Our members at Bendigo Bank have achieved a terrific win for workplace flexibility and work from home, with the bank shifting their approach on office attendance.
In addition to the bank removing its in-office attendance metric from its performance process, management will also place emphasis on individuals, teams and people leaders working out their best working arrangements.
Already, we have seen some teams reassess and reduce their 60% in-office mandate to pursue an arrangement that considers employee feedback and gets the balance right.
The decision came after employees provided valuable feedback about the in-office attendance requirement via a staff survey. FSU members also provided persistent feedback regarding the challenges of management’s rigid in-office mandate, including increased commuting costs and disruptions to family and other caring arrangements.
For too long, management had insisted that working in the office would help with ‘collaboration’, while ignoring the reality of employees working in the office but still logging onto Teams meetings.
Bendigo Bank worker and FSU Workplace Representative Paul Everson said it was emphasised to staff that nothing would change unless they provided their feedback via the survey.
“I personally made sure to speak in Teams meetings about staff providing their honest feedback and that this was our chance to have management change their decision.”
In announcing the change in policy, Bendigo Bank stated they were placing “more trust in you and your leaders to create a work rhythm that delivers great results while supporting work-life harmony”.
Paul said he believed that this emphasis on staff trust should be an example to all employers.
“Staff have genuinely taken to heart that they are being trusted and that management actually listened to the feedback that was given,” said Paul.
“Work flexibility is so important. For example, it allows staff with caring responsibilities the chance to attend school events and medical appointments more easily.
“Although flexibility existed prior to this announcement, to some extent that came down to how your own manager applied the policy.
“So with this announcement, management now have more scope to be flexible given the bank has removed the office attendance metric from the performance process.”
Congratulations to all Bendigo Bank FSU members for securing this terrific outcome! We’ll be watching closely to ensure this commitment is fully implemented.
“One day they pulled me into the office and said, ‘You have been…
When FSU member Andrew Dickinson's employer suspended him and directed him to complete…
“A few years ago, I encountered some issues with my manager at NAB…
