The Bank’s decision to trawl through staff accounts to justify its salary increases is fundamentally a question of trust. A big part of why trust has been lost is because Lloyds accessed staff accounts without the permission of the account holders. Whether the data was anonymised or aggregated is irrelevant. Equally, the intricacies of the Data Protection Act are also irrelevant. To put it bluntly, staff feel violated both by Lloyds for doing it in the first place and Accord for letting it happen, saying nothing and trying to hide it.
At the recent Digital and AI Investment Summit, Charlie Nunn, Group Chief Executive, said:
“Now we spend a lot of time torturing ourselves on what trust looks like, how you build trust, and then how you manage it.”.
There’s no need for Mr. Nunn or members of the GEC to torture themselves metaphorically speaking or otherwise. What Lloyds should have done is tell staff what it was seeking to achieve and why? It should then have asked permission to access their personal accounts. And the anonymised and aggregated data for those staff opting in should have been published together with data from the general public.
Lloyds did none of those things.
Like a thief in the night, a preprogrammed bot rifled through staff accounts on an industrial scale, collecting its digital contraband along the way before dumping it in an algorithm which we are told then determined whether Lloyds staff were “financially resilient” and could withstand a derisory pay increase. We wonder whether the Bank’s Remuneration Committee will rifle through Mr. Nunn’s personal account to determine whether he’s “financially resilient” and needs a salary increase next year or not?
In the same seminar, Mr. Nunn said:
“We do think trust is today fundamental to who we are.”.
Trust was lost fundamentally when Lloyds rifled through staff accounts – it’s that simple.
We believe that Information Commissioner will reach the same conclusion.
Accord In Meltdown
It seems that Accord’s “calm reflection”, which I mentioned in my last Newsletter, lasted just 24-hours. And in a fit of pique, Accord’s thrown its toys out of the pram and closed its Viva Engage intranet page after being criticised by its members for allowing Lloyds to trawl through staff accounts.
In justifying its decision, Accord said:
“You may also have read discussions on the Accord Viva Engage page. It is clear that community rules have not been observed. Some contributors are not Accord members and our elected representatives have been subject to personal abuse”
Absolute rubbish.
There was no abuse whatsoever. It was members of staff asking Accord to justify why it allowed Lloyds to rifle through 36,000 staff accounts and why it tried to hide it? Accord couldn’t answer those questions and others, so it closed the site down to avoid accountability.
It even tried to blame us because we published the story in a Newsletter which was then picked up by the Financial Times. I wasn’t the one quoted as saying what Lloyds did was “helpful” and “interesting”. That’s what the General Secretary of Accord said to the FT: he needs to own it rather blaming everyone else. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
The issue is not going away. Accord [Unite only have a few hundred members and are irrelevant] needs to explain what it did, when and why?
We will be returning to this issue again in our next Newsletter. In the meantime, members with any questions can contact the Union’s Bedford Office on 01234 262868 (Choose Option 1).
MEMBERS SHOULD PASS THIS NEWSLETTER ON TO THEIR COLLEAGUES IN HALIFAX & LLOYDS SO THEY TOO CAN BENEFIT FROM THE ONLY INDEPENDENT TRADE UNION IN LLOYDS BANKING GROUP.