NAB senior analyst on $150k salary fired for unsuitability

A former senior security analyst at National Australia Bank (NAB) had their unfair dismissal claim scrapped after the commission found they were “not suited to the role [they were] appointed to”, despite their claims that the bank tried to offshore their job.

Fair Work commissioner Trevor Clarke has rejected the senior security analyst’s claim that the bank tried to offshore their $150,000 per annum job, ruling the termination valid after the worker failed in six of the 10 improvement areas in an extended performance improvement plan.

After working for the bank for one year, in late 2024, the worker’s employer staged an “early intervention” to help manage their performance.

A few months earlier, the worker requested to be assigned to more complex assignments; however, they rejected the offer and were assigned day-to-day operational tasks instead.

NAB alleged that when the worker was given more complex assignments, they displayed an “inability” to, with their employer establishing the view that they were only capable of doing more operational work rather than complex work.

On 8 April 2025, NAB entered the worker into a performance improvement plan (PIP) to address 10 weak areas. The worker said the “performance criticisms of him were misconceived”.

By the end of the plan, which lasted two weeks longer than the intended six-week duration, the employer alleged that the worker failed to improve in six of the 10 outcomes.

“The worker’s inability to perform what might be regarded as the higher functions of their role was a key ingredient in the worker being placed on the PIP to begin with,” Clarke said in his 17 April decision.

“The valid reason was underperformance with respect to the higher functions of [their] role and some underperformance on some velocity measures.”

NAB submitted that it was made aware that the worker sought assistance from other members of the team for what were “basic, routine queries” and expressed concern about gaps in the worker’s abilities that limited their reliability in critical situations.

In mid-June, the worker was given an opportunity to show cause; however, they failed to provide a response, saying “the outcome of the review was communicated to me last week” and that there was “nothing more to add”.

Due to the worker’s failure to respond to the show-cause letter, they were terminated verbally on 27 June 2025 and issued a letter of termination.

“There was a great deal of variability in the number of such tasks that were completed by the worker from week to week, ranging from zero to 18,” Clarke said.

“The applicant’s explanation for this was that [they] focused on doing some of the more complex tasks in the PIP to begin with, hoping [they] could return to the simpler task later but ran out of time to perform the number of these tasks that were required of him.”

The worker added that junior team members were able to be more productive than he was because of their “narrower scope of work”.

“When you have people with significantly less experience either exceeding what you were doing or coming close to it, and you have your direct peers doing significantly more, meeting the goal is good, but it’s still not a good look,” NAB said.

“It’s quite easy to see when people are busy and productive and making a valuable contribution. You were not,” the bank told the worker.

In consideration of all evidence, the commissioner quashed the worker’s unfair dismissal application, ruling that there was a valid reason for dismissal, upholding the termination.

“Ultimately, the worker was simply not suited for the role [they] had been appointed to,” the commissioner said.

Carlos Tse

Carlos Tse is a graduate journalist writing for Accountants Daily, HR Leader, Lawyers Weekly.

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