Lecture: How a staff rewarding system created the financial crisis

With a view to the current European crises and the new CDR procedure, R&D Ispra organises for all staff a lecture from the perspective of a former HR specialist from the banking sector.

"Bonuses and appraisal procedures (e.g. CDR) are not well designed, de-motivate staff and do not lead to better performance"

The speaker

That is the opinion of Dr. Kilian Wawoe, a Human Resources specialist, who wrote his thesis on "bonuses & banking". Almost his whole professional life he worked for a big international bank in various places across Europe and Asia. In his last function as Head of Human Resources for west & south Europe. He discovered in his research project that what he was doing in his daily job, e.g. paying bonuses to bankers, was one of the reasons of the financial crisis. He left the bank in 2010 to become a professor and consultant on Performance Measurement & Reward. 

Whistleblower

As a whistleblower he flagged the risks of the bonus system, in- and later outside the company. Mr. Wawoe is a much acknowledged and frequently invited speaker. His aim is to achieve a mentality change in staff rewarding, in order to prevent that a huge majority of taxpayers have to pay for the benefits of a small minority. For example, the takeover of Banca AntonVeneta in Padova which was the beginning of the end for ABN-AMRO: the staff that completed the deal were rewarded huge bonuses, the tax-payers however lost EUR 20.000.000.000,-.

The lecture

Based on his experience, Kilian Wawoe will explain in an accessible and entertaining way what and how it went wrong. Furthermore he will address staff-rewarding systems in general from a socio psychological point of view. We would be very interested to hear his opinion on our rewarding system and especially in a research environment. So if you want to know how a wrong staff rewarding system created the problems we are all facing now, please attend the lecture. The lecture is free of charge and will be held in English.

 

When: 20th January 2012, h. 10.30