This statement “The US Bureau of Labor and Statistics indicates as much as 35% of America's bank tellers are making less than $15/hour.” comes as a shocker!
With all the money they bank makes, they decide to pay their staff similar to what some teens make at Starbucks and other retail stores.
May be the staff of those banks should just go to drive Uber or doordash with their time.
Forgive my long responses to your short comment -- this got me wondering:
How would a teller "stay ahead" of banking software progress beyond the training and experience they are afforded on the job? And how would staying ahead of software progress help a teller be more highly valued and compensated?
For starters, it's not like one can just purchase and download banking software, or sign up as an individual for updates and training . . .
As a tech person who has researched and built software for financial services, I have a good idea about how I might personally go about that, but the experience that has me able to do so also has my hourly rate valued minimally at 10x what we're talking about -- I'd never advise someone to bother doing it for a super monotonous job that doesn't even pay $15/hour, reward performance, or offer a clear path to a more rewarding career. I might recommend it to a teller who's super ambitious and looking for a creative way to leverage their experience into a completely different and more rewarding job role (e.g., working for a banking software company)
If tellers aren’t staying enough ahead of software progress relevant to their jobs when that's something the bank needs and values, responsibility falls squarely on bank management.
But let's even say a very ambitious and software-curious bank teller is staying ahead of software progress on their own time and dime, maybe even leaps and bounds ahead of what everyone else in the bank knows and can do. How will that help increase their salary or justification for higher pay as a teller? (It might, I just can't currently envision a scenario where it would.)
The bank's software is the bank's software. It does what it does and doesn't do what it doesn't do and tellers gotta use it "as is" to get the work done in the moment on the job serving customers. How the software progresses or might progress is completely outside the scope of a teller's job description, power, and probably even influence in most institutions.
The job role and function of a teller as designed and brought to the labor market by the bank is either worth a living wage or not. (Whether a given person in the role is worth it or not is not the question.) If a given person is not considered worth it, that's a talent management issue (recruiting, hiring, training, performance management). If the job role itself, as designed and defined, isn't worth it, that's an organization design issue (and opportunity).
Anyhow, clearly lack of software skills isn't what's keeping teller salaries low. Given the nationwide shortage of bank tellers, if teller software skills were what's in demand, banks would be competing with each other and luring tellers who already "know the software" away with promises of higher pay and benefits.
Maybe we should call them bankers and not tellers depending on bank size. At my bank there are two people when you walk in and they corral docs for all kinds of account openings, track wires and fill in a number of processes that technology workflows don’t always track.
They are often training to step up to a job supporting producers.
I don’t think any of these folks are looking to organize.
For folks stuck handling checks they are free to organize to ask for an extra several dollars but for their sake I would hope they are either grabbing extra income in exchange for flexible schedule or also keeping an eye on higher value roles in the future.
For small banks they can make connections to train themselves more broadly, to answer your question. At truist I would expect they would be more prone to organize or leave to a more flexible bank.
Thank you for advancing the conversation. My apologies, I believe we are not talking about the same thing.
If we’re providing career coaching to tellers about how to get more out of their often low-paying, dead end jobs — “train yourselves, pursue social networking, get a second job, treat being a teller as a stepping stone only” — is all fine and appropriate advice.
However, the conversation here isn’t about what tellers should do or not do — it’s about the sorts of things that Banks and Bank Management can do — and arguably should do — to improve their own performance and to strengthen the industry as a whole. Neither Timyan’s article above nor I are recommending labor organization.
Tellers clearly have the basic knowledge and skills for the job, or they wouldn’t be getting hired and retained.
If they aren't skilled with the software, they won't be in the position for long, right? We're not talking about retention here, we're talking about base compensation for the basic job.
If tellers as a matter of rule don’t have the full range or level of knowledge and skills the bank wants and needs, then the bank needs to improve its recruiting and training practices.
If that’s not working, the bank is overpaying its managers. They’re the ones lacking the skills (or character) needed to do their jobs recruiting, building, and rewarding a properly skilled, high-performing team, yet they’re getting paid “as if” they have the requisite talent management skills and are using them to maximum benefit of the bank.
If the job function of a teller has become so limited and low value that it doesn’t encourage or afford employees the opportunity to do work the bank feels is “worth” paying a living wage, then the job itself needs to be reinvented. Innovative bankers worth their own salaries are expanding the role of teller in ways that allow for higher teller compensation, increase employee satisfaction, and deliver greater value to the bank and its customers.
In any event, there's a national shortage of bank tellers. Scarcity and free market dynamics alone are sufficient business case to support paying them a living wage.
This statement “The US Bureau of Labor and Statistics indicates as much as 35% of America's bank tellers are making less than $15/hour.” comes as a shocker!
With all the money they bank makes, they decide to pay their staff similar to what some teens make at Starbucks and other retail stores.
May be the staff of those banks should just go to drive Uber or doordash with their time.
This is really Unions could help with!!!
Is the teller skilled and knowledgeable, or unskilled? I think a number of tellers today would do well to stay ahead of software progress.
Forgive my long responses to your short comment -- this got me wondering:
How would a teller "stay ahead" of banking software progress beyond the training and experience they are afforded on the job? And how would staying ahead of software progress help a teller be more highly valued and compensated?
For starters, it's not like one can just purchase and download banking software, or sign up as an individual for updates and training . . .
As a tech person who has researched and built software for financial services, I have a good idea about how I might personally go about that, but the experience that has me able to do so also has my hourly rate valued minimally at 10x what we're talking about -- I'd never advise someone to bother doing it for a super monotonous job that doesn't even pay $15/hour, reward performance, or offer a clear path to a more rewarding career. I might recommend it to a teller who's super ambitious and looking for a creative way to leverage their experience into a completely different and more rewarding job role (e.g., working for a banking software company)
If tellers aren’t staying enough ahead of software progress relevant to their jobs when that's something the bank needs and values, responsibility falls squarely on bank management.
But let's even say a very ambitious and software-curious bank teller is staying ahead of software progress on their own time and dime, maybe even leaps and bounds ahead of what everyone else in the bank knows and can do. How will that help increase their salary or justification for higher pay as a teller? (It might, I just can't currently envision a scenario where it would.)
The bank's software is the bank's software. It does what it does and doesn't do what it doesn't do and tellers gotta use it "as is" to get the work done in the moment on the job serving customers. How the software progresses or might progress is completely outside the scope of a teller's job description, power, and probably even influence in most institutions.
The job role and function of a teller as designed and brought to the labor market by the bank is either worth a living wage or not. (Whether a given person in the role is worth it or not is not the question.) If a given person is not considered worth it, that's a talent management issue (recruiting, hiring, training, performance management). If the job role itself, as designed and defined, isn't worth it, that's an organization design issue (and opportunity).
Anyhow, clearly lack of software skills isn't what's keeping teller salaries low. Given the nationwide shortage of bank tellers, if teller software skills were what's in demand, banks would be competing with each other and luring tellers who already "know the software" away with promises of higher pay and benefits.
Maybe we should call them bankers and not tellers depending on bank size. At my bank there are two people when you walk in and they corral docs for all kinds of account openings, track wires and fill in a number of processes that technology workflows don’t always track.
They are often training to step up to a job supporting producers.
I don’t think any of these folks are looking to organize.
For folks stuck handling checks they are free to organize to ask for an extra several dollars but for their sake I would hope they are either grabbing extra income in exchange for flexible schedule or also keeping an eye on higher value roles in the future.
For small banks they can make connections to train themselves more broadly, to answer your question. At truist I would expect they would be more prone to organize or leave to a more flexible bank.
Thank you for advancing the conversation. My apologies, I believe we are not talking about the same thing.
If we’re providing career coaching to tellers about how to get more out of their often low-paying, dead end jobs — “train yourselves, pursue social networking, get a second job, treat being a teller as a stepping stone only” — is all fine and appropriate advice.
However, the conversation here isn’t about what tellers should do or not do — it’s about the sorts of things that Banks and Bank Management can do — and arguably should do — to improve their own performance and to strengthen the industry as a whole. Neither Timyan’s article above nor I are recommending labor organization.
Tellers clearly have the basic knowledge and skills for the job, or they wouldn’t be getting hired and retained.
If they aren't skilled with the software, they won't be in the position for long, right? We're not talking about retention here, we're talking about base compensation for the basic job.
If tellers as a matter of rule don’t have the full range or level of knowledge and skills the bank wants and needs, then the bank needs to improve its recruiting and training practices.
If that’s not working, the bank is overpaying its managers. They’re the ones lacking the skills (or character) needed to do their jobs recruiting, building, and rewarding a properly skilled, high-performing team, yet they’re getting paid “as if” they have the requisite talent management skills and are using them to maximum benefit of the bank.
If the job function of a teller has become so limited and low value that it doesn’t encourage or afford employees the opportunity to do work the bank feels is “worth” paying a living wage, then the job itself needs to be reinvented. Innovative bankers worth their own salaries are expanding the role of teller in ways that allow for higher teller compensation, increase employee satisfaction, and deliver greater value to the bank and its customers.
In any event, there's a national shortage of bank tellers. Scarcity and free market dynamics alone are sufficient business case to support paying them a living wage.
See https://www.wavetec.com/blog/banking/shortage-of-bank-tellers/