Banks training descends to new lows
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Banks training descends to new lows

Bankers are famous gossips. They like nothing more than talking about the revolving door of job moves in the industry, the embarrassing slip-ups rivals have made with clients or the scandals that can result when alcohol and the capital markets collide. But although the rumour mill ensures bankers know plenty about other firms, they don’t always know what’s going on at their own.

Take one banker at a European firm. Like many ambitious young dealmakers, he used to ignore his firm’s mandatory corporate training. But after the warning emails piled up, he decided last week that he should finally get up to date.

He sat there for an hour or so, working his way through various interactive training modules. It quickly became apparent to him that he must have missed some fairly juicy scandals at his own firm.

One of his training modules asked the following question: “What is the appropriate amount of alcohol you should consume at a company gathering?” Deciding that his answer should reflect his ideals rather than his behaviour, he chose ‘moderate’. But why was this part of company training?

The test went on, “if you’re offered marijuana at a company event, should you take it?”

What exactly, this banker wondered, had he missed? There was clearly a big pre-lockdown party that he had not been invited to. Never before had his bank’s HR team even uttered the word ‘marijuana’, he said, although there’s a chance he was just too stoned to remember.

At the end of the training, the system gave him a certificate showing that he had learned to drink moderately and not take drugs with clients. What a qualification! It’s like an MBA for millennials.

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