The CEO of ANZ Bank has apologised after a redundancy email was preemptively sent to employees before they even knew they were getting the axe.
The email error took place on Wednesday, when around 300 employees were told of their redundancies before they were aware there would be changes to their employment.
Staffers were reportedly told in the email how to return their work laptops once their employment wrapped up, with the bank’s acting group executive Bruce Rush later sending a follow-up email to clarify the blunder.
“Unfortunately, these emails indicate an exit date for some of our colleagues before we’ve been able to share their outcome with them,” Rush wrote, per The Sydney Morning Herald.
“It was not our intention to share such sensitive news with you in this way,” he added.
According to reports, some recipients of the email questioned whether it was a mistake and whether they were still employed, with managers later confirming they were in fact being made redundant.
Now, ANZ’s CEO Nuno Matos has issued an apology to staff days after the incident, describing it as “indefensible and deeply disappointing” in an email, per the ABC.
“The way this sensitive news was shared with some of you is indefensible and deeply disappointing,” Matos wrote.
He went on to assure staff that the blunder is being investigated “with urgency to ensure it does not happen again”.
Matos said the issue needed to be fixed to win back the goodwill of staff.
“We must stay focused on fixing the controls and processes that aren’t working … to earn the respect of our employees as well as our regulators and shareholders,” he wrote.
While it’s reported that 300 people were impacted by the error, the full scale remains unknown as ANZ halted the email push once it realised the mistake.
It’s not the first time a botched email has made headlines, from emails incorrectly informing students they were “ATAR ineligible” to a bitchy message accidentally sent by a real estate agent to a renter.
Thankfully Gmail now has an unsend feature, but in ANZ’s case I’m guessing it’s a little too late for that?
Lead images: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images and Universal Pictures
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