Axed Lehman Brothers’ staff do not need career coaching or CV surgeries, the administrator has insisted.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) last week announced that 750 fixed-income and personal investment management jobs would be cut at the bankrupt investment bank, because no buyer could be found for these sectors of the business.
But while the HR team remains firmly in place to help PwC deal with redundancies and payroll, it does not need to organise separate services to help former bankers find new jobs.
A PwC spokeswoman told Personnel Today: “The type of employees at Lehman Brothers don’t need that sort of help, they are all proficient in CVs and so on. For the 750 redundancies, we’re offering those people the chance to have a one-to-one meeting with someone at PwC. But this is not career coaching, more ‘what do they need from us’ [to make the process go as smoothly as possible].”
She added that the HR team was “pretty instrumental” in dealing with the job cuts.
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“The actual redundancy calls will be done by PwC, but the HR team has the knowledge of how best to communicate to Lehman employees. The HR team is pretty indispensible at the moment.”
PwC was appointed administrator for the UK operations of Lehman Brothers in September when its US parent company filed for bankruptcy after being hit by the credit crunch and a failed rescue deal. It employed around 4,500 people in the UK at the time of the collapse, most of them based in London.
