Australia’s banks continue to downsize in drips and drabs, with NAB the latest to slash staff, but wouldn’t it be better for them to announce in advance how many jobs they plan to cut this year?

Global banks, from Citigroup to UBS, tend to reveal their international retrenchment plans to the press several weeks, or even months, before they take place.

In Australia it seems a lot stealthier. We often hear about job losses first via rumours, rather than official announcements. And banks tend not to tell us their overall headcount expectations, preferring instead to cut a hundred here, a hundred there, month by month.

The Finance Sector Union has cottoned onto this, labelling their approach “a death by 1000 cuts”. Union national secretary Leon Carter reckons the Big Four are cleverly stage managing their redundancies to avoid too much bad PR.

“They’re announcing a whole series of small reductions, but when you add it all up, it comes to thousands of jobs,” adds Carter.

Macquarie, as always, is a little different to the Big Four. It cuts big (1000+ in one go) but tries to do so on the quiet by gagging staff who speak out.

Of course it may be that our comparatively healthy banks - unlike the struggling globals which must drastically downsize simply to stay afloat - don’t need to know the numbers in advance. Their cost cutting isn’t so urgent. They have the luxury of assessing their headcount needs on a regular basis and taking action when necessary.

NAB chief executive Cameron Clyne said in March that the firm doesn’t have a job reduction target. Then last week the bank cut personal banking jobs and created new ones in business banking. This may be frustrating for staff who don’t know how safe their jobs are, but it probably makes good business sense.

The ad hoc nature of Australian banking-sector layoffs also makes it difficult to draw out many industry-wide trends, says Ben Shields, manager of banking and financial services at recruiters Ambition.

“Each bank has a distinct reason for making redundancies. For example, while NAB is shifting its emphasis to business banking, Westpac is looking at synergies following its merger with St George.”

How do you think Australian banks are handling their redundancies? Should they be more up front, or is the current approach working well? Leave you comments below.