Summer Help

About this time every year comes a contradictory phenomena known as "summer help". Summer help employees are those hired by our esteemed financial institution to pick up the slack caused by regular, trained employees who, hopefully, are taking a well earned vacation. Indeed, if audit rules are being followed, every full time employee takes at least two weeks off every year - and avoids the banking industry like the plague while off the job.

Summer Jobs Scarce in 2005
According to the experts, summer jobs are more scarce this year than ever before. The economy is the major cause of the loss of summer jobs, while cutbacks and layoffs are also taking a toll. Big companies, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies in Boston, are trimming summer help. Seasonal employers, such as camps and amusement parks, are about the only industries who have not cut back their hiring. Six Flags Inc., for instance will hire more than 30,000 employees for its 29 amusement parks. And about 1.2 million jobs are filled in camps and campgrounds each summer. But the retail, service, and manufacturing industries are all cutting back. Last summer the employment rate for teenagers was the lowest in 37 years, and the Boston Labor Market Study says this year is expected to be worse.

Exceptions
But, according to the Center, there are exceptions. The food-service industry is still hiring ("...you want fries with that?") and so is the financial service industry ("...may I see your identification?") That would be us. According to SnagAJob.com, an online job recruiting Web site for part-time and full-time hourly jobs, there are still openings in everything from tellers to customer service representatives in banks and other financial institutions.

Big Differences
The most noticeable difference between a summer job in a financial institution and almost any other job is the training involved, and the consequences of actions taken due to the lack of training. We've not been talking about regulations and compliance for all these years without the realization that summer employees put into positions of responsibility can cause a great deal of damage to the bank's reputation, the institution's liability and the employees' safety. Think about an untrained, unaware, person in just three major areas - BSA, Privacy, and Bank Robbery. To say nothing of all the other regulations that you and your fellow staff members have been hammered with all year. Without complete, in-depth training, such as you take time to do with your full time staff, over and over, there is no limit on the harm that could result by communications or actions taken by untrained or inexperienced summer help.

The other notable difference is occasionally between the appearance of your full time, customer-conscious employees and some of the younger generation applying for summer jobs. One bank finally decided to attach a suggested dress code onto its summer help application to avoid some of the more extreme fashions, in order to assure that customers would not be offended.

We Will Survive
We've survived other summers, and other people who have worked our front lines who were considered "summer help", and we'll do it again. Sometimes they even return and become a real asset to the financial institution. But it's a calculated risk. And when fall comes, and they all leave to go back to school, that big sigh of relief you hear comes from three areas - Security, Compliance, and Audit. You might find they usually take late-in-the-year fall or winter vacations. There's a good reason for that!

Copyright © 2005 Bankers' Hotline. Originally appeared in Bankers' Hotline, Vol. 15, No. 6, 7/05