Uncoordinated, careless, poor work culture. I LOVED the bank that I worked for an was of course saddened when they were bought out, but I was open to the idea of integrating into this exciting new, bigger bank culture! However, I was sorely disappointed. They mismanaged the merger so terribly it was obscene. They fired entire departments all at once after reassuring our bank time and time again that they weren't planning on firing people, people who had worked for our bank for decades were cut off without a second glance. We were short staffed as is when the merger started and despite our bank's best efforts to stress the importance of sufficient time to train our staff on the new systems, Simmons managed to mismanage SO badly that we did not have time to designated half-week trainings for the employees and our employees had to go to trainings after work that resulted in almost 12 hour work days to meet deadlines. The final straw was the day before opening when they requested ALL employees come into their respective branches on a Sunday to run through all the new systems on all the computers and test the new equipment, stating in the email it would take a few hours AT MOST. That's fine in and of itself - of course we need to run through the new systems on a day that customers are not coming, its integral that all of our computers and systems were running smoothly for opening both for the sake of employees and customers. However, Simmons system broke down and instead of sending us home and delaying opening, they demanded that all employees bunker down at their respective branches until the systems rebooted and we could test them that day. It took them over two hours to get them somewhat functional, during which time we all sat on the floors of the bank and twiddled our thumbs. The total duration of that experience was well into 8 hours and they did not provide food, drinks, or explicit breaks to leave the building. My supervisor, who was phenomenal, hard-working, and never complained, and never flinched at hard situations, broke down in tears multiple times towards the end of the merger because of the stress invoked by Simmons' poor handling. Even after the first day issues persisted as their debit cards stopped working and their systems crashed, and we as employees of this new bank trying to learn the systems ourselves had to take the brunt of customer abuse and anger because of it. I quit the day after the merger and I will never do business with them ever again.
