We are barely into the New Year and Lloyds has announced 682 redundancies with over 2,198 members of staff having to go through the stress of applying for their jobs again. Some of those members will have gone through selection exercises every year for as long as they can remember. If that wasn’t enough, Lloyds is closing offices in Speke and Dunfermline with staff having to travel to alternative locations to keep their jobs.
This is the year of delivery for Lloyds Banking Group with Charlie Nunn, Group Chief Executive, and other senior executives under pressure to achieve demanding growth targets. The recent announcements are just the start of what’s going to be a very difficult year for staff. There will be further announcement over the coming months.
Members who are affected by the recent announcements should contact the Union’s Advice Team on 01234 262868 (chose Option 1) to discuss their options.
Bonuses & WFH
According to a Union source, 60% of senior managers in grades F and G are not attending any Lloyds offices for at least 40% of the week. That’s a devastating statistic.
Members will recall that in 2023, Charlie Nunn, Group Chief Executive, announced that there was a mandatory requirement for all non-branch based staff to spend at least 40% of their working week – which equated to two days for full time staff – in an LBG office location. Lloyds also tried to remove arrangements for compressed working. As a result of the imposition of new hybrid working arrangements – with the tacit support of Accord and Unite – the Lloyds employee engagement index fell to its lowest level since 2014.
At the time, Ms. Doherty, Chief People & Places Officer, said:
“The main themes for this centred around negative feedback about changes we made to our ways of working earlier this year. While I know this has been challenging for many and we’ve taken some valuable lessons from it, our approach to Flexibility Works is the right one and we’re committed to making it work and continuing to listen to you.”
The Lloyds employee engagement index has still not recovered.
Lloyds is so worried that senior managers are not spending enough time in offices, at a time when many organisations are going back to offices for 3 or 4 days a week, that it’s planning to use Group Performance Share (GPS) bonus payments to penalise those not meeting the 2-days a week benchmark. Those individual bonus awards will be decided between 7th – 20th January and announced in mid-February 2025. Grade F+ senior managers are entitled to bonus payments of up to 30% of base pay, depending on performance relative to peers.
The factors considered when determining GPS bonus awards include: ‘Contribution’, ‘Behaviour’, ‘Leadership/Peers’, ‘Development’ and ‘Total Compensation”. Lloyds will use ‘Behaviour and ‘Leadership’ to adjust bonus awards downwards for those senior managers not hitting the required 2-day benchmark. It won’t say so in as many words but that will be the outcome. Senior managers whose bonus awards are less than last year should look at the rationale given to justify the payment. If it mentions ‘Leadership’ or ‘Behaviours’, then senior managers need to ask for evidence of how they are not performing relative to their peers. Those responses will be interesting to see.
Members with any questions should contact the Union’s Advice Team on 01234 262868 (Option 1)
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