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How the Covid-19 Crisis Turned One CEO Into Counselor in Chief
Since taking over as CEO of
Amalgamated Bank in 2014, Keith Mestrich has demonstrated his management chops
by reengineering the $5.3 billion institution’s balance sheet and improving its
profitability.
But that experience pales in comparison to the challenge of running a company headquartered in New York City, which is ground zero for the Covid-19 pandemic. Most of Amalgamated’s 400 employees have been working from home since mid-March, including Mestrich. “I never thought that I’d be in the sixth week of running a bank from the basement of my house, by myself,” he says.
The pandemic has had a devastating
impact on the U.S. economy; the likelihood of a severe recession requires
management teams to carefully monitor their banks’ vital signs, including loan
losses, liquidity and regulatory capital levels. But most bankers are
experienced at this, most recently during the Great Recession in 2008. They
know how to manage balance sheets through an economic downturn.
Managing employees through a crisis of this magnitude is another matter entirely.
One obvious way in which the current
situation is starkly different from the last recession is the incredible
personal stress the pandemic has placed on employees. Social distancing and sheltering
orders have forced most employees to work remotely, either isolating them or
requiring them to juggle work and parenting if young children are in the home.
These stresses are layered on
top of the fear of infection. In New York City, where most of Amalgamated’s
employees work, there were more than 138,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19, with nearly
10,000 confirmed deaths and more than 5,000 probable deaths through April 22,
according to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. And of
course, the news has been full of stories about the city’s overcrowded hospital
emergency rooms and the desperate, daily search for ventilators and protective
gear.
People are frightened, including many Amalgamated employees. One of Mestrich’s jobs now is to be counselor in chief.
“I spend a huge amount of my
time just checking in with people at all levels of the bank,” Mestrich says. “People who have to come in and work have different levels of fear
and … and that is calibrated by their own family situation. I talked to one
woman who works in one of our branches, who has three kids, and she’s a single
mom, and knows that if anything were to happen to her, [it] could be really
devastating, so her fear level is very different than somebody who’s a single
person and relatively young and healthy.”
He has also heard positive stories
from his employees. “I got a great message from one guy – the only member of
our staff who I know was actually hospitalized – [that] he was going back to
work,” Mestrich says. “He’s recovered and doing well.”
The fear that some Amalgamated employees experience could magnify when they’re asked to return to their old work environment. “I think coming back is going to be really challenging, especially for organizations that are in hot spots,” he says.
Will companies be required to test
their employees and verify the results, and will social distancing requirements
remain in place in the office? Amalgamated will rely on guidance from the
government in repatriating employees, although Mestrich notes that “guidance
right now, as of today … is very all over the place.”
No matter how this normalization process is executed, Mestrich says it will have to be done with great sensitivity. “I think we’re going to have to be unbelievably empathetic to people who have any number of situations, whether they’re a little bit older worker or they have underlying medical conditions or they still have kids at home and don’t have any other childcare arrangements or they’re just fearful,” he says.
Amalgamated has its roots in the U.S. labor movement. The bank was founded in 1923 by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America to provide banking services to its members and is still 40% owned by the union’s modern day successor, Workers United. Mestrich says many of the private sector unions that bank with Amalgamated have “seen significant layoffs and a lot of stress, both in terms of trying to figure out how to service their members, but also concerned about revenue dropping from dues income.”
And of course, many union members lave been laid off as well. In early April, Amalgamated launched the Frontline Workers Fund to provide financial support to workers impacted by the pandemic, including health care, grocery, cleaning service, food service, domestic and retail workers. It contributed $50,000 to stand up the fund and will donate 10 cents whenever a customer opens a new account or spends over $10 using the bank’s debit card. Amalgamated will donate proceeds from the fund to other union organizations for distribution.
The Amalgamated Foundation has also joined several other large foundations to establish the Families and Workers Fund. This fund will also focus on workers, families and communities that have been impacted by the pandemic. It has an initial commitment of $7.1 million, with a goal of raising $20 million. Amalgamated will also manage the fund’s operations.
In one sense, these two initiatives are just larger examples of the empathy that Mestrich has for his own employees. After all, what is philanthropy but empathy in action.