Wall Street bank forced to respond as slide presentation goes viral on social media
What’s it like starting a career with a major banking group on the financial world’s most famous financial district?
According to a group of junior analysts at Goldman Sachs, it’s tough. Really tough!
The cohort went public late last week to share their tales of gruelling working weeks, poor mental health, and trying to survive on just 5 hours sleep each night.
In a slide deck presentation titled Working Conditions Survey, February 2021, the analysts shared that an average week means 98 hours working with bedtime coming at 3am.
Asked to rate their mental health before and after starting their role, they reported an average decline of 6 points from 8.8 to 2.8 with physical health slumping almost 7 points to 2.3.
Three quarters said they had sought counselling, therapy, or other help due to the stress of their job.
In an age where work-life balance is key to wellbeing, every one of the respondents said their job had impacted their relationships with family and/or friends.
Despite an overall satisfaction rating of just 2 out of 10, around half respondents felt they would still be working at Goldman Sachs in 6 months’ time.
Workplace abuse
In perhaps the most serious allegation, more than three quarters of respondents said they felt they had been “victims of workplace abuse.”
In a statement published by the Financial Times, Goldman Sachs responded:
“We recognise that our people are very busy, because business is strong and volumes are at historic levels. A year into Covid, people are understandably quite stretched, and that’s why we are listening to their concerns and taking multiple steps to address them.”
The Wall Street stalwart has a policy of junior workers not working between 9pm Friday until Sunday morning and the slide deck includes sticking to this among its recommendations.
But the junior bankers are also being urged by their peers to limit working weeks to 80 hours and that adequate time should be factored in for client meetings to reduce the pressure.
