Dive Brief:
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Large Wall Street Bank Goldman Sachs made it public this week that it had chopped 1,700 positions over the past three months.
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According to Fortune, it is Goldman's biggest quarterly headcount reduction since the 2008 recession, and it "underscores the troubles Goldman is having maintaining profitability" with the Dodd-Frank law and other bank-focused regulations that have been an impediment to profitability.
- Goldman CFO Harvey Schwartz held a conference call with analysts, saying the latest quarter was "challenging" and that Goldman expects to save $700 million a year with its cost-cutting strategy, which included a employee travel cutback announced earlier this summer.
Dive Insight:
HR leaders at most financial institutions like Goldman are struggling under the reforms passed by Congress since the recession, and this layoff announcement really shows the impact.
Along with the job cuts, Goldman Sachs' other cost-reduction measures this year related to talent management include using video to conduct interviews with potential hires from non-traditional universities (in other words, not just top-tier schools), improving some benefits to raise retention rates (and better compete with Silicon Valley), and finally, junking its antiquated, number ratings performance management system for one designed to better help employees maximize their efforts and career opportunities while improving the firm's bottom line.