NAB’s Leaked Workforce Plan: 105 Australian Tech Jobs Out, 65 Offshore In
The bank's announcement talks about simplifying. Its leaked spreadsheet talks about geography.
Somewhere inside NAB there’s a workforce plan that turns 500 technology jobs into 400. The percentages leaked to the ABC this week sound bloodless: Australia’s share of the team falls from 53 per cent to 40, India’s rises from 14 to 30, Vietnam’s from 13 to 20. Convert them and they stop sounding bloodless. Australia loses 105 roles. India gains 50, Vietnam 15. The team gets smaller and the offshore headcount gets bigger in the same spreadsheet.
The plan surfaced two days after NAB told the stock exchange it would cut up to 2,500 roles, about 6 per cent of its workforce, with as many as 1,500 gone before Christmas. The bank booked a A$300 million restructuring charge for the redundancy bill, roughly four per cent of the A$6.76 billion statutory profit it made last financial year. Divide the charge by the headcount and each removed role costs the bank about A$120,000 to remove.
The cuts have a name inside the bank: spill and fill. Whole teams have their roles declared vacant and must reapply for the smaller number left. One technology team member, who gave the ABC the pseudonym Dylan after a decade at the bank, said his team got a two-week consultation period ending December 2 or 17. “Until today, it’s been a lovely place to work,” he said.
A spill doesn’t just cut roles; it makes people audition for the ones that survive. That’s the detail the announcement’s careful language sidesteps. Chief executive Andrew Irvine promised “no material impact to customer-facing banking roles” — a statement about the org chart. The people in the spilled teams still have to interview for their own jobs by Christmas.
The technology team is one department. The pattern is bank-wide. The Australian Financial Review has reported NAB employs about 7,000 people across “innovation centres” in India and Vietnam — roughly 18 per cent of its global headcount — and the bank is open to adding more than 1,000. The Finance Sector Union puts this round’s offshore number at around 180 roles. And it isn’t the first round: in March, the union said the bank was cutting a net 170 jobs in its Australian business division while adding 237 roles in India and Vietnam.
Senator Tony Sheldon wants NAB to say plainly what role AI and technology played in the decision, calling the bank’s “future fit” language “deeply disappointing”. He asked whether the bank’s vision for the future “prioritises Australians or relies on AI and an offshore workforce.”
Irvine has rejected suggestions the cuts are fundamentally linked to AI. Two months ago he told a Melbourne business summit to be under no illusion: AI is “the fourth industrial revolution,” as consequential “as the steam engine, electricity and the computer was to humanity” — adding that “some roles will go. Some roles will change. And new roles will be created.” ABC business reporter Daniel Ziffer notes the cycle isn’t new: in 2017 NAB cut about 6,000 jobs, a fifth of its workforce, while hiring 2,000.
NAB isn’t cutting alone. Westpac told the Finance Sector Union of 140 more roles this week, on top of 102 a fortnight ago; the union counts more than 300 roles affected since the start of October and says 10,000 banking jobs have gone in two years. Commonwealth Bank cut 304 staff while creating 110 jobs in India, then reversed course when call volumes spiked. ANZ cut 3,500 last year. The first to feel AI’s effect, says Balfour Capital Group’s Hersh Oberoi, will be contractors and consultants — the same group NAB says it will “materially reduce.”
The consultation period runs ten business days. NAB reports its full-year results on November 5.
