personal banker

teller

analyst

branch manager

lead teller

KeyBank

I was hired as a part time teller. I did love my customers. If it wasn't for them, I would've left sooner. 

During the interview, I asked about Saturday hours, I was told by my manager that I would have to work MOST Saturdays - I said that wouldn't be a problem since most doesn't mean every Saturday. After I got hired, I was give a month and half worth of schedules and I noticed I was scheduled to work every Saturday. I didn't say anything since I was new, but after 2 months of working every Saturday, I sat down with my manager and asked him again about Saturdays- that's when he said, "Part timers are expected to work every Saturday so the full timers don't have to work Saturdays". Thats when I told him that would be a problem for me due to child care issues and when I asked about Saturdays during the interview, I was told most Saturdays not every Saturday. He claimed he never said that to me during the interview. Needless to say, I was only given 3 Saturdays off during the time I worked here and that because I requested them off. 

My BIGGEST complaint was management. My manager wasn't knowledgeable, he didn't take responsibility for his mistakes, he always put blame on someone else, took other peoples credit/ did not give credit where it was due, changed the schedule EVERY WEEK, gossiped, always had something negative to say, and was very unprofessional- not a leader or team player at all. He would get upset if he told you to do something and you told him no because you were uncomfortable with his request, he didn't care that his request was job risky. He's even said to myself and other coworkers that he's the manager and he can do what he wants and come and leave when he pleases. 

My manager wrote me up with false accusations and told me I had to sign when I refused to sign something that wasn't accurate. He told me I was his worst employee but days prior, he was saying I had great leadership skills and had great client relations. He even sat me down one day and said I was coming into work too early and I had to stop- I came into work 2-5 mins before my shifts. He said I was taking too long counting big bills because I would check to make sure there wasn't counterfeit and that I needed to stop checking. My manager would speak about my timecard/schedule with other coworkers, he's even made changes to my timecard and my other coworkers timecards. I had to start writing down my clock in and clock out times daily to see if he would make changes. He would make weekly schedule changes without notifying me and then tell a coworker to tell me of the change....it was like a game of telephone. The environment he created was stressful and toxic. The staff turnover rate at my branch was ridiculous - in the short time that I was there (6 months), 5 people left and they all verbally told me the main reason was because of management. Two of those five people who left were longtime employees.

I truly did enjoy my job, it was boring at times because the bank was dead and there would be times where hours went by and not one client came in, but when the rush came and when the clients did come in- I truly enjoyed it. I loved having conversations with the clients and meeting different people. Clients gifted me chocolates and hand made items because we built such a great professional friendship. However, a lot of clients did complain about my manager saying he was always in his office with the door closed, he was rude to them, he would make them wait for long periods of time before acknowledging them or helping them, he would send them to different branches especially on Saturdays, and he wasn't  knowledgeable. I've had multiple people close their accounts because of the treatment they received from my manager. 

KeyBank itself isn't that bad- but they love to promote financial wellness, but then charge people $8 for bank checks, $7.50 per check for non clients to cash checks, and $38 for overdraft plus more the longer you are negative, maintenance fees, service fees, etc. Be prepared to get yelled out 80% off the time because of the fees. They also expected the tellers to be like telemarketers....they wanted us to go down a list and make phone calls promoting financial wellness, make appointments to get people to open accounts, and ask them when was the last time they had their financial review, etc. 

If I didn't have him as a manager, I wouldn't have left. I definitely saw myself longer than 6 months at Key, but my manager was definitely the worst manager I've ever had. 

People don't leave bad jobs, they leave because of bad bosses who don't appreciate their value.

Would I ever recommend anyone to bank here or work here. Terrible management and lack of job advancement. They pride themselves on their employees however when a new position becomes available they would rather hire externally.
I worked at the Danielson, CT branch for 6 months and even that short of a time I could not stand it anymore. Every person who walked in that door already had a negative attitude and were there to complain about another fee they were charged or how long they had to wait for assistance. We were extremely understaffed for one of the busiest branches in the region- only 2 tellers on the counter (there were 5 stations available), 1 personal banker (when there were 3 offices and 5 desks all together), and 1 manager who was never there. Some people would wait 15-20 minutes or more for service if we were in the middle of our lunch rotation- only ONE person running an entire counter and ONE person running the drive through.
The personal bankers there have to "cold call." For those who don't know what this means, please picture a telemarketer in your mind for me. That's what they do here. They generate lists from God knows where with people who live in the area's information- potential clients, and call them at 5 or 6 pm on a weeknight when they're probably eating dinner or spending time with family. They also do not use their best judgement when making referrals; because their goals are so high they're practically unattainable, they have to resort to making unethical referrals such as recommending a credit card to an elderly woman who has never used one before. They also pull reports on which clients have the most money to value them more and provide a better client experience.
Manager was very poorly trained, not knowledgeable on products or policies, and showed favoritism to one employee in particular. She was never in the office and liked to micromanage. Once she made me go home without pay to get MY NAME TAG. 
I got an award for their version of employee of the month. It was great, I got a bag of goodies, a card, and a $200 incentive to spend online off their rewards site. It was all glamorous and generous until I found out that management and human resources FAILED to mention to me that they were going to be reporting it as income and i was taxed DOUBLE. The paycheck I got that week ended up being LESS than what it usually was by almost $200. I was so livid.
And lastly i will mention that as a teller i was thoroughly overworked, performing teller, banker, head teller and management duties on a daily basis. I never once received a bonus or a raise (not to mention they actually "don't do raises") for this extra work i was putting in. When i said i was interested in a banker position, the regional director (my managers' boss) gave me a list of things that i needed to do to get promoted (one of these was to obtain employee of the month, and another to be the highest in sales)- i successfully busted my butt and achieved everything on his little list, then when i applied for the position they didn't even give me the courtesy of telling me that i didn't get it. For weeks and weeks on end i had to watch my manager interview EXTERNAL applicants when i hadn't even gotten an answer yet.
It was at that point that i realized i was being taken advantage of and being used for my intelligence and work ethic. They were okay with me doing all the work but not with raising my pay.

GET IT TOGETHER KEYBANK.

KeyBank is a financial services company that offers a wide range of products and services to customers, including personal and business banking, investment services, and commercial lending. Working at KeyBank may involve interacting with customers, providing financial advice and support, and helping customers with transactions and account management.

Employees at KeyBank are typically provided with training and resources to help them succeed in their roles. The company places a strong emphasis on teamwork and collaboration, and many employees have opportunities to work with colleagues from different departments and levels of the organization.

Like many financial institutions, KeyBank is a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment. Expect to have a heavy workload and pressure to meet targets.

Overall, working at KeyBank may be a good fit for people who are interested in the financial industry, enjoy working with customers and have a strong desire to help customers with their financial needs.  High-stress environment: The banking industry can be a high-stress environment, especially during busy periods, and employees may be expected to work long hours and handle a high volume of customer interactions.
Bureaucratic company structure: Key Bank is a large and complex organization, which can lead to a bureaucratic company structure that can slow down decision-making and make it difficult for employees to get things done.
Limited Remote Work: Even though the recent events in the world have made remote work a necessity, Key Bank has limited options for remote work for its employees.
Sales and performance-based culture: Key Bank, like many other financial institutions, has a sales and performance-based culture which can put pressure on employees to meet sales targets and can lead to a competitive work environment.  You find that like anyplace, every bank has its own work culture, but some things are true for all. They are very bureaucratic and hierarchical. There are a lot of layers and titles; chain of command is always followed. They are bottom line driven. It may sound odd to say that. It’s so obvious, but you don’t know what that really means until you start interacting with some of the business units and have to make budget and ROI analyses for projects. All the happy talk and soft objectives go away if the profit margin doesn’t meet financial objectives. They are regulator conscious, but some matter more than others and, again, ROI trumps all. They would rather take a fine than a loss if the fine is smaller. They would rather ignore the government than the Credit Card Association. The one I worked at was extremely structured in every aspect of work life, from titles to work space amenities, to mandatory training, to dress codes. They knew they were overly structured but their response was just to change to more or different structures. They are also very big on accountability. There is a lot more paperwork and meeting time to do status reporting and tracing than with most other organizations. And they like secrecy. We were discouraged from talking about our work outside the bank. I bet today you have to sign NDA’s. Compensation is market rate, not particularly generous unless you are pretty high up, and they expect a hard day’s work every day. 

I worked as a floating teller for Keybank for fourteen months. This gave me the opportunity to experience many different Keybank branches, and while I'd have to say that the majority of my coworkers were wonderful, just about everything else about this job was awful.

 I was an on-call worker, filling in for branches as they needed me, which meant that I had no benefits and no sales goals. The management, however, never quite understood this arrangement. I purposely avoided attempting to get on full-time or even part-time, because I'm a terrible sales person, and I know that at Key if you don't meet your sales goals for a certain period of time they WILL fire you. I saw it happen a couple times while I was there. Regardless, the management was constantly pressuring me to push credit cards and mortgage options and extra accounts on clients who 90% had no interest in anything other than doing what they came in to do and getting back to their own jobs. I had no incentive and no reason to do what they asked, but at almost every branch I was asked to, anyway. 

Banking is a high-stress world in the best of circumstances, but at Key, the stress is multiplied exponentially by the lack of enough employees to staff most branches (they eliminated a bunch of positions to cut costs while I was there), the amount of work they expect the limited staff to be able to accomplish, and the irritation most clients of Keybank inevitably feel at having to wait in extra long lines because of poor staffing and then having products shoved in their faces if they make the mistake of actually coming into the branch.

I know of some smaller, much less corporate banks who've had their same tellers for years, because they're actually concerned about the well-being of their employees. At Key, there were times I'd show up at a branch only to find that almost all of the tellers had resigned or switched to another bank at almost the same time. That's how miserable Key made us all.

In the end, I was terminated two weeks before I'd planned to seek another job, anyway. I deposited a check for a client into their account that turned out to be fraudulent, and the loss was great enough that they decided I wasn't worth keeping. I'm not angry about being let go from Key. I saw the same thing happen to many a better employee than I before my time came. I was smiling as I walked out the door for the last time, in fact, because the misery had finally come to an end.

If you want to get into banking, I would recommend going for credit unions, who I heard very good things about, or go for smaller community or state banks, who will treat you much better than the cold corporate wall that is all the warmth you'll ever see from Key. 

*Tip: Other big banks, like B of A and especially Wells, are also miserable, or so I've heard from a great many co-workers and clients of theirs.

Co-workers are excellent! Tons of friendly people work at KeyBank. You’ll find a lot of good people with the same interests as you and you might make some life-long friends. Work culture in most back office departments is very laid-back. 

Most KeyBank branches and operations centers are also well maintained, which shows that they at least have integrity in their curb appeal. 

But management is all over the place and inconsistent with their decisions. They constantly contradict themselves. 

Paid time off and work/life balance is a joke. Workforce management never fails to screw up your PTO yet they don’t correct their mistakes and offer no apologies. 

There will be a number of reasons that workforce management comes up with as to why you cannot take time off or are not able to adjust your schedule to something a bit more reasonable if you’re a college student, have kids, etc. 

When I first started working here, we had a lot of office parties and social gatherings and this really helped us network with others within the company, but times seem to have changed and now things are becoming more number focused than ever before. 

In my department, no one seems excited anymore. Instead everyone seems stressed out and ready to jump ship any day now. Gatherings are few and far between now and it’s all about work, work, work. So many people are battling health issues, some of which I’m sure are job stress related, but none of the managers seem to notice or if they do notice, they don’t appear to be genuinely oncerned that some employees are battling mental and physical exhaustion everyday. 

Managers also micromanage and nit pick you for every little thing. Like, you may have a complicated issue that you’re trying to get resolved for the client. So you reach out to a manager who tells you exactly what to do. Their directions couldn’t be any clearer. So you provide that solution to the client and everything seems to be fine. Then days later you get scolded by another manager and interrogated about why you told the client wrong information. Even when you try to explain how another manager told you what to do, they don’t want to hear it. Then you end up getting written up. This can be very depressing. 

I can say that recently there has been a huge effort to get employee feedback on company wide issues that need to be resolved. I just hope that things are fixed before it’s too late.

Bankers and tellers are trained and shadow someone until they are proficient; managers are thrown in the fire and expected to produce and lead, with little to no guidance on Key policy or day to day tasks. I asked leaders in certain areas such as Small Business and Key @ Work for help, and never received a response, but would get chastised in conference calls when we didn't meet goals. Speaking of conference calls, we average six conference calls a week, sometimes as high as ten - rather than being able to learn or lead my group, I had to sit in my office many hours a week listening on what needed to be done. Waste of time to have that many! 

My area leader was nice to me, but I saw her interact with one of my under performing employees, and she was condescending and demoralizing. She also called out her disappointment with another branch manager in front of everyone on a conference call - that manager told me how embarrassed she was by that. Not a positive or encouraging environment. That was when I had enough and decided to leave. 

Systems are complicated, slow and cumbersome, and you have to access multiple systems to get most things outside of a teller transaction completed. 

SVP is rigid, old-fashioned and lacks empathy. We can't even decorate or dress-up for holidays, men have to wear ties. Not a big deal, but makes Key unwelcoming and stiff. Small changes here would make work more enjoyable and help with turnover, which is very high at Key. 

I've worked in banking for almost 20 years, and Key is all about micro-management, high stress, complex daily tasks and structure, rigidity and being resistant to change. I walked in thinking they had a more holistic approach to productivity and meeting client needs, but it's still a bank. Employees are expected to produce, produce, produce, but aren't given the appropriate tools and training to succeed. Most of my staff didn't know how to do many things, and two had been there for over a year. 

Invest some money in bandwidth and updating/condensing your software. Loosen up on old-fashioned ideas of banking, allow your staff to express themselves and be creative. Create a more supportive and interactive training program for external hire managers. Your retention will increase, staff will be happier and productivity will go up.

I was a Part Time float teller for Key Bank. I had the opportunity to work with a lot of different people and personalities. As well as the different personalities of the regulars who frequented each bank. Some of the customers can be rude, impatient, and unclear on what they need done at times. Key mostly has business owner accounts or people a little more well off. Not your everyday average income person living pay check to pay check. 

The pay was okay. $14 an hour. I just think I was offered that because at my previous job I was paid a little less than $12. If I were paid a little more I probably wouldn't have minded the work load. The 401K plan was excellent. I wasn't allowed any health coverage because I was part time. Although I often would pick up a lot of extra hours because they were always short on staff. I wonder why. I would get anywhere from 30-39 hours. I was hired as a 20 hour float. They would rather hire two or three part time people as opposed to giving one or two full time positions to save on providing health care coverage. 

As far as employees, there are those who are pleasant to work with. Then there are those who gossip (as with almost any workplace), people who talk about the same thing everyday, "oh, how's the weather?" type of conversations. EVERYDAY. You start to feel like a robot. I'm more of an introvert. I don't mind sitting in silence and simply being quiet and to myself when there are no customers. I know how to socialize but, unnecessary conversations about the same stuff with employees can be irritable. Key doesn't seem to care about individual personality types.   

The hardest part of the job is that it can get busy at certain times of the day. You may only have two tellers and a line out the door but you have to manage. Certain transactions or dollar amounts I would need overrides because I was new and that would create more dysfunction waiting for someone to override. You're only allowed one lunch break. My previous job I was allowed one lunch and two 15 minute breaks. It can get stressful at times. I would go home and mentally be worn out.

Due to my outlook on life I wouldn't say this job is for me. Maybe someone who is looking for a certain long term financial stability or whose settling down.

For the last 5 years I was charged with the task of taking our department paperless. I had 18 boxes of paper reports that I had to figure out what reports were actually needed, then find them on line & learn to use them on line. It cut costs a lot. The paper, ink cartridges, print room fees & storage fees for 7 years. I learned to process the reports on line & annotated what we did & also with customer calls & comments. Then I had to train everyone in the department & help write the instructions for the jobs.

When new management came in, it was decided that an analyst should do this & not one of the people that does the work. There were some problems with this as they decided we didn't need to do something that we had been doing for years & the customers were unhappy. Also the analysts were not always familiar with different regulations & we had to redo some of the things that the analysts didn't think we should have to do.

I took classes for Customer Service & telephone techniques, then trained the rest of the staff.

My co-workers were great. We got along really well & covered for each other as needed.

I had to go on 2nd shift about 15 years ago to train someone for a job. She had some family problems & had to switch to 1st shift, so they asked me to stay on 2nd shift. I enjoyed it as I didn't have to drive in rush hour traffic, & the dress code is dress down all the time.
We worked till 9:00 PM EST which is 5:00 PM in Alaska where we had west coast customers. You don't have all the back-up that you would have on 1st shift & you were on your own most of the time. It was a challenge some times.

When the new management came in they started enforcing more rules & the atmosphere was a little strained. Raises & bonuses seem to disappear.

I loved working on projects & working with the customers. Most customers were on a first name basis with us.

Prior to working in the ACH department I worked in checking accounts. I learned all the jobs there & was a floater when I left.
It wasn't as automated as the ACH department & we worked over time a lot.
Start date was 1972 not 1992. your system wouldn't let me change it.

I worked for Key almost 2 years and I'm not sure why I even bothered staying there for that long. In the beginning I loved it, had great ARL (area retail leader) and managers, but that changed quickly. As Key does most of their changes without any notice, they switched the ARLs year later. Since the change, all I saw was Area 1 going down the hill! So many employees left Key cause of the new management. 

For me personally, there were so many promises made and never delivered. They will lie to the max for their own benefit and can care less about the employees. I was screwed over my pay raise more than once and pretty sure what they did was illegal at one point! I tried talking to my ARL and just made excuses that made no sense and later admitted it to another employee and laughed about it. 

Their always short staffed, so you will be doing the work of three people by yourself. I was without a manager for over a month. Never got to take my lunches or breaks and wouldn't get paid for it either. I would manually punch in my lunches just to say I took lunch cause we would get in trouble for going overtime. Mind you I was doing the duties of manager, banker and teller and got underpaid. 

Over that you would get chewed out if you weren't on their unnecessary, waste of time conference calls. While you could be helping clients and producing. They don't care if there are only total of two employees working in the branch and wasn't able to get on the calls cause you were slammed helping clients. 

KeyBank is all about sales, which I don't mind selling but it is ridiculous how much they will push you to sell instead of really taking the time and meet the client's needs.

The business partners want referrals but will talk down to you like you're nothing! To the point where they will yell at other employees over the conference calls, so unprofessional! 

There is no training for new managers or bankers if your new to Key, you will just get thrown in and just expect to learn on your own. 

At the end, there is no appreciation for employees no matter how hard they work!

I am so glad I left this company and advise others to stay away!!

Was contacted by a recruiter for a management position.  After 4 interviews started the onboarding process only to find out last minute that the position had been filled internally and I was being offered the internal candidates former job with the anticipation of being benched for future management opportunities in the area.  Was given barely any training and thrown into production almost immediately.  I never shadowed or observed a *single* transaction before being expected to handle all customer interactions. For comparison newly hired tellers were required to shadow for a week before being allowed to transact on their own, while I had accounts, lending and investments all under my purview and was expected to run teller transactions daily.   Other than a brief 15 minute overview on my first day I was given no direction on how I was compensated or what my production goals were until I had been in the role nearly 5 months.  Meanwhile, due to total lack of instruction I was also making numerous operational errors that were not made apparent to me until I was corrected for them. Despite being “benched” for future management opportunities, in the 17 months since my onboarding 2 of the 5 branches in the area have been closed, including the one I worked at. 
I had a solid career plan and path ahead at 5/3 before being recruited and there’s not a day that passes I don’t regret making the switch.  The companies system and processes are horribly antiquated (their main production system has a splash screen of two people standing in front of a late 90’s compaq presario) and this carries over to their customer interaction model which is resembles something from a bygone era.  Their pay in extraordinary but thoroughly not worth it  and my nightmarish 7 months there made me reevaluate my entire career path in finance.  Avoid at all costs.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Personal banker 77 salaries reported	$25.80 per hour
Teller 84 salaries reported	$20.21 per hour
Analyst 6 salaries reported	$71,000 per year
Branch manager 53 salaries reported	$86,170 per year
Lead teller 54 salaries reported	$21.64 per hour

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