Thousands of Lloyds staff deemed to be underperforming face axe

The jobs of thousands of Lloyds Banking Group staff are at risk as part of a performance shake-up at the financial firm.

The banking group is set to tell those it deems are among the weakest performing 5% that they could be made redundant unless their work improves.

It marks the second time in less than two years that thousands of Lloyds employees have faced job losses, after it cut 1,600 roles in January last year.

The BTU union warned of staff being "hounded out of the business", but Lloyds spokesperson said it was "striving to embed a high-performance culture in the organisation".

"To achieve this, and in line with wider industry practice, we continuously look for ways to help our colleagues perform at their best," the Lloyds spokesperson added.

"We know that change can be uncomfortable, but we are excited about the opportunities ahead as we propel forward to achieve our growth ambitions and delivering exceptional customer experiences."

About 3,000 people deemed by Lloyds to be underperforming will be told their jobs are risk, with roughly 1,500 expected to lose their jobs, according to the Financial Times, which first reported the story.

Bosses at the company will be reviewing data from a HR software programme to monitor progress, the newspaper said.

The firm is not understood to be looking to cut a specific number of jobs but to solve an issue with low numbers of people leaving the banking group over time.

The performance policy has echoes of so-called "rank and yank", which was popularised in the US by the former chief executive of General Motors Jack Welch.

He supported "ranking" employees by performance and then "yanking" the worst performing out of the company.

Accord Union, which claims it represents more than 21,000 staff across Lloyds and TSB, said it was "asking Lloyds Banking Group to reassure its staff that it will continue to uphold the integrity of the established performance management processes".

But Matt Britzman, an analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said Lloyds had been "forced to take a more aggressive approach to weed out the lower performers".

"This seems like sensible business and aligns with the banks quiet push to offshore more roles, aiming to hire 4,000 people in its India tech hub by year-end," he added.

"If [Lloyds] can match peers like NatWest and Barclays on offshoring and branch reductions, the cost improvements could drive meaningful profit upside."

The BTU union, which claims to represent 17,000 Lloyds staff but is not recognised as an official union and so it not consulted by Lloyds Banking Group, said it did not support the companys actions.

"In Lloyds, it will simply become a numbers game and staff will be hounded out of the business. Weve seen it before," it said.