CBA to spend $90m to prepare its workforce for AI's influence

Commonwealth Bank will spend $90 million over the next three years to prepare its workforce of 30,000-plus staff for anticipated changes to roles, primarily due to the influence of AI.

CommBank's CEO Matt Comyn.

The bank yesterday unveiled what it is calling its ‘future workforce program’, which CEO Matt Comyn said was about “transparency and opportunity” for bank staff.

The aim, according to the bank, is “to help employees build skills, find new opportunities and get ahead of the changing nature of work.”

Comyn said that workers needed to “prepare for a future where AI plays a bigger part and the ways work gets done is different.”

Under the program, the bank intends to launch a career platform “designed to help employees discover – based on their skills and experience – job opportunities across the bank and understand how their roles and careers could evolve.”

“The impact will be uneven and it’s not certain what the pace will be, but we are trying to get ahead of it,” Comyn said.

Comyn said that the bank had “worked constructively with unions to develop the program”.

“Traditionally, organisations [take] decisions, [make] changes and then engage with their workers after the fact,” Comyn said. 

“In contrast, CommBank [is] trying to give employees more control over how their careers evolve.

“For us it’s about trying to create transparency and opportunity, replacing a perception of uncertainty,” he said. 

Once in place, the program could prevent or at least minimise the impact of workforce reductions at the bank.

Coinciding with the program’s launch, the Finance Sector Union flagged a fresh round of cuts, which it said “will affect teams across retail, business and institutional banking and human resources, with the majority of roles impacted in technology.”

In a statement, the union implored the bank to “use its newly announced future workforce program to support workers displaced” by the planned reductions.