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‘Our leave is not your KPI’: CBA slammed for tying leave to staff bonuses

Commonwealth Bank employees protest against using leave as a KPI. Source: Getty
Commonwealth Bank employees protest against using leave as a KPI. Source: Getty

The Finance Sector Union has started a petition to axe the Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s controversial key performance indicator (KPI): to ‘reduce annual and long service leave’.

Protestors stood outside CBA’s Eveleigh offices Wednesday morning with posters stating “Our leave is not your KPI” in a bid to get signatures for the petition.

The petition, which can be found on campaign platform Megaphone, is to remove the leave element from “all KPI dashboards,” and to “halt any further plans to roll this performance measure out”.

A CBA protestor with the sign: "Our leave is not a KPI".
(Source: Supplied)

“CBA have added a new KPI: to meet this KPI employees must reduce their annual and long service leave balances,” the petition states.

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“Annual leave and long service leave are entitlements of employment, they're earned, and to link taking that leave to employee performance at the Bank is not appropriate or fair.

“CBA have plenty of options if they want to ask staff to reduce the amount of leave they’ve got saved up – to make this a KPI is not fair.

“What staff do with their leave is their business, their ability to meet their KPIs and get their bonuses should not be linked to getting their leave balance down!”

‘Stop taking everything away from us’: petition signatories

At the time of publishing, the petition had already achieved 455 of its 500 goal signatures, with signatories slamming the bank for its plans to link employee bonuses to reducing leave.

“Any form of leave is an entitlement and should not be factored into KPIs,” one signatory said.

“We have already worked hard and continue to work hard through any challenges but enough is enough stop taking everything away from us and treat us all with the respect that we so rightly deserve.”

Another said leave was an “entitlement for all employees,” and that “current performance should have no impact” on entitlements.

“A performance measure is how you perform your duties in the workplace and it doesn't make sense that [reducing leave] is used as a metric for your performance,” another said.

“Especially as you are not at work performing your normal duties when you are on leave, so it doesn't impact your performance at work.”

‘Unprecedented and unsettling’: FSU

FSU national secretary Julia Angrisano said that the union had been hearing “for a long time” that CBA management were being pushed to reduce leave balances for their staff.

“We’ve even had members refer to this as a ‘silent KPI’ but there are processes and policies in place that deal with how CBA approach this,” she told Yahoo Finance.

“To turn the taking of someone’s saved up leave into a KPI and link it to a their ability to reach their performance goals is an unprecedented and unsettling move that our members are understandably not prepared to accept.”

“Members at CBA are proud of their work, they’ve stuck with the bank through a lot of challenges lately, and they’re understandably really disappointed about this.”

‘We will address as appropriate’: CBA

A Commonwealth Bank spokesperson told Yahoo Finance that there is no “group-wide” KPI relating to leave or rostered days off.

“Where managers have incorrectly set this KPI in their efforts to manage team leave, we will address as appropriate. The KPI that was shared with those teams is being removed.“

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