Comcare has confirmed that it is investigating the circumstances leading to two separate suicide incidents involving employees of the National Australia Bank (NAB). Both events were also raised at a NAB board of directors meeting earlier this month, with directors concerned about allegations of broad cultural problems at the bank.
On 5 March a NAB fraud operations team employee died in a fall from the 14-storey roof of the NAB’s Docklands headquarters shortly after lunchtime. Within weeks a second employee, based in the home loan customer operations team, also died by suicide whilst on long-term leave from the bank.
NAB employs more than 40,000 staff, with approximately half of those in Australia. NAB has made several announcements in recent months of rolling staff cuts aimed at removing almost 450 jobs, largely in its back-office positions, with more than 250 new positions to be created in India and Vietnam.
Meanwhile, NAB employees report bullying, excessive workloads and a “dehumanising” environment inside the bank and an atmosphere that left employees feeling “afraid to raise concerns”. Whistleblowers and union representatives have repeatedly pointed to long hours, aggressive performance management and a resistance to flexible work as systemic issues, even as the bank pledges a “speak up culture” in its public statements and policies.
NAB has previously faced criticism and regulatory action over underpayment of staff and the treatment of customers, including hundreds of millions of dollars in remediation provisions following a major payroll review.
The reported culture and outcomes at NAB echo the findings of the 2025 Neoliberalism, toxic work and the shadow of death: hidden suicidality among Australia's finance sector workers study which looked at the impact of neoliberalism and toxic work environments on suicidality among workers in Australia's finance sector. The article follows the stories of ten finance sector workers who contributed to a Finance Sector Union (FSU) website portal dedicated to gathering worker testimony for the 2018 Australian Royal Commission into the Banking and Finance Industry. Authors of the article, John Bottomley of Transforming Work and John G Flett of the University of Divinity, concluded that there is an urgent need for research and action to address the toxic work environments in the finance sector.
Changes in legislation to address psychosocial hazards in the workplace have brought the duties and obligations of employers to maintain psychologically safe workplaces into focus, but some employers are slow to come to terms with psychological safety obligations becoming a necessary part of all levels of management and the impact that has on roles such as HR that previously were considered quite distinct from safety accountability.
It should also be noted that current OHS laws across the country do not fully align with community expectations about how employers should respond to staff suicides and the rules differ significantly across jurisdictions. In Victoria, the OHS Act 2004 does not require a business to notify of a death by suicide, in contrast with the model WHS laws enacted in other states that make a work‑related or suspected work‑related death by suicide a notifiable incident.
Read more: Workplace safety regulator investigating two suicides among NAB staff