These are complex corporate times, but as the finger of blame for the global economic downturn is pointed at various external stakeholders – such as the regulators and even the customers themselves – it’s interesting to hear the term “corporate culture” finally surfacing in banking postmortems.

The term “performance culture” has been increasingly abused in performance-management parlance. It has become inextricably linked with the drive for delivering shareholder value in quarterly increments, and with the “up or out” mentality that has spilled over from investment banking.

But now that almost every investment banking supertanker has holed itself on the reefs of greed, selfishness, arrogance and some suspect practice, it’s time to reclaim the phrase. This is why leaders such as the Royal Bank of Scotland’s Stephen Hester are now having to open internal moratoriums in an attempt to bridge the growing employee engagement gap in some of our high-profile financial-services names.

Ironically, despite this being an employer’s market, employee engagement, employer brand and corporate culture have never been so important. But it’s time for a fundamental rethink about how internal stakeholders (employees) are managed. The infrastructure underpinning many employment brands is clearly in need of a dramatic overhaul. And this is no job for the marketing function or advertising types.

Characteristics such as sustainability, network building and relationship development are the bedfellows of integrity, accountability, security and trust. But how can these values flourish when employees in financial services have seen HR functions replaced by processes and helplines, when average employee tenure (and loyalty) has fallen dramatically and when effective performance management and feedback loops have been replaced by grievance processes and whistleblowing – the corporate equivalent of ratting on your colleagues.

I’m certainly not calling for a complete return to the cosy old hierarchies, glass ceilings and command-and-control regimes. But it’s clear that there will have to be a large dose of mature, relationship-based thinking if an appropriate and authentic performance culture is ever going to be achieved by our most influential businesses and brands. And, if the last 18 months have taught us anything, it’s that none of us can afford for our financial-services brands to continue to fail their employees by making promises to customers and the market that they simply can’t keep.