Something horrible happened recently at a Wells Fargo office. A woman, Denise Prudhomme, died and nobody noticed. Headlines emphasize that no one noticed for four days, but keep in mind that includes a weekend. If Prudhomme died at the end of the day on Friday, it was really only on Monday that people didn’t notice.
It’s still terrible. Tragic. Traumatic.
It is not, however, indicative of a bad culture, nor does it require a new policy, practice, or HR training to prevent this from happening again.
Yes, Wells Fargo should conduct an investigation and cooperate with the police, as should you if some tragedy befalls your workplace. But this is not a sign of a bad workplace.
Not everyone agrees with me, though. Workplace mental health strategist Natasha Bowman wrote on LinkedIn:
To keep reading, click here: The Hard Truth About Workplace Tragedies: Why Wells Fargo’s Loss Doesn’t Require a New Policy
Wells Fargo is a bank. Why don’t they have a system that alerts their security office that someone clocked in but never clocked out?
I’d guess she wasn’t on a timeclock, but was salaried. We don’t know enough details to know whether or not there need to be any kind of policy or procedural change – and we almost certainly never will, and really never *should*.
There’s a reason why people assume the worst for Wells Fargo. The worst has certainly been true of them many times in the past. But that’s really the *only* information we have on this.
A couple reports I read stated the employees “scanned” in but never “scanned” out. It seems to me that in itself is a security issue.
Workplaces that require an employee to scan a security badge for entry, should also be automatically capturing people when they exit from the building They should run a match every 24 hours, of entry and exits for each badge, simply as part of their own building security. Why in the world they did not find the anomality in at least 48 hours, regardless of whether part or all of those 48 hours are open hours, is a security problem.