ANZ aims to engage its employees in the organisation by helping them to understand the important role they play in our success. Our experience is that organisational culture and employee engagement are key elements of our business strategy. In fact, they are a critical success factor and part of our competitive advantage.
'Culture' has been a key performance area for ANZ for several years. Rather than a 'soft' issue, it formed part of a three-pronged business strategy launched in 2000 called Perform, Grow and Breakout. This strategy matched the organisation's focus on performance and growth with an equal emphasis on people and culture.
Extensive research at the time showed that our people were not satisfied working at ANZ. They did not identify with ANZ's culture which was seen as hierarchical, overly bureaucratic and inconsistent with the personal values of the people who worked here. This was limiting the performance of the organisation.
Employees said they wanted to differentiate ANZ by being 'The bank with a human face'. This meant developing relationships of trust with our customers, shareholders, employees and the community. Together we developed ANZ's values to reflect this:
- Put our customers first
- Perform and grow to create for our shareholders
- Lead and inspire each other
- Earn the trust of the community
- Breakout, be bold and have courage to be different
According to Siobhan McHale, Head of Breakout, the Breakout personal transformation workshops were the first step in changing our culture. Staff examine the thoughts and values that drive their behaviour and the impact this has on the culture at ANZ. They are also given the tools they need to make values-based decisions.
'The word Breakout was consciously selected as it symbolised a breaking out from current paradigm - changing mindsets, symbols and behaviours - with a strong force and energy,' says Siobhan.
This year Harvard Business School Professor, John Kotter, introduced Breakout as a case study for organisational change and leadership. According to Professor Kotter, Breakout may be the most important addition to his learning materials in the past decade.
But Breakout is more than a series of workshops. It has also led to the establishment of new initiatives in various areas of ANZ including our diversity strategy; employee benefits such as share schemes and product discounts; health, safety and wellbeing programs; talent and graduate programs; learning and development and community programs. These programs have contributed to improved staff satisfaction and engagement results.
FROM SATISFACTION TO ENGAGEMENT
By 2004, staff satisfaction had increased from 49% in 1999 to 85%. So we started focusing on 'employee engagement' - which is the extent to which staff are willing to be advocates for their employer, are committed to staying with their employer and are motivated to contribute their best every day.
Research by Hewitt Associates shows companies that have an engagement score of 60% or higher have an average five-year Total Shareholder Return of greater than 20%.
Today, our engagement score is 64% which is well above the benchmark for Australasian financial services organisations (58%) and close to Hewitt Associates' Global High Performance benchmark of 79%. This makes ANZ one of the most engaged workforces of any large banking organisation (Hewitt Associates 2007).
Employee perceptions of our culture have also changed for the better. Our people now consider the following values as reflective of our culture: customer satisfaction, customer focus, profit and community involvement.
TAKING BREAKOUT TO A NEW LEVEL
This year, we held an event called Breakout Live, which gave 1,000 employees the opportunity to deepen their understanding of emotional intelligence, our values and self awareness through a series of mini workshops and experiences.
We also held our first Breakout Festival - a five-month global culture initiative which encouraged our people to depict what our Breakout culture means to them, through art, film and song.
The Festival celebrated the creativity and diversity of our people. There were more than 500 entries from around the world and employees voted for their favourite entries. A special event was held in Melbourne where 1,300 staff celebrated the winning entries.
The next step is to build on Breakout to deliver a high performance culture.
'Of the materials I use to help people learn about leadership and change, the Breakout case study may be the most important addition in the last decade.'
Professor John Kotter, Harvard Business School
