Under withering staff pressure, Walt Bettinger course corrects to shut all Schwab branches and to let Charles Schwab Corp. non-branch employees work from home

Bravo for peer pressure!

Congrats Schwabbies. Thanks to your comments here, RIABiz's work posting the story in the first place, and (probably most importantly) a major financial news outlet picking up the story, Schwab finally took action. Sad but not surprising that it took a mountain of bad PR to get the EC to finally stop bickering and move.

Corporate executives are human. They make mistakes and the best executives realize their mistakes and change. Social media won this important battle! Happy for Schwab employees.

Corporate leaders make mistakes. Great leaders recognize their mistakes and change. 2020 leaders also pay attention to social media.

After this ordeal and the horrible decisions made by Walt Bettinger, I have remarkable respect for Abby Johnson. Walt sent a totally staged and rehearsed video to all of us on a Sunday. He starts by saying, “I apologize for my jeans and sweater, this is the real Walt on the weekends”. Give me a break. Then he goes on to say that he is just in the office on a Saturday afternoon getting some work done. You sir, can go to hell. I was at a firm over a decade ago that had VPN and remote access far superior to the capabilities that Schwab has. I have clients that are reading these articles and they want to know if we are ok. One client said that they were embarrassed on your behalf. Even now, they want us to work in the branches but not allow the public inside. After more than a decade with Schwab and always being proud to represent this company, I am done. I have already reached out to Fidelity, who has tried to recruit me for years, and I know of dozens of peers that have done the same.

Wait for it, here comes the canned Schwab corporate response how this article is clickbait and everything is under control. Glad I resigned from that branch network years ago.

Our health and our family’s health is worth $1,000 (before taxes), gee thanks!!

Clearly leadership is clueless. What major company does not have a disaster recovery plan? Clients should be very concerned.

The fact of the matter is the only thing that ever factored into schwabs decision to change was the image projected to the customers. They could give a flying f*** about their actual employees. So the moment a little bad PR came in, total reversal.

Please realize that Schwab has closed offices only to the public. The employees are still required to come into the branch and work over the phone and computer. There is no control over where your fellow employees have been, where people in their household have been, etc... Why are we forced to come into a branch if the public cannot come in? What about those of us that depend upon public transportation to get to work? Should we just cross our fingers on a subway, bus, uber? What a group we have on our, "executive council"...are any of you at work? I would bet that you are all at home, as encouraged by the GOVERNMENT! I will be the first to participate in the initial class action lawsuit. My fellow employees: Make sure that agreeing the receive the $1,000 bonus does not preclude you from litigation in the future! You should be ashamed of yourselves.

Fido has spent bazillions on IT - with many well known fails. Moving to the cloud is no guarantee that a company is ready for remote working. Just because you don't have physical servers and moved them to the cloud doesn't mean that remote access and the highly complex telecoms requirements of such an enterprise is a done deal. Fidelity obviously thought ahead and are now poised as the winner by shaming its competition. Hats off to Fido. Jesse

I currently work in one of our centers. This is what I have observed and acknowledged over the past few weeks (in no specific order). A. The BCP was disgustingly ill-prepared. So what if no one could have expected this? What if there was a natural disaster or city-wide power outage in Phoenix or Denver? You would reroute calls to another open center because you already knew you didn't have the capacity to have a full center WFH. And, here we are... B. Walt's Video. Fully agreed it's canned. And he mentioned he was in the office working. That is not the office of a CEO and there is a house out the window in the background. Makeshift. C. 600 people were laid off in 2019 and Walt got a raise. Typical. D. At the center I work at, we literally just got directives to make a decision on whether to come in or not. This situation calls for YOU, SCHWAB, to be telling us NOT to come in. Not "it's up to you". E. It's very true. Through no one person's fault, this company has become so big that it has to keep bringing money in, or it dies with it's revenues and earnings. That means the person in charge is no longer living Chuck's vision, because they can't. However, what they can do is allow the business to grow organically and efficiently, so this company CONTINUES to be a great place to work. Right now, it is not. F. There is 100% a sense that speaking up will get you fired or, at least, close all the doors to your career. Why do you think so many people, including myself, post anonymously? Only clients and brown-nosers put there name up. Perhaps your argument is that we are just trying to give Walt or the company a bad name. Yeah, like we dont have anything better to do with my time than troll a company on this website. I'm worried about my family and this post is a result of that. Lastly, Schwab, under Walt's supervision, has ALWAYS fought the battle against boosting tech and putting bodies in the seats all for the sake of boosting profits and earnings. It blows my mind. Does paying a rep, say, $45k plus benefits really amount to enough savings you'll justify the fallout from a situation like this? Even $100k? You spend money on garbage projects, many of which never see the light of day, rather than developing more experts in the field. You are ALWAYS miles behind the competition in tech. Terri (Kallsen) was hired specifically to cut costs for the firm and that destroyed our morale. Destroyed. When her job was done, she got the golden parachute, which I'm sure amounted to millions. It's sad that she was perhaps the scapegoat, and she does deserve some of the blame, but she didn't do ONE THING without the direction or approval Walt. Walt, I'm sorry man. You let your greed takeover. 99% of us will never be in your position, so we can't relate. That being said, we're intelligent enough not to just skim the pages of this situation. We know that you don't care. You can disagree all you want. Why aren't you taking phone calls in a call center? Why aren't you visiting branches and centers to reassure the employees who are still stuck there? You have a corporate jet, so you know you can't use the travel ban excuse. Why do we feel like there's not really and open door policy? Why does your video look like you're probably using a "set"office in your safe home? Look at the window behind you. That's not an office window. To many of you, I just sound jaded. The truth is, this has been an issue with this company for years. So, years of this could make someone jaded. How could you blame them? I hope at least one exec or Walt reads this and decides to be better. Be a better person. Be someone your younger self could be proud of.

Yup, $1000 gross is how much your employees are worth to you. And 20% for one month is how much your willingness to sacrifice your health, or someone else's, is worth.

Branch employees are still being required to work, even it states that are on stay at home order. Mind you, branch employees can do everything remotely that they could do in a closed door office.

Dear Schwab Colleagues: Being who I am I cannot believe what is about to roll out of my mouth because I should be shorting the heck out of Schwab. BUT there are times in your life when the human fight or flight mechanism is engaged. It is a complex mix of psychological & physiological events that affects you a lot like panic. There can be loss of reason, logic & thinking ability which is paralyzing. However I submit to you that in this situation given that the state of California has made a "stay-in-place" order its time to take flight. This is decision is based on reason and what's more it is being made for you by state and federal authorities and best of all - in the court of public opinion. Go Home. Stay Home. Your family's life depends on it. The world's health depends on cooperation of every citizen. This isn't about politics. It's about reasonable and logical thought. There is a pathogen threatening humanity and without humanity there are no consumers, no economy, no markets. There is no financial risk to you for your actions. There is no possible way Schwab is going to fire you. Once this over they cannot "furlough" or make sweeping cuts under the guise of necessary reductions based on losses without coming under scrutiny now. Best wishes to you and your family's well-being, JLL

I want to clarify some things that folks in the above comments have already begun doing. The email they sent was incredibly disingenuous. While they are providing a small bonus and pay raise for one pay period, they framed the email as if all but completely essential employees are working from home. That is not true. Branch network employees are still being required to come in by exploiting a loophole in the lockdowns that states financial institutions are essential. However that rule is in regards to access to money and Schwab branches carry no cash. Clients can access their funds online or over the phone just as well as they could at a branch. Despite protests and concerns from branch employees they are not only putting immense pressure on them to come in, they are even monitoring and micromanaging activity and sales levels even more so than under normal circumstances. I have firsthand knowledge and accounts of folks in closed branches who have been guilt tripped by management to come into the office despite their grave concerns. Even employees who have legitimately called in sick over the past week have been pressured to return to the office! It’s unconscionable how short sighted Schwab is being in handling this. That brings me to the service centers. These folks are still being required to come into these germ hotbeds they are sharing with hundreds of colleagues to take client calls. I’m sure the pressure there is even more immense than what branch network employees are feeling. I believe that unless Schwab is able to procure a ton of tech and capacity very soon they will have to choose between servicing clients adequately and protecting their employees. They can’t do both, and quite frankly they aren’t. This is hurting the financial services industry in general but Schwab is going to be hit hard. They are going to lose loyalty from the inside and out, and people are likely going to die as a result of their decisions. It’s an incredibly sad situation that was caused by a lack of preparation, followed by a lack of compassion for the employees who make the company great.

Why not apply "through the client's eyes" and revert to " through the employee's eyes "

per galton per bain

Hey Everyone! Time to celebrate! Leadership just sent an email out saying all vacations and sabbaticals are "postponed". Woohoo!

I’ve worked for the company for just under 5 years including my time as a contractor. At first, i couldn’t care less about schwab but the more i learned and got to know people, the more i wanted to be a Schwabbie. I’ve worked at 3 locations in 2 different states so I’ve seen more than most employees. This is what I’ve learned at my time there. This is (and i mean no disrespect to everyone) a very “white america” company. Just my name alone determines if people will respect me or not. But that’s another story altogether. These last couple weeks have truly exposed to me certain things about schwab. The leadership is absolutely lacking and they had zero contingencies in place if anything other than a flood or fire happened to a building. It’s been DAYS since we’ve heard anything from our management regarding people being able to work from home. People are walking out of the building with phones, desktops and monitors with no idea how to set up a home office or if they can connect at all. Security was told them to not stop them which is a potentially huge security risk. And since i cannot work remotely, my job requires that i spend 100% of my time in the building, a possible hotbed of nasty germs to spread while my management is ALL working from home. I mean, that 1000 dollar bonus is great but is my health only worth $1000? To schwab it apparently is. I’m done with this place and I’ll never look back.

It has been chaotic environment, no doubt about it. There was alot of pressure and tough decisions were made. Personally I feel Walt help navigate us through the turmoil and eventually we will all land on safe footing. I appreciated his message and I am forever thankful of still having the opportunity to provide for and protect my family. My favorite leadership characteristic of Walt is his message about serviant leadership. The only thing I was ashamed of was looking around at the absolutely pathetic managers, senior managers, and directors practicing selfish leadership. They could care less about their people working hard in the trenches. You forgot who the real battery of this business is. I applaud you front line professionals. And for all you "sell out leaders" today I am ashamed to call you colleague. You should be embarrassed of yourselves.

Hey guys, This is Lisa Shidler, and I've written a few pieces on this topic. I'd appreciate the chance to communicate with any staffers and see how things are going now for work-at-home. I wanted to see if most staffers are working at home. Also, Is the technology is coming together to work from home. What kinds of communication are going on? And, is morale is bad as it seems. I can be reached at: lisashidler@gmail.com or 219-743-6282 (text or call).

I am shocked that the person who runs Schwab Business and Cyber Resilience organization (part of Corporate Risk) hasn’t been fired yet. This outcome is complete disastrous and shows that what was thought to be a solid BCIM program was nothing more than ludicrous paperwork that turned out to be useless/inaccurate when the firm needed it the most.

Schwab may have their faults, TD America is 10 times worst. Terrible CS, hours on hold. Fidelity, will not return emails. So, the entire system needs to be reviewed.