Following Paul Evans’ announcement that he was splitting AXA Insurance into two distinct business units, Unite in AXA met briefly with Steve Hardy (personal) and John O’Neill (commercial) earlier this week to hear their high level thoughts.

Whilst the inevitable cost challenge facing commercial and personal will be high on their agenda, both CEO’s stated that Paul Evans had made it clear to them that redundancies had to be bottom of the list and he would not countenance getting rid of staff now and then recruiting when the business expands further down the line, a stance Unite is extremely pleased to see adopted.

We touched on the need to improve the working culture in AXA (indeed John and Steve beat us to the punch on this) and also the need to empower staff to do their jobs and remove the layers of bureaucracy and sign off that stagnates decision making within AXA which found favour with all parties.

Unite in AXA will be meeting both John and Steve again in November for a more detailed discussion on their plans. No doubt we will disagree on some details but the broad thrust of what the company want and what the union want is identical (a profitable stable business) so hopefully this initial meeting bodes well for the future.

A number of members have volunteered to become union reps to help make AXA a better place to work and assist their colleagues with any workplace issues:

Hazel Daniels (London OBS)
Min Street (Coventry)
Isaac Turner, Kayt Walker and Alex Mucha (all Ipswich)

Thanks to all for volunteering.

Sadly Phoebe Rope has stood down as she moves to pastures new outside AXA and we’d like to thank her for the help and assistance she has provided both Unite in AXA and the union members in Ipswich over the years.

Today’s announcement of the changes in AXA Insurance and the establishment of two separate business units (the personal lines one under Swiftcover’s Steve Hardy), may well have caused some concern for members working in these areas.

Unite in AXA are currently commencing consultation with AXA regarding any possible plans it may have for these areas and would like to ensure any members concerns are addressed at as early a stage as possible.

If you have any queries or concerns which you would like us to put forward can you please advise your local union rep (a list can be found here) or post them as a comment on here below this story (if you don’t want the comment published, just indicate this and we will ensure it is kept it offline).