CBA tells staff to get back to the office; The gift of time waits for no PM
The Commonwealth Bank is furtively unwinding its working-from-home arrangements. It issued a workforce-wide instruction on Monday that staff basically get their act together and be in the office at least half of their working time per month – or a few days per week.
The decision comes mere weeks after NAB boss Ross McEwan ordered his EGMs to be at their desks five days per week, although he stopped short of a group-wide mandate on the cardigan-class of the bank’s workforce – its bookkeepers, tellers and cashiers.
Presumably CBA was emboldened by NAB’s lunge in this space, which explains why CBA’s human resources chief Sian Lewis outlined a “new expectation for employees regarding attendance in the office” this week.
“Our group-wide expectation is that you attend the office for at least 50 per cent of your work time,” she wrote.
To wean everyone off the habit, the bank’s launched an internal app so people can plan to come in when their mates are around.
Margin Call understands the policy will take effect from July 17, giving staff a bit of air to work out any inconveniences with points of their personal life, a bit like that Clearlink employee who had to sell the family dog to make it back into work.
CBA’s technology division eagerly backed Lewis’s email, doubling-down on Tuesday with a second missive reminding everyone to take this seriously.
“We understand how positively everyone has embraced hybrid working and you will still be able to work from home,” the leadership team stated.
“However, as we’ve said before, being together in our corporate offices provides stronger levels of connection, which help us in our own learning, as well as in collaborating to build services for our customers and in sharing and co-developing with our colleagues.”
Margin Call asked CBA to comment on the policy, expecting them to back it in with a robust, front-footed reply. “Apologies,” they said, “we will have to politely decline the request.” Doesn’t sound like the media team thinks much of it, either.
Elsewhere, at ANZ, the union is fighting to enshrine working-from-home arrangements in the enterprise bargaining agreement.
They say workers are just as productive at home, which would seem obvious if they’re refreshing themselves with regular midday naps.
At Westpac? No mandated policy on hybrid working and apparently there’s none in the pipeline. Presumably they won’t have any trouble filling job vacancies from here.
Watch this space
Anthony Albanese has enjoyed all manner of gifts and charms since he assumed high office last year, many of them bestowed upon him by dignitaries while sojourning through foreign lands.
But until last week, Albo surrendered all such presents to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. That included a pig tusk from the Prime Minister of Vanuatu and a silver bracelet from the family of former PNG leader Michael Somare.
Somehow these were given up, but Dick Smith’s latest book – My Adventurous Life – was apparently a keeper. So, too, was the Lime Cordiale Relapse Box Set.
US President Joe Biden was forced to cancel his visit to Australia last week owing to that minor debt ceiling inconvenience he’s sorting out stateside. Yet somehow his gift – a watch – was the only one not swiftly dispatched to the parliamentary pool room.
It’s no Patek, but Albo has seen fit to keep the Shinola watch, valued in the neighbourhood of $3000, depending on the model.
Funny, though – last year Cambodian PM Hun Sen gave Albo a silver watch, except on that occasion he didn’t keep it. Presumably the clock’s now ticking on that diplomatic relationship.
Established in Detroit, Michigan, the brand is a relative newcomer to the luxury watch market but has come to embody the symbolism of American manufacturing, which explains why the timepieces have been worn by former presidents, including Barack Obama (who gave one to former British leader David Cameron) and Bill Clinton.
We suspect Biden conducted the handover with Albo on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Japan last week. The PM’s media team, helpful and responsive as shop mannequins, didn’t bother to confirm either way.
No gender agenda
So much for the sisterhood. The NSW Liberal Party will gather its elders on Saturday to preselect a candidate for the NSW Senate spot vacated following the very untimely death of Jim Molan.
The frontrunners in that race are NSW Liberal president Maria Kovacic and former NSW transport minister Andrew Constance, although others have thrown in their hat. Given that much of the conversation in the Liberal Party is fixated on its dearth of women, one imagines that Kovacic could have a fighting chance of selection.
And yet the stakes continue to be raised. Former premier Gladys Berejiklian, possessed with the pulling power of Eddie Hall, is not backing Kovacic but has been calling around delegates on Constance’s behalf and lobbying for his support, Margin Call learned on Tuesday.
Berejiklian is plastered all over his personal brochure, in photographs during her time as premier, and in a pull-quote attesting to his “outstanding” contribution to public life.
Joining Berejiklian in her unequivocal support of Constance is former NSW speaker Shelley Hancock and Nationals defector Leslie Williams, lured to the Liberals with Berejiklian’s guiding hand. Stuart Ayres puts in a kind word but conspicuously missing from the testimonials is his partner Marise Payne, the former foreign minister who’s been equally tight with Constance these many years.
This would be the same Berejiklian who, in 2019, made fanciful pronouncements that she wanted a gender target of 50 per cent women in the Liberal Party “in terms of new members elected to parliament”.
Two years later, when that half-hearted commitment became an abject failure, she told reporters she was open-minded on setting quotas because “targets have failed us”.
If Berejiklian is to be believed then it truly sounds like she would like more women in parliament.
Presented now with an opportunity to meaningfully do something about it, the woman “who saved Australia”, as the Financial Review Magazine absurdly described her in 2021, is shrugging off the chance.
Constance, to be fair, comes with ample credentials. The issue is not whether he’s qualified. The issue is whether space should be made for fresh blood, a newcomer, especially after all that hoohaa over the urgency of a refresh to the brand. The alternative is to return a bloke who’s enjoyed two decades of the privilege.
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