Bank claimed analyst’s function was discontinued but there was still plenty of work for him
A Bank of Montreal employee lost his job because of his refusal to follow his superiors’ wishes to falsify financial reports, not legitimate business reasons, an arbitrator has ruled.
Sandeep Bhushan was a financial analyst for a project called enterprise information provisioning (EIP) at the Bank of Montreal (BMO). He was originally hired in November 1999 to perform various finance roles, before becoming the analyst for the EIP project in May 2007. The project was designed to simplify the processes by which departments send information to BMO’s information management department, and decrease associated costs by centralizing various data sources into one large warehousing computer.
Each year, those in charge of the EIP project had to submit a business case to secure funding in order to continue the project. Bhushan was involved in preparing the business case, as well as auditing, verifying, and reporting the costs associated with the project, which had to compete with other BMO projects for funding. Senior management decided on whether to approve funding based on comparing the return on investment against other projects.
In early 2008, the EIP project’s manager resigned and the director of information management assumed responsibility. She implemented changes to the project’s reporting structure and certain positions were eliminated. Bhushan was the only financial analyst in the EIP project, which in itself was the only project that focused on a “dedicated finance role.” The director anticipated that the finance work on the project would decrease, and though Bhushan’s position could be cut and the central finance group for the department could assume finance responsibilities for the EIP project.
Bhushan had been advised to reduce the time he spent on the EIP project to 50 per cent and charge it for that much of his time. However, his responsibilities didn’t change and he continued to spend most of his time on the project, and in January 2008 he was asked to defer the start of a scheduled vacation to complete some important work. In June 2008, Bhushan was asked to further reduced his EIP time to 15 per cent of his hours, but there was still no reduction in his responsibilities.
Analyst took issue with inaccurate financial reporting for project
In the first few months of his working on the EIP project, Bhushan realized its benefits had been overstated and its costs understated. He discussed it with the project manager at the time, who told him it was “imperative” that the project succeed because a senior executive had sponsored it. Bhushan found that management had reported cost savings related to the dismissal of a contractor, but the contractor had not left. The manager asked him to show a cost saving relating to four employees who had previously been dismissed.
Bhushan was concerned about other questionable reporting elements he was asked to do, including reporting a planned cost instead of an actual cost, a benefit that didn’t exist, and not reporting a cost of taking on more contractors. Bhushan initially followed his orders, but later refused because it would be violating BMO’s financial governance policies.
Bhushan continued to face pressure from his director to tailor the EIP business case through 2008, but he continued to resist. He raised concerns to his managers about the pressure to breach BMO’s financial governance rules, as BMO’s policy on whistleblowing required him to do so.
During this time, Bhushan’s managers were discussing issues they had with his job performance. He had received favourable performance reviews in 2007, but Bhushan was asked in March 2008 to prepare an action plan to discuss expectations and what he planned to do to meet them.
In September 2008, Bhushan expressed concerns to the director that certain hardware costs totalling more than $1 million were not being reported. He was told to focus on other things and management would handle costs. There was some further disagreement, and on Sept. 22, 2008, Bhushan was called into a meeting which he thought would be to discuss the cost reporting. Instead, he was told his position was being eliminated, and if he failed to find another job with BMO his employment would be terminated effective Oct. 17. The reason for his termination was that there wasn’t enough financial analyst work for him within the project, and other departments could take over his duties.
Employee suspected ulterior motives behind dismissal
Bhushan suspected the conflict over the project reporting played a role in his firing, so he contacted BMO’s ombudsman to investigation. He asked the director to extend his termination date until the investigation was completed, but the director declined to do so.
The arbitrator found BMO did not act in good faith when it decided to eliminate Bhushan’s job, and his function was not really discontinued. Though the director expected finance work on the EIP project to decrease, the reality was that it did not. Although Bhushan was asked to decrease the amount of time spent on the project, he was unable to do so and his role in preparing analysis for the project’s finances and strategies remained prominent. In addition, Bhushan was dismissed shortly before the final business case was submitted in late October, which was the largest one ever submitted for the project. Bhushan’s workload had remained high right up until his termination.
The arbitrator also found that although the director indicated she had given some thought over who would take over Bhushan’s duties, she didn’t actually discuss it with anyone before she decided to eliminate his role, which would be important in planning to discontinue a function.
“I find it surprising that (the director) would not have discussed how his duties would be disbursed given the magnitude of the project, and the financial work and reporting responsibilities that the position entailed,” said the arbitrator.
