The museum-quality prints, depicting workers from administrative assistants to older executives, were emblazoned with motivational words like "Proactive" and "Partner. " Through mid-July, however, the photos disappeared and the Swiss banking giant began lounging off 2, 000 employees.
Security guards prevented employees from taking cell-phone pictures since the posters were stripped away, according to one employee who was present.
"It sent a completely wrong message, " said an employee, who was not authorised to talk publicly. "Management literally threw away that kind of money on something therefore trivial, while planning to cut thousands of jobs. "
A bank spokeswoman declined to discuss the internal campaign or the employee's comments.
Credit Suisse's timing illustrates the actual unanticipated dangers of rampant job-cutting, which tend to run in cycles upon Wall Street. Employee morale often plummets at a time when survivors are asked to get more responsibility and customer relations can suffer as service and relationships degrade.
CUTTING 'MUSCLE AND BONE'
What's more, layoffs inartfully constructed can come throughout to shareholders as Band-Aid solutions that at best temporarily cut expenses as well as at worst pare away reserves of talented people.
"They finished cutting the fat and today they're into the muscle and bone, " said Tim White, a managing partner who specialises in wealth management in the recruiting firm Kaye/Bassman International in Dallas.
Credit Suisse has plenty of organization in its cost-cutting campaign. HSBC, Barclays PLC, Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Bank of New York Mellon Corp have announced plans to ax thousands of workers recently. On Thursday, Bank of America Corp Chief Executive Brian Moynihan sent the memo to senior executives outlining plans to cut another 3, 500 work.
The planned cuts at Bank of America have pushed the number of financial sector layoffs this season to 18, 252 -- 6% higher than in the comparable period this year, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement firm that keeps a regular tab on layoff announcements.
Some companies began the culling earlier this year -- HSBC has axed about 5, 000 employees, with 25, 000 more set to get pink slips through the end of 2012 -- and others, such as Goldman Sachs, said that cuts can come by year's end.
That is not good for morale.
BITING INTO CUSTOMER SERVICE
Hours have become longer, trading floors have more open seats and fresh young faces are overtaking offices where high-level personnel once sat. The highest-paid people can be simple targets for layoffs now, given the cost of keeping them employed and the eagerness of younger workers to defend myself against their roles, even at less pay, executive recruiters said.
Changes in pay structures mandated simply by the Dodd-Frank financial reform laws have exacerbated the problem.
Banks that accustomed to pay modest base salaries supplemented by opulent stock-and-option packages that encouraged conference short-term performance goals now are weighting compensation toward base salary.
Managing directors at investment banks have experienced a typical base salary double to $400, 000, said Paul Sorbera, leader of Alliance Consulting. Meanwhile, 2011 bonuses are expected to fall by as much as 30% for top earners, according to pay consulting firm Johnson Associates.
The shift erodes Wall Street's former flexibility to reduce end-of-year bonuses in bad times and forces a heavier reliance on layoffs.
The risk is that client service suffers.
"Banking clients abhor relationship-manager turnover, " stated Heather Hammond, a senior member of Russell Reynolds' financial services practice.
Traders, for their part, tend to view cost-cutting as a short-term solution that does not address fundamental issues relating to capital, strategy and the ability to withstand through hard economic times.
At Credit Suisse, some senior jobs have been consolidated as executives happen to be escorted toward early retirement with offers of bonus bridges and other obligations, sources familiar with the matter say.
Managing directors in businesses that have missed revenue targets happen to be told to reduce millions of dollars' worth of headcount expenses, according to some managing director who received such a request. In some areas, including procedures, legal and technology, more work is being outsourced and mid-level employees are now being replaced by consultants.
"People are leaving resumes on the printers, hoping somebody picks it up, " the Credit Suisse employee said.
Some sources think that banks are repeating their typical hiring strategy: Cutting staff levels too deeply in bad times and then rush out with open checkbooks when markets recover.
"When people are obtaining hired, fired, hired, fired, every two years, it's very difficult to run a company, " said Conrad Ciccotello, a finance professor at Georgia State University that has studied the issue. "There is precious human capital destroyed in vicious boom-and-bust cycles that's costly to replace. ".