It’s clear from our survey results that the use of dashboards in Lloyds Banking Group is driving the wrong kind of behaviours and they must be scrapped immediately.
Introducing skill based pay for grades A + B staff is only going to increase the pressure to deliver more sales. We will cover skill-based pay in a separate Newsletter but it’s been tried before and it doesn’t work.
The main driver of inappropriate sales pressure on staff is the use of individual dashboards, which were introduced last year. We are not blaming line managers. The Bank uses dashboards to drive sales and that applies equally to line managers as much as it does staff.
Members will have seen a previous Newsletter in which we reported the story of a father who wrote to Charlie Nunn, Chief Executive, Lloyds Banking Group, to tell him about the pressure his daughter was being put under to sell products to customers that the customers neither wanted nor needed. That was on the back of complaints raised by staff about some of the sales practices operating in Lloyds.
We surveyed members on the front line to find out what was going on.
The key results are as follows:
81.1% of staff discuss individual dashboards with their line managers on at least a daily basis. One member said:
“It is discussed daily, particularly the numbers of banking made easy and relationship growth referrals made.”.
Another said:
“Have to report daily a breakdown of how many customers digitally assisted. RG appointments booked and customers helped with mortgage appointments. Was until this week reported on Teams. Now been asked to text SM at end of day to mobile so no audit trail as this is not a culture behaviour the bank wishes to see on work devices!”.
70.73% of members said they felt under pressure to complete the needs capture tool.
Some of the comments from members are as follows:
“Feeling under that sort of pressure all the time. Having worked in different branches, I noticed: – BM checking with CSAs at 11am, 1pm and 3pm how many NCTs (both “long” – acc opened or appt booked and “short” – service ones) have been recorded, in order to report it to SBM – branch dashboard is discussed every morning with emphasis on low numbers of appts booked – colleagues seem to be predominantly focused on their dashboards and compare the results all the time, creating extra pressure on others, especially the ones on improvement plan.”
“Yes. And it absolutely must be accompanied with an in-depth story on how the customer came to us, their needs and how we tailored our conversation to suit them. The products we helped them with, what we taught them and showed them for future use. We are expected to take time to explore every customer’s personal specific needs but also expected to have dashboards that indicate an unrealistic amount of customer’s ‘helped’ (aka opened a new product with).”.
“Daily pressure to book apt for sale advisers and update nct. if no appt have been booked on the day manager will have 5 min meeting with me and ask why I haven’t booked any appt today and tell me how I could be moved to another branch if I don’t book for financial goals i.e. sale team It’s 50/50 because on the I’ve hand I get it in terms of analysing data for future products etc but at the same time it’s just clear KPI’s that dictate what you look like as a colleague.”.
“We have to for every customer and do at least 2 products per customer and see over 22 customers per week. Quote every customer gi and get them to a specialist apt within 48hours. TODAY, TONIGHT, TOMORROW is recited to us daily!”.
It’s talked about daily if not hourly some staff are literally loading in every customer they serve regardless of if they’ve actually helped the customer. Playing the game is mentioned by them. I am currently told we don’t have targets but get shown how many I’ve loaded and it’s never enough.”.
“It’s relentless in our pool we are told we must grow our graphs daily, observations taking place constantly, goal posts moved all the time. We now have managers sitting with us as we serve customers, and they step in if we miss anything. They class it as coaching but it’s far from it.”.
In a sign of the pressure staff are under, 46.55% of respondents said they felt pressurised to open accounts for customers who didn’t need them. That’s a worrying statistic which Lloyds needs to take seriously. Comments from members included:
“I have heard from BMs that every customer needs a savings account, been asked not to miss any “opportunity” to open it, particularly when registering NTB customers for Internet banking, foreign students etc. Also: being under pressure, colleagues often take over customers’ devices to do that, without actually properly educating customers and showing them the whole process.”.
“Always told open a savings account in some branches staff are being told to let the customer log on using the staff device and complete the renewals and product applications which I know is against risk It feels like the Bank’s gone back to the PPI days.”.
“We have been told on more than one occasion that when we help someone set up the app (especially new customers) we should open them a saver account to show them ‘how easy it is’. We are to say they should have 2 accounts as if anything was to happen to their card or account they have a backup one.”.
“Definitely as we are made to feel as if we are crap at our jobs if our graphs don’t grow. We are made to feel there is an agenda, if we don’t grow are we going to lose our jobs?? We are told that only doing 1 product is not good enough we need to have deeper conversations open multiple products and do multiple service toggles on customers app.”.
“Some staff are so desperate to keep the managers from bullying them they are opening multiple savings (4 easy savers) for each customer and the managers are aware but don’t care as it looks good for them. If we have had a bad week on appt shown the manager will not speak to any of us all day and make our lives hell.”.
“Always told in weekly check in that when we are viewing customers app if they do not have a savings account we should be encouraging customers to open one. Have also been told we should upgrade all standard savers to easy saver as this counts as a product. Interest is lower on easy saver doing the customers an injustice.”. [BTU emphasis]
Is this right? We would like to hear from members who have been told to move customers from the standard saving account to the easy saver account just because it counts towards a product sale. If that kind of mis-selling is widespread, then Lloyds is breaching the FCA’s Consumer Duty rule.
It’s also breaching one of its new ‘dealbreakers’, ‘Customer Outcomes’, which says: “You always act in the best interests of our customers to ensure they get the experience they deserve”. According to Lloyds those ‘dealbreakers’ are “what we won’t tolerate and will take decisive action on”.
The remainder of our survey results including referrals to Consumer Growth will be discussed in our next Newsletter. Members with any questions should contact the Union’s Advice Team on 01234 262868 (Option 1).
MEMBERS SHOULD PASS THIS NEWSLETTER ON TO THEIR HALIFAX COLLEAGUES SO THEY TOO CAN BENEFIT FROM THE ONLY INDEPENDENT TRADE UNION IN LLOYDS BANKING GROUP.