Following the latest skills capture exercise, Lloyds is set roll out Platform 4.0 which will see more UK job losses, job changes and the offshoring of more IT jobs to the Lloyds Technology Centre in Hyderabad, India. Unlike previous roll out this one will be done platform by platform so Lloyds can hide the scale of the job losses.
In the wider Group, Lloyds will also be announcing a further round of job cuts. We’ve been told Lloyds will be cutting 3,000 jobs in 2026.
In our last Newsletter we commented on an internal report seen by BTU. That report paints a devastating, behind the scenes, picture of the Bank’s technology strategy. 50 key staff were interviewed for the report including consultants from Gartner, Accenture and EY. One of the most devastating conclusions in the report was that platform reviews [3.0 and now 4.0] are creating organisational chaos and undermining staff engagement in a key area for the future of Lloyds leading to a culture of distrust.
Under the heading ‘continuous organisational change, the report says:
“….interviewees alongside external partner have called out that the continuous change that the organisation is going through in terms of change in job family, roles and accountabilities, skills assessment and operating model is disrupting the principle of creating enduring teams that know what they are doing (i.e. no engineer wants to touch or cares about someone else’s code as they do for their own work/code). Furthermore, yearly big-bang changes as part of Platform model were called out as an inhibitor to agile mindset, creating psychological safety and a culture of trust.”.
Is it any wonder that staff are disengaged from the business when they are having to constantly justify their existence in these endless platform reviews. When a report says there is no alignment between business unit priorities and Group-wide strategic objectives resulting in a breakdown down in strategic coherence at platform and team level you know the wheels are about to come off. That report was presented to the GEC last year. Rather than banging on about AI at every opportunity, Mr. Nunn should concentrate more on making sure the basics are being done properly. He is after all an ex-management consultant and should know how to get a grip on this sort of issue.
The fastest growing part of Lloyds in terms of jobs creation is the Technology Centre in India. When it was first opened Lloyds argued it was because it couldn’t recruit enough engineers in UK. That was a specious argument. What it really meant is it couldn’t recruit enough engineers at the salary levels it was willing to pay. What we’ve seen since then is highly skilled, well-paid jobs going to India as Lloyds looks to reduce its cost base. Our concern is that as part of Platform 4.0 Lloyds will start offshoring non-IT jobs to India.
Lloyds should be training its own engineering staff rather than looking for cheaper alternatives overseas. Equally, hundreds of Lloyds staff and their children would welcome the opportunity to become IT specialists. Why isn’t Lloyds accessing that talent pool? And why doesn’t Lloyds commit to establishing 500 IT apprenticeships to train the home-grown IT specialists it’s going to need for the future and onshore job back to the UK That would show a true commitment to “Helping Britain Prosper”.
We will be returning to this issue again once the announcement has been made. In the meantime, members with any questions can contact the Union’s Bedford Office on 01234 262868 (Choose Option 1).
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