Only 40% of the Relationship Growth team would recommend Lloyds Banking Group as a great place to work to their friends and family. That’s a staggering number. And when it comes to engagement or advocacy, 60% of staff are either ‘detractors’ or ‘passives’.
So, why are Relationship Growth staff so disengaged with the new business? There are many reasons but the main one reported by members is the relentless pressure to sell more products or identify more leads without support for skill development. We are being told that the pressure is getting worse because Lloyds is not achieving its growth targets. And let’s be clear, Relationship Managers and staff in branches are being driven to achieve these ‘targets’ or ‘expectations’, or whatever you want to call them, by their individual dashboards. Now we don’t blame line managers for what’s happening because many of them are under the same pressure.
And there’s no escaping the fact that Lloyds has driven customers away from personal contact with staff. If you do all you can to force people down digital and self-service channels and away from branches you can’t be surprised if those of your competitors, who have not followed like lemmings, won’t capitalise in it or be surprised if people look elsewhere on the digital playing field. Chopping the branch network and forcing customers out of the branches that are left was always going to have this effect.
We understand that Mortgage and Protection Advisers have been told that from next year they are going to be measured on the number of protection policies they sell and it would be grossly naïve not to expect that figure to be ratcheted up over the course of next year.
The Union will be sending out a survey to branch staff and the Relationship Growth team to find out what’s happening on the ground. That will be going shortly. We will survey Mortgage and Protection Advisers in the New Year.
In the meantime, if your performance is criticised in anyway then members need to contact is immediately. As my colleague Emma Stopford said in a Newsletter on dodgy performance management:
“Contacting us after months of criticism and at the end of an informal performance plan, with a formal plan about to start, is a recipe for major problems.
We need to hear from members as soon as there is any hint of criticism of their performance or as soon as it becomes obvious that for whatever reason it is not possible to deliver what line managers want with the resources and time available.”.
Pension Cap
There has been a lot of press coverage about a recent pension case with some commentators claiming that millions of pension schemes members could be entitled to a cash boost.
The Court of Appeal’s judgement of 29th July 2024 in the case of Virgin Media Ltd v NTL Pension Trustees Limited (and others) upheld the High Court’s 2023 judgement on the correct interpretation of historic legislation governing the amendment of contracted-out DB schemes.
The Court of Appeal upheld that, based on the relevant legislation at the time, a written actuarial confirmation was required where an alteration to a scheme’s rules affected pension benefits attributable to past or future service benefits without such a confirmation, an amendment would be void.
Many members have asked whether the Trustee got such an actuarial confirmation when the pension cap was introduced back in April 2010.
Lloyds – like many employers – effected the pensionable pay restriction “contractually” without asking the Trustee to make any rule amendments to implement it. The Bank’s argument at the time was that no defined benefit members had a contractual right, express or implied, to a pay rise, and therefore if the Bank choose to provide such a pay rise, then it was entitled to impose terms on that rise including that it would not be pensionable. That condition extended to all future increases including promotions. By continuing to work and accept that pay rise, the member of staff would be deemed to have accepted the terms and conditions attached to it.
That’s what the Bank has done every year since the cap was introduced.
The leading case in relation to making pension changes contractually is the High Court case of Southwest Trains v Wightman. Based on that case, if contractual terms are amended for the purposes of introducing new pension provisions, then an employer is entitled to require pensions schemes trustees to acknowledge the amendment to the contractual terms. That’s what Lloyds did and that was the only involvement of the Trustee. If the Trustee had refused, then Lloyds could have got an injunction obliging it to administer the scheme consistently with the terms of the contract of employment.
The only way of challenging it at the time was through coordinated action by all the unions. We balloted on industrial action. Accord and Unite did nothing and accepted the changes because they wanted a close relationship with Lloyds.
Look how that’s turned out now they’ve been derecognised.
Members with questions on this Newsletter should contact the Union’s Advice Team for on 01234 262868 (Choose Option 1).
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