{"id":3952,"date":"2026-04-15T16:30:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T16:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/?p=3952"},"modified":"2026-04-15T16:30:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T16:30:19","slug":"a-24-billion-dutch-lender-is-cutting-its-workforce-and-to-get-the-remaining-staff-on-board-the-ceo-is-having-sandwiches-with-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/?p=3952","title":{"rendered":"A $24 billion Dutch lender is cutting its workforce\u2014and to get the remaining staff on board, the CEO is having sandwiches with them"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The $24 billion Dutch bank ABN Amro is cutting a fifth of its workforce over the next three years\u2014so how is its CEO Marguerite B\u00e9rard rallying the troops? By sacrificing her long meals and talking over the growing pains with staffers over weekly lunches.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI now take lunch early and at my desk,\u201d B\u00e9rard told the Financial Times in a recent interview. \u201cThis is a big cultural change because French meals can be long. This has been one of my adjustments.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bank has been taking hits since the financial crisis, having previously been rescued from collapse\u2014and more recently, ABN Amro\u2019s 2025 fourth quarter net profit was lower than market expectations. Last November, the bank announced a plan to increase return on equity (ROE) to at least 12%, while keeping cost\/income ratio below 55%. However, the bid to turn things around required some sacrifices, including cutting 5,200 staffers between from 2024 to 2028. By the end of 2025, 1,500 employees had already been cut, ABN Amro informed Fortune.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, once a week, the French banker has sandwiches with eight to 10 colleagues in an effort to \u201chear their views on the bank\u201d through the transition.<\/p>\n

\u201cBuilding consensus and coalitions is often important in the Netherlands,\u201d the CEO continued. \u201cIt\u2019s something that the French don\u2019t always know how to do well.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The gesture is essential in getting staffers on board as the company reduces costs and staffers, the CEO explained, while attempting to boost profits and stay competitive. B\u00e9rard said that employees have \u201cunderstood\u201d the reasoning behind the company\u2019s strategy, and that redundancies would be handled in a \u201cvery responsible manner,\u201d as the European bank has committed to helping laid off workers find new jobs. However, it follows that not everyone would be satisfied with the plan, and B\u00e9rard is committed to making progress over time.<\/p>\n

\u201c[But] we also recognise that consensus may take time to build, and sometimes the status quo is not a good option and you have to move at pace.\u201d<\/p>\n

The CEOs who eat lunch with staffers to better their businesses<\/p>\n

ABN Amro\u2019s CEO isn\u2019t the only leader of a billion-dollar business sitting down to break bread with staffers\u2014others are leveraging the mundane meal as a powerful connection strategy.<\/p>\n

Chris Tomasso, the CEO of breakfast and lunch chain First Watch, is uniting with his staffers through small moments that have an outsized impact. Not only does he write congratulation letters to his staff celebrating career milestones like 10, 20, or even 30 years at the billion-dollar business, but the leader also likes to dine among employees for his midday meal. Tomasso said it\u2019s critical for employees to feel happy and appreciated.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI tried to minimize the [CEO] title as best I can when I\u2019m interacting with people,\u201d Tomasso told Fortune in a 2025 interview. \u201cI eat lunch in the break room with everybody, which always, for whatever reason, blows new employees away\u2014that I just sit down next to them and bring my lunch and have lunch with them. I think it\u2019s a shame that there\u2019s that feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even the leader of one of the biggest companies in the world, $3.8 trillion tech behemoth Apple, doesn\u2019t always take lunch in the corner office. CEO Tim Cook has frequently sat down with random employees at the company\u2019s cafeteria during lunch\u2014a shift from his predecessor, the late Steve Jobs, who often dined with design executive Jonathan Ive.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Leaders at Duolingo also like to gather with their fellow executives\u2014only in the public commissary, so they can rub shoulders with all kinds of staffers. The CTO and cofounder of the $4.5 billion learning platform said that these daily team lunches, which include cofounder and CEO Luis von Ahn, are \u201cfundamental to our company culture.\u201d He said that connecting with employees is better than any engagement survey, because they\u2019re more open about how things are going at the company: \u201cThat\u2019s when the real stuff comes out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLunch is an opportunity for people who don\u2019t normally work together to actually talk. On any given day, Luis or I might be sitting next to a new hire fresh out of school. Or people from completely different teams,\u201d Hacker wrote in a LinkedIn post a year ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s important is that lunch lets us hear what\u2019s actually on the team\u2019s mind,\u201d the cofounder continued. \u201cThere\u2019s no rehearsed feedback or polished updates\u2014I get to hear things I\u2019d never learn in a formal meeting.\u201d<\/p>\n

#billion #Dutch #lender #cutting #workforceand #remaining #staff #board #CEO #sandwiches<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The $24 billion Dutch bank ABN Amro is cutting a fifth of its workforce over…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[245],"tags":[8590,1819,703,552,1163,585,960,6090,1997,3767,8594,1381,8591,3833,580,1209,8595,8592,5842,8597,8598,2398,8593,1779,624,8596],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3952"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}