By Surprising! How First Bank Used 36-Words SMS To Sack Over 1000 Staff Nationwide
Many employees of First Bank Nigeria plc have been rudely disengaged from service after they were sent text messages shortly after working hours, so bad that some of them were not aware until they were shown the way out by security officials after they were unable to log in to the system.
Reports gathered revealed that the mass retrenchment which have affected over a thousand of staff nationwide was car red out by Whyte Cleon, the bank’s labour consultant. See below for the text message…
“Dear colleague, this me safe supersedes the earlier message sent by us.
“You are hereby withdrawn from the services of Whyte Cleon Ltd. Effective immediately, 7th August 2017. For further clarification, please contact the office. Thank you.”
It was learnt that after sending the SMS on August 7th to most of the affected staff, physical letter was then sent to the affected staff on August 28th. It was also learnt that most of the affected staff have worked with the bank from period 5 to 10 years.
Reacting to the reports, the bank’s Head, Media and External Communications, Mr Babatunde Lasaki while speaking to a national newspaper source confirmed the mass sack but maintained that it was carried out in line with global best practice.
He revealed that the bank on yearly basis conducts an appraisal after which it promotes staff with exceptional performance while those that under performs are asked to leave the bank. He denied that text messages were used to purge the staff who were mostly front tellers, account officers, clearing support officers, customer service officers and marketing associates.
“I am not sure that is true. That is what they said but that is not standard practice. It is not the way we exit people in our organisation.
“Everybody who is leaving will be given his or her letter. I have a letter of one of those leaving. It is not possible to be asked to leave with a text message.
“I sympathise with people who are asked to leave because I know how traumatic it could be but people can be very emotional when they are asked to go and that is understandable. We follow the global practice and our bank is not only operating in Nigeria. We operate in seven countries across the continent and everything we do is in line with the global process,” he explained.
