Banking Labour Relations and Industrial Action Readiness Training Course

Course overview

Banking employers must manage labour relations in an environment where service continuity, customer access, regulatory confidence and operational resilience are all exposed by unresolved employee disputes. A grievance, pay dispute, restructuring consultation or recognition issue can escalate quickly when branch networks, contact centres, operations teams or technology functions are affected. HR and employee relations professionals need to distinguish legitimate employee representation from emerging industrial-action risk, maintain constructive union relationships, and prepare proportionate continuity measures without undermining statutory rights or trust.

This course examines the full labour-relations cycle in a banking context: union recognition and consultation structures, collective bargaining preparation, grievance and disciplinary interfaces, information and consultation duties, dispute escalation, conciliation, and lawful industrial-action planning. Participants learn to map stakeholders, analyse bargaining positions, build an evidence-based negotiation brief, assess operational exposure, document decisions, and coordinate HR, legal, operations, communications and risk teams. Particular attention is given to customer-facing services, regulated functions, outsourcing arrangements, workforce redeployment and the reputational consequences of poorly managed disputes.

Instruction combines expert-led analysis with banking-sector scenarios, including a pay negotiation, a branch and contact-centre strike threat, and a dispute arising from automation-led role changes. Participants work with consultation planners, issue logs, bargaining matrices, workforce-impact assessments and continuity-planning templates. By the end of the week, each participant produces an Industrial Action Readiness Pack for a realistic banking scenario, containing a stakeholder map, dispute-risk assessment, engagement plan, decision log, communications sequence and operational continuity actions.

The course is designed for intermediate HR, employee relations and operational leaders who already participate in workplace consultations or need to advise decision-makers when collective issues emerge. It is equally valuable for managers responsible for critical banking operations who must contribute accurate operational intelligence to a legally informed employee-relations response.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Map union, employee representative, regulator and operational stakeholders using a banking labour-relations stakeholder matrix
• Interpret recognition, collective bargaining, consultation and dispute-resolution provisions in workplace agreements
• Prepare an evidence-based bargaining brief using pay, workforce, productivity and service-impact data
• Conduct structured collective-negotiation meetings using agenda control, mandate limits and concession tracking
• Assess industrial-action exposure through a banking service continuity and workforce-impact risk register
• Design a lawful consultation and employee-communications plan for restructuring or workforce-change proposals
• Coordinate HR, legal, operations, security and communications actions through an industrial-action response playbook
• Produce an Industrial Action Readiness Pack with decision records, escalation triggers and recovery actions

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Employee Relations Managers — who lead collective issues and need defensible negotiation and dispute-response plans
• HR Business Partners — who advise banking leaders on consultation, restructuring and workforce disputes
• Industrial Relations Specialists — who manage union relationships, bargaining agendas and formal dispute processes
• Operations Managers — who must protect branch, contact-centre, payments or back-office continuity during disruption
• HR Directors — who require consistent governance for workforce-risk decisions across banking business units
• Legal and Compliance Managers — who support legally informed labour-relations decisions and evidence trails

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have practical experience in HR, employee relations, operations management, legal advisory work or line management within a bank or comparable regulated service organisation. They should understand basic HR processes such as grievances, disciplinary procedures, performance management, consultation and workforce planning, and be able to read internal policies and collective agreements. Familiarity with local employment law is helpful because legal requirements differ by jurisdiction, but specialist legal training is not required. Participants should bring a laptop capable of using Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word. No prior union-negotiation experience, legal qualification or business-continuity certification is required.

Training methodology

The programme is delivered through instructor-led briefings, facilitated analysis of banking labour-relations cases and practical team workshops. Participants examine sample recognition agreements, bargaining data, consultation records and service-continuity scenarios, then apply structured templates to their own context. Role-played bargaining and escalation meetings develop negotiation discipline under pressure, while group exercises test coordination between HR, operations, legal and communications. Each day adds a component to the final Industrial Action Readiness Pack, followed by peer review and an end-of-course workplace application plan.

Course outline

Day 1: Banking Labour Relations Foundations

• Banking workforce structures and collective employee representation
• Union recognition models and bargaining-unit boundaries
• Collective agreements, policies and established custom-and-practice terms
• Grievance, disciplinary and collective-dispute process interfaces
• Stakeholder mapping across HR, operations, legal, risk and employee representatives
• Banking service criticality and workforce dependency analysis
• Early-warning indicators for collective workplace disputes

Workshop: Participants build a stakeholder map and early-warning issue log for a bank facing a disputed change to branch staffing arrangements.

Day 2: Consultation and Collective Bargaining Practice

• Information and consultation planning for workforce change
• Bargaining mandate definition and executive decision rights
• Interest-based negotiation and positional bargaining techniques
• Bargaining brief construction using pay, productivity and workforce data
• Concession strategy, trade-off design and red-line documentation
• Meeting agendas, minutes and action-tracking controls
• Conciliation, mediation and dispute-resolution escalation routes

Workshop: Teams prepare a bargaining brief and conduct a simulated pay and scheduling negotiation with employee representatives.

Day 3: Industrial Action Risk Assessment

• Forms of industrial action and practical workplace effects
• Lawful action thresholds, notices and jurisdictional legal checks
• Industrial-action risk register design for banking operations
• Critical service mapping for branches, contact centres, payments and technology support
• Workforce availability, skills coverage and dependency analysis
• Third-party, outsourced-service and supplier exposure assessment
• Decision logs and executive escalation triggers

Workshop: Participants complete an industrial-action risk register and service-impact assessment for a threatened contact-centre and branch work stoppage.

Day 4: Readiness, Response and Communications

• Industrial-action response command structure and role allocation
• Business continuity actions for customer-facing banking services
• Staff redeployment, cross-skilling and minimum-service planning
• Employee, union, customer, regulator and media communication sequencing
• Manager briefing packs and line-manager question handling
• Security, conduct, wellbeing and incident-reporting arrangements
• Post-action recovery, reconciliation and relationship repair

Workshop: Groups develop a timed response plan and communications sequence for disruption affecting payment operations and customer service channels.

Day 5: Integrated Banking Readiness Simulation

• Scenario briefing: automation-led role redesign and collective dispute
• Evidence review and disputed-facts validation
• Negotiation strategy refinement under executive constraints
• Cross-functional response-room coordination
• Escalation decisions and documented risk acceptance
• Recovery metrics and post-incident review methods
• Industrial Action Readiness Pack quality assurance

Workshop: Participants complete and present their Industrial Action Readiness Pack, receiving instructor and peer challenge on legal, operational and relationship risks.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, ILO Convention No. 98, ACAS Code of Practice on Disciplinary and Grievance Procedures

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions