Lloyds will announce shortly that everyone in the engineering job family will be required to undertake mandatory job testing. That testing will be undertaken over the next few weeks.
Staff will be required to rate themselves against the competencies for the engineering role. That rating will then be peer reviewed.
There will then be a multiple-choice coding test based on the one used for new recruits in Hyderabad, India. We believe that Lloyds will use that data to compare the two groups of engineers and justify its decision to transfer more work to India. It will argue that engineers in India have more up-to-date programming language knowledge and engineering tools and, therefore, require less training and development.
Lloyds staff will then be required to provide evidence about their qualifications to do the engineering work. That could be course certificates, examples of coding etc. Again, Lloyds will use the lack of formal, up-to-date qualifications as an excuse for transferring more jobs to India.
Now Lloyds will say that this about identifying skill and development gaps and putting in place the appropriate training. Equally, Lloyds will be at pains to say it’s not about cutting jobs or transferring more permanent roles to the Lloyds Technology Centre in Hyderabad, India. But members are not stupid; they know that’s exactly what Lloyds is planning. And let us not forget, that Dr Vipal Singh, the Director & Head of People and Places, in Hyderabad was boasting about the fact that it had taken Lloyds only 6 months to recruit 1,000 in India, most of them being engineers.
A lot of existing staff are in the engineering job family because of previous reorganisations. Many would admit that their skills are not as up to date as newly recruited engineers but that’s no excuse to throw them on the scrap heap: it’s a reason for re-training. We will resist any attempt to replace UK engineering staff with engineers in India.
When the Bank’s proposals are announced formally, we will provide further information. In the meantime, members with any questions on this Newsletter should contact the Union’s Advice Team on 01234 262868 (choose Option 1).
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