"Whistleblower" claims she was fired over complaints
A senior Commonwealth Bank executive is suing the bank for allegedly seeking to fire her over complaints about understaffing and workplace safety.
Kara Nicholls, group governance executive general manager for CBA, said the bank’s governance team has tremendous attrition rates, is chronically under-resourced, and is drowning in excessive workloads, according to a report by The Australian Financial Review. However, the bank has done little or nothing to address the issue, Nicholls claimed.
Nicholls is suing the bank for allegedly seeking to fire her last week after she made whistleblower complaints to senior officers and CBA chairman Catherine Livingstone about the bank’s failure to respond to repeated warnings about the issue. Nicholls said the bank has ignored several independent reviews that have pointed out the issue. She also said the bank was liable for potential “serious harm” to the governance team’s physical and mental health.
“The [bank] acted with conscious and contumelious disregard for the rights and interests of Ms Micholls, and the rights and interests of employees in the group governance team, including by way of raising legitimate concerns as to workplace health, safety, culture and resources,” Nicholls’ Federal Court claim said.
The bank has not yet filed a defence. It told AFR that it “takes any concerns raised by its current or former employees very seriously.”
“As this matter is currently before the Federal Court, we will not be making any further comment,” a CBA spokesman told AFR.
Nicholls has been the bank’s head of group governance since 2019. According to her claim, she discovered that the governance team faced “immense pressure” and high workloads as they grappled with CBA’s increased regulatory burden following the banking royal commission.
Nicholls said the team was overworked and suffered from low morale, with employees’ psychological wellbeing suffering. She said sick days and staff turnover were “extremely high,” with the team covering the work of eight fulltime vacancies at one point, AFR reported.
Nicholls also said that multiple independent reviews supported her claim that the team was chronically under-resourced. A Herbert Smith Freehills review in March 2020 recommended that the bank assign more resources to the team. A Gilbert + Tobin review found that high workloads were adversely affecting the team’s wellbeing.
Exit interviews by CBA’s human resources managers also found staff complaining of excessive hours, AFR reported.
Read next: CBA to ‘re-purpose’ 90 regional branches
Nicholls said that starting in May of last year, she repeatedly raised concerns to her direct report, CBA general counsel Carmel Mulhern, and in the bank’s non-financial risk committee. She said there was a “lack of response” from CBA, so in October she prepared a detailed action plan for the bank to ensure the team could work safely and effectively.
However, Nicholls claimed that neither Mulhern nor the human resources department took appropriate action to address the issues, AFR reported.
Nicholls said that on Nov. 5, during a regular meeting with Mulhern, the bank’s general HR manager was in attendance. Nicholls said she was told she would have to take personal leave until the end of January, at which point she would be fired due to concerns about her leadership ability, AFR reported. Mulhern allegedly told Nicholls that other CBA leaders came to her with strategic solutions to problems, while Nicholls just asked for extra resources.
While on leave in December, Nicholls sent a “whistleblower protected disclosure” to Livingstone and the bank’s committee chairs, AFR reported. The disclosure spurred an external investigation, but Nicholls said its final report was flawed.
This month, the bank notified Nicholls that she would be terminated effective Aug. 6, two days before she filed her federal court action.
Nicholls claims the bank’s termination notice violated her whistleblower protections and was an adverse action taken because she raised workplace health and safety concerns, AFR reported. She is seeking punitive damages for “the serious harm liable to be caused to the physical and mental health and wellbeing of the group governance team” due to the bank “failing to adequately respond” to her warnings, the Federal Court claim said.
