"These are mistakes that could cost someone their home"

The article points to this as example of bad management, but that's not bad management. That's good management. Staying on top of your team is what a manager is supposed to do:

One manager, in a daily "3 p.m. pulse check," e-mail reminded her team recently that "we need 11 new signed notarized files per reviewer per day," reminding the staff that "I asked that you take a few files at a time to be signed [and] notarized; it does not appear we are following this process."
On other occasions, the reminders can be more pointed. When a backlog of 59 files needed to be completed by 11 a.m. the next day, another manager e-mailed his team: "No one should be doing anything other than [these] files. No socializing, no going for breakfast, no doing [other] files ... until we are done with [these files]. It is that important. Help me out with this. If you finish all [the] files in your pipeline, you are expected to ask me for more.”

The 3 p.m. "pulse check" is exactly that an effective supervisor should be doing. At 3 p.m., productivity can begin to slide down. You need to stay on top of your workers to make sure the work is being done.

He is also talking about making the notary process more efficient. Based on that article it seems like it is a major time waste to go into the room to get each file notarized. You have to gather up the file, walk into the notary room, swear the affidavit, place the file in the bin and walk back to your desk. If you do this for each file individually, you are wasting (rough guess) 5 minutes per file. If you do it in a batch, you are saving the travel to and from your desk, plus the filing time for any file after the first file. It's a best practice and what should be done. Don't waste effort bringing the files one at at time. Bring them in a batch.

In the second instance, he is emphasizing the priority of one set of files over the other. Those are the files that should be worked. The company is paying you to work the files -- not chat with your neighbor, not go to breakfast, not sit around. Work those files and nothing else. The company pays for breaks and lunch. The rest of the time should be working those files -- once again good management, not harassment.

The argument this article seems to be making is that 10-11 files per day is too much of a burden. Maybe it is. I have no idea. But based on a 7.5 hour work day (9 hours - 1 hour for lunch and 2 15 minute breaks) that means a person should spend 40-45 minutes on each file.

Is that too short? I have no idea. Maybe it is. They need to set better production standards based on the actual time it takes to process a file. If 8 files per day is actually what is realistic, then set the standard at 8 files per day. Do the timings, find the right productivity standards and manage to them.

But the actions of the supervisor to reduce chit chat, breakfast time, idle workers, etc. aren't the problem. That's called management. If you want to socialize, eat breakfast, go on farmville or whatever else you want to do, do it in the 15 hours a day you aren't at work. Do it on your 15 minute breaks. Do it on your 1 hour lunch. Just don't do it when the company is paying you to process files.

 

Got Mrs. E & I got our initial mortgage with Wells Fargo 5 years ago.
Two years ago when rates were dropping we decided to refinance. Filled out all the paperwork and thought everything was in place. Then all of a sudden the manager of the local Wells Fargo office calls at 4:45 p.m. saying that the person who had handled our refi was no longer with the company, that the paperwork was left on his desk not filled out properly and that if we wanted to lock in the rate we had to re-sign all the proper forms first thing in the morning or else we lose the rate.
I had him e-mail me the forms, we signed, and I brought them back to him first thing in the morning - fortunately I had the morning off from the law firm I was interning at.

A few days later we get a letter from the servicing department saying they need a few more documents. I call for confirmation, scan everything needed and e-mail the documents. I call and speak to the person I was dealing with and get told on a Thursday, three weeks prior to close, that she'll check everything and get back to me. The following Tuesday, I call to confirm everything to make sure the closing will happen on time and get told that she's no longer with the company and my loan has been assigned to someone else. For two days that person doesn't return my calls. I finally send an e-mail, using my e-mail account at the law firm I was interning at. Less than 30 minutes later I get a call from him, explaining how busy he is, that they normally don't finalize these things until a few days before closing, but he'd check on it. Later in the day he calls me back to say that I need to resend everything I had sent as the system administrator can't get into the e-mail of the person no longer with the company that I had sent everything to.
So I re-send everything and fortunately everything went smoothly at closing.

 

This will read harsher than it sounds, but did you read the story?

Making an entry-level, third-week employee nominally a "vice president" so as to skirt the extra work of oversight is a joke. So is subcontracting the prep work outside your company at a cheaper rate with people who probably do shit work.

This is right out of the profit playbook: Cut corners, cut corners, cut corners for the sake of profit, very little of which the grunt employees see, the corners they cut hurting others.

If there is a future obstacle to offshore work, it may be this: Many of the overseas workers are stubbornly ethical. They don't like to look the other way when some mid-30s mid-management scam artist sells them a line over Citrix about "pushing the queue."

 

I read the whole thing. And yes, I believe the practice of giving fake titles to basic processors to skirt rules is appalling. I believe that the banks are getting bit in the ass for terrible lending practices for years and I am glad they are getting their feet held to the fire.

However, I don't feel that examples of management 101 aren't part of the problem. When you are at work, sit down, shut up and do your work. I don't think it is unrealistic to expect people to do work during the times they are expected to do work. I don't think its unfair for managers to actively monitor work queues. I don't have a problem with managers sharing best practices and expecting them to be followed.

If the quotas are unrealistically high, then yes, this is bad. I can't just the quotas because I have never done timings of this time of work. But at first glance 40-45 minutes to review mortgage files doesn't seem like slave driving.

If they are not letting you take your lunch, that is bad. If they are forcing you not to take your legal 15 minute breaks that is bad. But this article doesn't cite those kind of conditions (in fact it says the smokers take more than just the two 15 minute breaks). I don't have a problem with ripping the bank for skirting the law with a terrible system. However, I do have a problem with the employees bitching about basic techniques.

 

I just looked up the North Carolina labor law. Believe it or not, it's worse:

The employer is not required to provide ANY break for anyone 16 and over.

http://www.nclabor.com/wh/faqs.pdf

So, in other words, it's sit at your desk, shut up and starve!

Yep, because a full stomach violates the constitutional right to work.

 

Lovely.

And people don't think unions have any place in the workplace anymore.

"Right to work" is one of the greatest Orwellian phrases of all time.

 

Which my idiotic statehouse just passed! Huzzah!

Not picking on you, Baron, but anyone who thinks the newspaper industry has a monopoly on "crazy managers" is fooling themselves.

 

I think you missed the point

It's not about "management 101" or whether the $30.000 a year peons are making their quotas.

It's about unqualified people, disguised as corporate officers, making questionable decisions that affect people's lives.

Don't know about the US but up here you could not make someone a legal signing officer for this purpose unless they were listed on the articles of incorporation. A judge would throw this bullshit out in a heartbeat.

The mid management drones have their balls on the line and they're not looking for quality, just quantity.

Once the loan process specialists fill out the information in a standard affidavit template, they sign it before a notary, a public official licensed by each state to perform legal functions that include administering oaths and witnessing signatures on documents.

In the Charlotte office, that means a trip to a separate room where a handful of notaries sit all day behind a few small desks with lamps. Much of their time is spent reading a newspaper or a book or playing with smart phones while they wait for the next legal processes specialist to stand before them, swear that the affidavit they've just filled out is true, and sign it.

"It's exactly like an assembly line," said the loan processor in that office. "You sign it, you push it off to a notary, they stamp it, you put it in a box and it goes somewhere else."

That's about the worst type of management you can think of.

 

OK, for the sake of arguement, let's make the workers stay at their desks for 7.5 hours per day. That's about 40 minutes per file. Is that really enough time to make sure everything is in order?

If an affidavit is needed, then that processor needs to read every piece of paper in that file, and track down any missing info. I'm guessing that would take more than 40 minutes to do.

 

Noticed this ad for a foreclosure analyst. Does anyone else get the feeling that it's a "no experience necessary" position?

http://www.careerbuilder.com/JobSeeker/Jobs/JobDetails.aspx?ipath=EXGOO&siteid=CBSIMPLYHIRED&Job_DID=JHQ14J6FJJN08TV1C8S

 

Sounds like an ad for a call center employee.

 

Current events sidebar -

Isn't this the job George Zimmerman had?