The Central Bank of Ireland has agreed a new performance management system with trade union Unite. The agreement means bonus payments will continue not to be paid to its staff but high performers will instead continue to be rewarded by their superiors with up to five days' additional holidays.
The Central Bank’s 1,400 employees receive a ranking of between one and five, depending on how they perform during the year. On average most Central Bank employees receive one extra day’s holidays based on their performance. The number of employees receiving the maximum of five bonus days is understood to be very small.
Including annual leave, privilege days, performance days and bank holidays, it is possible for employees of the Central Bank to take more than 40 days’ holidays a year. This is not out of line with many jobs in the public sector.
Some staff have accumulated so many days’ holidays in recent years the bank has had to buy some days back from them.
In a statement the Central Bank said: “The Central Bank introduced a new comprehensive performance management system under an agreement with Unite union representatives in 2011.
“Earlier this year the bank and Unite entered in to a collaborative joint review of the system . . . That process concluded successfully in recent days with agreement reached on a number of key improvements . . . There are no bonus payments made under the scheme.” Unite said it was pleased that agreement had been reached.
Talks are understood to have centred around how staff are graded in order to ensure that the numbers of people achieving each grade are guidelines rather than targets to be met. Sources say this is to ensure there are no forced downgrading of staff in order to meet targets for individual grades.
Central Bank staff also got at least one extra day off after the bank gave itself a top grade of over 85 per cent for the third year in a row earlier this year.
The bank gave itself a rating of 88 per cent for its work in 2013, extending its “A grade” winning streak to every year since it introduced a new performance evaluation system in 2010.
