At a recent Town Hall meeting Charlie Nunn, Group Chief Executive, was asked:
“Given recent concerns about LBG’s use of colleague banking data during pay negotiations, how will you rebuild trust, what safeguards will ensure this can’t happen again, and why should colleagues continue to bank with LBG after such a significant breach of trust.”.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Nunn didn’t engage with the question directly which was about trust and safeguarding staff accounts from data trawling. Instead, he did what politicians normally do when they don’t want to answer the question, he answered a different question.
However, Mr. Nunn did say very clearly that: “the two unions were very comfortable with us using that data in our conversations.”. So, contrary to what Accord has been spinning to its members, it did support the trawling of personal accounts on an industrial scale. Accord told Lloyds that it was “very comfortable” in discussing that data which it knew had been produced without consulting staff. That’s the key issue; no amount of prevarication and obfuscation on the part of Accord is going to deflect the very real anger staff still feel about having their accounts ransacked by their employer whilst Accord sat by and did nothing.
He also said Lloyds was carrying out an internal investigation into the trawling of staff accounts. Mr. Nunn must commit to publishing the results of that investigation. The key question is who decided to do this in the first place? That must not be swept under the carpet to avoid embarrassing whichever highly paid executive made this mistake. In the absence of an outright denial, the finger of suspicion points towards Ms. Sharon Doherty, Chief People and Places Officer, and her most senior HR colleagues. Staff and the other customers involved will want to know. This was a massive blunder which has undermined trust across the Group and calls into question the quality of decision making on everything else Lloyds does. Ordinary staff are sacked for much less!
Mr. Nunn also justified the ransacking of staff accounts saying: “it was a legal use case using aggregated data for a relevant business outcome.”. We think the Bank’s lawyers crafted that wording! We will deal with that and the responses some members have received from the Bank regarding their complaints in our next Newsletter. In the meantime, members with any questions can contact the Union’s Bedford Office on 01234 262868 (Choose Option 1).
MEMBERS SHOULD PASS THIS NEWSLETTER ON TO THEIR COLLEAGUES IN HALIFAX & LLOYDS SO THEY TOO CAN BENEFIT FROM THE ONLY INDEPENDENT TRADE UNION IN LLOYDS BANKING GROUP.