When Lloyds Banking Group starts asking questions about the caring responsibilities of its employees it’s a fair bet that something is about to happen.
In a recent message on updating personal data, Lloyds said that it was asking staff questions about their socio-economic background and caring responsibilities because:
“By having up to date data about our people, we can better understand you, tailor our approach to support you better, identify where we need to improve, and track our progress towards creating a truly inclusive workplace that works for everyone.”.
Now that all sounds well and good but experience tells us that staff need to be cautious about giving that sort of information to Lloyds. Let us not forget that when it introduced its new hybrid working policy, it paid scant regard to staff with caring responsibilities. Many of those staff with compressed working weeks, for example, are still being forced to justify their caring responsibilities.
Members will also recall that earlier in the year Lloyds rolled out spying software across the Group that would enable it to monitor more closely and intrusively what staff were doing and when they were doing it. Could it be that staff with caring responsibilities are going to be subject to a different and more intrusive standard of surveillance? Equally, Lloyds could look at how staff with caring responsibilities are performing compared to those members of staff without those responsibilities. And that information could inform how they deal with staff when it comes to reorganisations.
The fact is there are no guarantees how Lloyds will use the information it gets from members.
If Lloyds wants to provide a wider range of help for staff with caring responsibilities, then it can do that. If staff then want to access those services then they can do so. However, we all know that Lloyds won’t be doing anything extra for staff with caring responsibilities, it just wants to know who they are and what they are doing.
Lloyds says that answering the new questions is voluntary. Members with caring responsibilities should reflect on what we’ve said when deciding whether to answer those questions.
Members with any questions on this Newsletter should contact the Union’s Advice Team on 01234 262868 (choose Option 1).
MEMBERS SHOULD PASS THIS NEWSLETTER ON TO THEIR COLLEAGUES SO THEY TOO CAN BENEFIT FROM THE ONLY INDEPENDENT TRADE UNION IN LLOYDS AND HALIFAX