The rules have changed. You won’t feel comfortable at Barclays and, to be frank, we won’t feel comfortable with you as colleagues.” The message in this month’s letter to staff from Antony Jenkins, the bank’s new chief executive, was plain: if you don’t like our values, get out.
It is a strong start to reforming the bank’s culture but, as Barclays’ recent history shows, the problem with values statements is making them stick. For, even as some employees were fiddling the London interbank offered rate and selling customers interest rate swaps and unnecessary payment protection insurance, the bank already had an apparently robust code of conduct. “Our organisation,” read one crucial section, “was founded on traditional values of trust and honour and our success has been, and continues to be, dependent not only on the quality of our products and services, but on the way in which they are delivered. We expect every Barclays employee, and others who work on our behalf, to conduct themselves according to consistently high professional and ethical standards.”
That statement was signed by John Varley, chief executive until 2010, and reinforced by his successor. Bob Diamond said in a radio lecture in late 2011: “Culture is difficult to define. I think it’s even more difficult to mandate. But, for me, the evidence of culture is how people behave when no one is watching.”