Given the abuses of the performance management policy that we now encounter daily it is hard not to conclude that the people running Lloyds’ systems believe they can operate in defiance of UK law.
Amongst the abuses we have seen are:
- Refusals to hear grievances about the conduct of managers implementing performance plans, in breach of Section 3 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 (ERA) and ACAS Code of Practice 1.
- Giving line managers targets for the number of staff on performance plans so they are forced to put staff whose performance has never been criticised on plans purely to meet arbitrary targets.
- The use of performance plans as disciplinary sanctions in themselves, without investigations, in breach of ACAS Code of Practice 1.
- The use of performance plans as threats or as disciplinary sanctions to pressurise staff on non-harmonised contracts to work Saturdays.
- The use of a performance plan, with the threat of dismissal within four weeks, to punish a whistleblower contrary to Section 47B of the ERA1996.
These are indicative of an employer that is treating itself as above the law.
If these actions have not been approved by Chief Executive Charlie Nunn and HR Director Sharon Doherty they need to:
- Immediately repudiate this behaviour.
- Apologise personally in writing to the staff offended against.
- Dismiss the managers responsible for these egregious acts.
- Put in place a new performance management programme that both guarantees proper treatment of staff and respects UK law.
- Make themselves personally and publicly responsible for the conduct of future performance management programmes.
- Undertake to make their bonuses dependant on their performance in this area.
I am more than happy to provide unlimited newsletter space for Messrs Nunn and Doherty to reply to the charges if they choose to do so.
What about Lloyds Policies and Rules?
Well what about them?
Without exaggerating the situation it has become clear that Lloyds Bank has ‘thrown away the rule book’.
No one who has been involved in representing Lloyds staff in the last five years could possibly doubt that the main intentions of the Bank’s policies are:
- Virtue signalling i.e. showing what a fair, not to mention politically correct, organisation Lloyds is – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling.
- Providing an acceptable public face to politicians etc.
- Providing an apparently rule-based justification for the dismissal of anyone in any circumstances that can be argued to be a breach of a rule.
Members reading this newsletter are entitled to ask for an example of this, so let me provide one.
Lloyds’ ‘Dealbreakers’
Lloyds says:
“You’re the face of LBG. How we show up reflects how the Group shows up so our personal behaviour matters. Our Dealbreakers provide clarity in the behaviours we’ll discourage and not tolerate. Our values describe the behaviours we want to encourage.”
More specifically the Bank says that:
“Discrimination, harassment, including sexual harassment or victimisation of colleagues, customers or a third party.”
constitute Gross Misconduct i.e. they justify dismissal without notice.
It adds as Dealbreaker 5 that staff should:
“5. Show respect
Zero tolerance on discrimination, harassment or abuse of power of any kind.”
One is bound to ask, at what level in the Bank do these strictures not apply and in what situations can they be ignored? My question is of course rhetorical because we all know that they don’t apply to people high up the food chain or people acting on the instructions of other people high up the food chain!
If I’m wrong, I repeat that Charlie Nunn and Sharon Doherty should come out, using simple language that cannot be misunderstood, and make clear that they will deal decisively and personally with the sort of abuses I have described above.