You may never know your fate whenever there is a slight change of leadership at the top or middle management.

I know of one self-confident operations department head who was de-feathered by a redeployment to a market-facing function. All the swagger and arrogance melted into priestly humility. He was asked to go within six months due to non-performance.

Banking has taught me that monkeys are deemed magnificent when the trees are near to each other in the forest but would understandably become very ordinary in the desert.

Once the performance facilitating dynamics of you current posting change, your rating and relevance change.

Because every fowl in my friend’s poultry farm would one day be sold or eaten just as your banking career would one day end, why not do things differently?

I advise that you work so hard to make great friends with many of your colleagues (both junior and senior) and customers. They would be your the safety net when you find yourself like a fish out of water.

An intelligent peep into the after-career lives of wicked bosses or those who willingly allowed themselves to be used to truncate the careers of fellow colleagues for transient gains, would be a correctional slap you may need now to think straight.

Now that you know this, what is your exit strategy or Plan B?

Your services may be deemed not-required earlier than you think.