NAB Fires 2,500 People, Calls It 'Simplification'

National Australia Bank announced it will eliminate up to 2,500 jobs—6 percent of its workforce—by mid-2027, with up to 1,500 cuts coming before the year ends. The bank will book $300 million in restructuring costs. So far, so normal for a major financial institution in 2024. What's interesting is how they said it.

NAB's CEO Andrew Irvine explained the cuts as necessary to "simplify its operating model and better align its workforce to prioritise growth and technology initiatives for customers." Translation: we're cutting people to move faster and save money. The bank stressed that customer-facing roles would largely be spared, with reductions concentrated in corporate functions and senior management. Duplication, they said, needed reducing. Decision-making needed speeding up. The usual suspects in the corporate restructuring playbook.

But here's where the messaging becomes the story. Senator Tony Sheldon and the Finance Sector Union's Nicole McPherson weren't buying it. Sheldon called out NAB's use of buzzwords like "future fit"—code, he suggested, for AI automation. McPherson called the timing "disgraceful" and accused NAB's leadership of being "completely detached from the lived experience of their workers." When a union rep has to translate your corporate speak for the press, you've already lost the room.

The real kicker: NAB shares fell 2.9% on the announcement, which observers noted broke from the market's typical pattern of rewarding job cuts. Even investors seemed unimpressed by the spin.

This is NAB's largest restructure since 2019's Accelerate One plan, which cut around 6,000 staff. Five years later, the company is doing it again. The numbers are worse, but the language is better—which might be the only thing NAB actually improved this time around.