Wells Fargo: The Criterion Nobody Wrote Down

Wells Fargo fired 5,300 employees for fraud in 2016. A year later, it offered approximately 1,000 of them their jobs back.

The bank's retail hiring process had one clearly documented criterion: cross-sell performance. The targets were precise. The tracking was weekly. The performance reviews were built around them.

What the record did not contain was any scored, documented assessment of ethical conduct or compliance judgment.

When thousands of terminations were challenged, the organisation had to answer a question it had never needed to answer before: what were these people hired against?

The hiring file showed what had been measured. And what it didn't show became the legal exposure.

What is not documented at the point of hire cannot be defended at the point of termination. That holds whether you are running 8,700 branches or a team of eight.