Deutsche Bank female VP allegedly bullied by director over pregnant junior

Banks are outsourcing a lot of work to India at present, and it appears they're outsourcing some of the more contentious aspects of banking culture to those offices too. The husband of a Deutsche Bank VP took to social media yesterday, claiming that his India-based wife is in therapy thanks to bullying from her director.

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Harish Prasad, himself a VP at BNY Mellon, said "my wife's mental health has suffered" due to her treatment by her manager. Praasad says she was criticised and labelled a "poor manager" over her handling of a pregnant junior, whom she allowed to work flexible hours while pregnant. His wife's director at DB allegedly said the pregnancy was a "personal issue" and the team "shouldn't have to suffer" because of it.

Deutsche Bank has over 22k employees in India, home to its largest global tech hub. The Indian operation is headquartered in Mumbai, but it also has an IFSC banking team in GIFT City. The bank declined to comment for this article, but writing beneath Praasad's claim, it says it will follow up on the claims internally and is "committed to ensure that all our employees feel safe." 

Prasad says the director's bullying extended beyond unwillingness to accommodate pregnant team members. He's alleged to have stated that "no one in my team is allowed to fall sick," and to have criticised Prasad's wife for her asthma by describing her as "almost handicapped." Prasad says the director also expected staff to come into the office during monsoon season, "even if it takes three hours."

Prasad also claims his wife was publicly yelled at in a town hall. The director allegedly said she was "instigating the team" after she said her team didn't receive enough recognition. 

When the issues were brought to employee relations by Prasad's wife, they allegedly responded by saying there was no evidence to support her claims and accused her of intimidating the team. Prasad says that, since this ruling, the director has "escalated his retaliatory behavior." She still appears to be employed there, seemingly in data engineering.

Some Deutsche Bank employees have responded in support of the bank. A male VP in its payments business who had worked at Deutsche Bank for 18 years said "the work environment is one of the best." A cloud migration engineer, also male, said the bank has "flexible and friendly management."

Intense workloads for Indian employees seem to be an unfortunately common theme. Late last year, a 26-year-old female employee in the Audit team of Big Four firm Ernst & Young died from what her mother claimed to be an "overwhelming workload." The mother claimed nobody from her company attended the funeral. A study of Indian bank employees last year claimed that over 80% respondents had moderate to high levels of burnout. 

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