BNZ makes some changes but pushes ahead with unachievable targets

BNZ is pushing ahead with unachievable new targets, but has made some changes in response to submissions from Finsec members.

Targets are to be adjusted down to reflect sick leave and public holidays. They have also adjusted the products to change the focus from selling debt products to other products and services. From December onwards the threshold will be set at 20 sales per week for Banking Advisors and Personal Managers.

BNZ Union Council Chair Callum Francis said that these concessions are not enough and that the new targets are bad news for both customers and staff. “We intend to keep putting pressure on the bank to reconsider these targets. To do this we need staff to get active on this issue and keep us up to date on the impact of targets both on our work for the bank and on our customers.”

Proposed redundancies at BNZ

The Herald on Sunday has reported that the BNZ is proposing to make more than half of its mobile mortgage managers redundant, cutting the team from 52 to 22 to “increase efficiency.” Media speculation has continued that the job losses are part of the response to the credit crunch and the downturn in the
housing market.

Finsec Campaigns Director Andrew Campbell has expressed concerns that the BNZ is moving away from offering dedicated support to customers making important financial decisions. He also says that the financial sector’s approach to the economic slump is short-sighted.

“Companies who invest in staff and infrastructure during a recession are much better placed to grow when the economy recovers,” said Campbell. “Business is cyclical and constant restructuring is bad for customers and for staff, and is an impediment to growth and profit.”

Management musical chairs at BNZ

Clyne’s new house in Australia?

The National Australian Bank announced this week that the current CEO of the BNZ, Cameron Clyne has been appointed as the new CEO of the NAB Group starting in January 2009.

Clyne’s role at the BNZ will be filled by Andrew Thorburn, currently Executive General Manager of Retail Banking Australia for NAB.

Clyne will receive a healthy pay rise for his promotion and will be paid nearly $NZ 10 million a year, including long and short term bonuses and shares.

Getting behind the hard sell

Excellent coverage of important issues for bank staff in the Sunday Star-Times continued last weekend with an in-depth analysis of the impact of sales targets, which you can read here :

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sundaystartimes/4623172a6445.html

The issue of targets is also being discussed this year with the BNZ, with a review of targets to take place during July and August. The bank has agreed to meet with us in August to allow Finsec an opportunity to comment on the bank’s proposed targets. A review of staffing levels in the bank is also to proceed later in the year.

Overworked? Over here!

Staff at the BNZ are being asked to identify if staffing levels at their site are unacceptable or in crisis. Finsec has been meeting with the bank to discuss and resolve ongoing staffing issues, and BNZ have agreed to look further into sites with serious staffing issues.

In a Finsec survey late last year, 53 percent of participants from BNZ said that staffing levels at their site were borderline, unacceptable or in crisis. As the surveys were filled in by individuals, the next step is to find the sites that reported the worst under-staffing.

BNZ members are urged to contact Finsec by Friday 9 May if their site is experiencing significant problems with current staffing levels so that work can be done to fix staffing in these sites.

BNZ Staffing Group meets

The BNZ group to address staffing levels at the bank had their first meeting on Tuesday 18 March. Finsec representatives gave a presentation on the results of the survey members filled in late last year on the impact of staffing levels, and the Better Banks Agenda for Change goals. The bank gave a presentation on different aspects of their business and community activities. 

After the meeting, the BNZ Union Council met to discuss solutions to the problems created by current staffing levels and to provide a BNZ specific element to the Better Banks Agenda for Change goals.

 

Finsec will be forwarding the outcomes of this discussion to form the basis of ongoing dialogue on staffing issues, which will be resumed in another meeting scheduled to take place in April.

 

Staffing levels survey underway

Staff at ANZ National and BNZ have been participating in the Finsec survey on staffing levels at their banks.

“This survey provides us with an opportunity to raise the issue of current staffing levels in a meaningful way. Instead of dealing with the effects individually, we will be able to work through them with the employer through Finsec,” said Cathie Lendrum, NBNZ Christchurch branch delegate and chairperson of the ANZ National Union Council.

Cathie says that all staff have a direct interest in staffing levels and that they are getting a good response to the survey.

“We will be really interested to see whether the same issues come up across the country. I really encourage all staff to take part in the survey so we can share our stories and come up with some solutions.”

The surveys need to be completed by Friday 7 December and returned to delegates who will forward them on to Finsec. Finsec will be using the survey to inform its participation in the groups which have been established to discuss staffing levels.

No sub-prime here, but no room for complacency either

It takes at least 81.2% of the average take-home pay to afford a standard mortgage payment of a median-priced house. In June 2002, it took a much lower 45.3% of take-home pay to make a mortgage payment on a median house and in May 2006 the figure was 68.2%. (Extract from the CTU’s recent submission on the monetary policy framework.)

So, while New Zealand’s financial markets and economy continues to sail along healthily, our high levels of debt remain an iceberg under the surface that we need to navigate our way around. As CTU Economist, Peter Conway, notes:

“There is some speculation about how immune New Zealand is to the global credit crunch. Obviously it has hit some finance companies. Although we have many people who have stretched very considerably to buy a house (and will be finding it tough with the increased mortgage interest rates as they roll over their fixed term), we do not have all that hedge money chasing sub-prime mortgages as in the USA. But there are many people with high credit card debt and significant hire purchase payments. So while there is no need for particular alarm – there is no cause for complacency that it could never happen here.”

Finsec continues advocate for New Zealand’s finance institutions, and in particular its major banks, to take leading role in reducing debt and thus reducing this risk to financial stability, by removing the target pressure on staff to sell debt. The BNZ, as the bank that many identify as most vigorously driving staff to sell debt to customers, could take an important leadership role this month by committing to review its target system.

As Conway noted last month there are economic concerns about pay systems which can encourage customers to take on more and more debt:

“This not only adds to house price inflation, but also runs the risk that customers may not be able to sustain such high levels of debt. At a time when there is renewed focus around the world on financial instability caused in part by high debt levels of some home owners, we need to be careful about this.”

(thanks to Dominic’s Pics for the photo)

BNZ proposes major changes to hours of work

The BNZ shared its claims with Finsec representatives late last week. These claims involved significant rewriting of many sections of the collective agreement and require us to compare hundreds of pages across several documents to assess the full impact. Finsec has not completed that task yet but hope to get a summary of those claims to BNZ members tomorrow. However our current analysis is that the changes that BNZ is proposing to terms and conditions are neither technical nor aesthetic. Many of them could in our view lead to worse protections, worse hours of work, and worse terms and conditions.

While we have not been able to complete a thorough analysis of the bank’s many claims so far, we have been able to identify some trends that give us concern. In particular we believe that the bank’s claims, when presented as a package, undermine people’s existing hours of work:

Some things the bank’s claims include, that Finsec has identified so far are:

• Removal of managers’ discretion to approve extra paid domestic leave.
• Ability for the bank to require staff to work on public holidays.
• A major re-write of the hours of work section of the collective agreement including the introduction of ‘individual work schedules’ and local autonomy for managers to open and close their individual branches at different hours.

BNZ wants the collective agreement to state:

“The bank is operational seven days a week and 24 hours a day in some parts of the business – depending on the type of work being carried out and customer demand.”

Finsec believes this approach could negatively impact on the work-life balance of many employees, by jeopardising their ability to spend time with friends and family, participate in cultural or sporting events, go to church or just socially enjoy time with others who are not working.

Finsec’s long standing position is that the bank has the right to conduct business at whatever time it wants but that agreed hours of work must be protected, and work over unsociable hours should be by choice and be compensated for.

(thanks to Mike “Dakinewavamon” Kline for the photo)

The other side of target bonuses

The recently released proposed new sales targets at BNZ have one aspect that has not attracted much discussion so far, and it is probably because it is so normal that we take it for granted.   So let’s take a second look.   Why do the bonus payments go so high? - up to 400%.Let’s take a look at sales targets for Banking Advisers for example.   A BNZ Banking Adviser at 100% of her or his salary earns $47,743 before getting any incentive payments.

But it is possible for her or him to earn a further $28,000 in incentive payments if she or he sells 400% of their target.

$28,000 on top of your salary sounds fairly good.   Good that is until you realise that the bank has just got the equivalent of four people’s sales done by paying just over 1.5 salaries; a saving to the bank of $115,000 if you follow our logic.

A Banking Advisor who ‘merely’ does the sales work of two people saves the bank nearly $36,000.

Finsec believes the BNZ’s strategy to increase profits at the moment is working because workers do not realise how much free work they are doing for the bank.   Currently many do a second, third or fourth person’s sales job at a fraction of the cost that it could cost the bank to hire new staff.We all know targets keep increasing to drive greater sales and profit for the bank.   When you add increasing targets to decreasing staff levels over recent years you create extra workload. Targets are placing significant pressure on staff to sell more and more products in an increasingly competitive and tight market.

(thanks to chadmill for the photo)