If you’re walking into a £100,000 job, still only recent graduate, you’ll expect the money to come with long hours and demanding targets. It’s just the price you pay for being a high earner.
But maybe that’s an outdated assumption. It’s not the deal that younger generations are looking for, not even for a career in banking. Recruitment of the “brightest and best” has become a problem that not even the offer of still more money and bonuses can solve. In a survey of early-career bankers by Financial News, 70% said they were considering leaving their job because of worries about workload and burnout. Younger generations don’t like the level of pressure — or the way banks have been demanding they only work from the office. And as a result, a “talent crisis’ is predicted.
The seriousness of the situation for financial firms, in terms of both reputation and recruitment, has been recognised by the Financial Conduct Authority. The FCA has announced new rules from September 2026 where cases of bullying, harassment and discrimination will have to be disclosed formally, as a breach of its regulatory code of conduct, just the same as financial misconduct.
There are lessons for HRDs and employers more generally from what’s happening to the finance industry: the growing importance of getting the culture right: the employee experience in terms of the balance between challenge and rewards and wellbeing. Because there are so many signals — when it comes to levels of sickness absence and engagement — that suggest HR haven’t been keeping up with the changing mixture of conditions and expectations.
Financial services keeps offering up examples of what can go wrong. What whistleblowers at investment banks have called “inhumane” working conditions: extreme hours (often 95 hours a week), unrelenting pressure and bullying and abuse from managers. Over the last year, three young investment bankers in the US have been reported as dying from work-related heart conditions.
In the UK sector, there have been repeated criticisms of toxic workplaces and the consequences of an imbalance of power for sexism and sexual harassment. The Treasury’s report in 2024 suggested 45% of financial services workers had experienced sexual harassment in their workplace. In spite of threats from the Financial Conduct Authority around issuing fines and bans on managers found to be in breach of expected standards of behaviour, insiders continue to point to an unwillingness to deal with problems of bullying and harassment head-on, and “a culture of silence”. There are fears that the “anti-woke” movement in the US has affected attitudes in the UK, particularly in banking, where there is a readiness to slow down activities relating to EDI in general.
Employees — including young, highly-motivated and ambitious employees — want to be humans in a human workplace. Sustainable conditions in terms of job design, targets and everyday experience. Where wellbeing support hasn’t become a priority because of the sheer level of stress that staff are subject to, as a remedial service rather than a positive benefit. After all, wellbeing and having tough targets and high expectations around performance don’t have to be mutually exclusive. The great majority of employees want a sense of challenge and achievement.
At the heart of the issue is trust. Staff in any sector, but especially the intensity of finance, need to feel able to raise concerns, minor or major, whether that’s targets and the resulting stress, or where there’s believed to be harassment and bullying. Our experience of working with the UK’s largest employers keeps on confirming how awareness of problems and ’speak up’ channels isn’t enough. They don’t overcome the basic fear of repercussions, of what starting a ‘difficult’ conversation with a line manager will mean for them and how they’re seen.
The real basis of a good workplace culture is always psychological safety, and that only comes with everyday experience — first-hand evidence of talking with managers who demonstrate listening skills and empathy. There are constant examples of how difficult situations and conversations are dealt with in positive and constructive ways: straightforward grievances, misunderstandings and clashes in personality are dealt with at earlier stages — whether through the use of easily accessible mediation services, neutral assessment, or just based on open-minded and honest conversations.
