Our People

Links to 2019 Group Performance Framework

Highlights during the year include: strengthening our Accountability and Consequence Framework; evolving our approach to measurement and governance of culture initiatives; redesigning and launching changes to how we manage and reward our people; solid progress in the investment in key skills for our future; launch of a digital learning platform; and a record level engagement survey result.

Refer to the Remuneration Report section of the Annual Report available at anz.com/shareholder/centre for further details.

Culture

Our desired culture is underpinned by our purpose, values, and Code of Conduct, as well as being focused on delivering great customer outcomes, making things simpler and always learning. Both a strong risk mindset and behaviours are embedded in our values, Code of Conduct and performance expectations, and we are committed to providing a safe environment in which all employees are empowered to ‘speak up’ and raise ideas or issues and concerns.

We seek to understand and improve our culture on an ongoing basis and are continually improving the way we track and measure our progress. One way we do this is through our Enterprise Culture Steering Group, whose membership includes the CEO and other members of the Executive Committee, which meets twice a year and provides an opportunity for each Executive to present the cultural strengths and development areas of their business, and actions taken and planned to shift the culture.

Culture assessments

We are supported by a team of specialists in our Internal Audit group who undertake cultural assessments within the bank. These assessments assist our leaders to understand the culture within the business, how culture impacts the way we support customers and where culture could expose us to risk.

The assessments focus on identifying cultural themes, underlying factors and their impact to support the business to drive sustainable change toward ANZ’s desired culture. They incorporate a blend of quantitative data, primarily through an employee survey, as well as qualitative data through employee focus groups.

More than 20,000 employees have participated in culture assessments (since 2016)

Once an assessment is completed, the implementation of actions to address cultural challenges is monitored, and the effectiveness of those actions in shifting towards the desired culture is reviewed.

Strengthening our risk culture

During 2019 we have strengthened the way we deal with risk events through an enhanced Accountability and Consequence Framework, which is applicable to all of our people.

New Accountability and Consequence Principles set out when and how an accountability review will be conducted following a material risk or audit event, define the various categories of accountability (e.g. direct, indirect, collective) and provide guidelines for the relevant Group Executive to consider in determining appropriate consequences. Appropriate consequences should reflect the severity of the issue and may include, for example, one or more of the following: coaching, counselling, formal warnings, impacts to performance and remuneration outcomes, impacts on promotion, application of malus and ultimately termination of employment for the most serious issues.

The Consequence Review Group (CRG), chaired by the CEO, oversees the implementation and ongoing effectiveness of the Accountability and Consequence Framework, being cognisant of its impact on the culture of ANZ. The CRG reviews material risk and audit events and associated accountability and consequences. Our ongoing focus on accountability, consequences and driving a strong risk culture supports our customer commitment that when things go wrong, we fix them quickly and consistently hold executives to account where appropriate.

‘Speak up’ culture

We also seek to support a strong ‘speak up’ culture and ensure managers recognise exemplary risk and audit behaviours. The focus on ‘speak up’ is being supported through our New Ways of Leading (NWOL) that are aligned with our purpose and values. NWOL focuses on five behaviours relevant for all employees and imperative for people leaders: be curious, create shared clarity, empower people, connect with empathy and grow people selflessly. We are incorporating culture into leader-led team activities to facilitate open, purposeful conversations about our culture and practices and create a psychologically safe environment for employees to ‘speak up’. We continue to promote and raise employee awareness of the various ways that employees can ‘speak up’ including through initiatives such as the Whistleblower Awareness Week.

We have 39,060 full-time equivalent employees

Application of consequences

In 2019 across the Group, 151 employees were terminated for breaches of our Code of Conduct. A further 516 employees received a formal disciplinary outcome, with managers required to apply impacts to their performance and remuneration outcomes as part of the annual review process.

Building workforce capability

We are creating an environment where our people can learn
and grow every day, helping us to build organisational agility
and capability to remain competitive.

We are building the capabilities of our leaders through the introduction of a new leadership feedback survey giving our leaders tangible and actionable feedback on their strengths and development opportunities. We continue to track the demonstration of our NWOL behaviours and our people are telling us through the leadership and engagement surveys that they are seeing their leaders demonstrating improvements across all five behaviours.

Employee engagement: 77%
(up from 73% in 2018)¹

In addition, we are building the capabilities critical to delivering our strategy and to future-proofing our workforce, with a focus on investing in our pipeline of data and engineering talent with new roles and development opportunities in data analysis and science.

During the year we launched a new social learning platform – Our Way of Learning (OWL). Combining the functionality of a search engine and a social learning network, OWL offers employees free access to internal subject matter experts at ANZ and external content providers and user-generated content. OWL can be accessed by our people anywhere, anytime, and on any device.

In 2019 our people undertook almost 1.5 million hours of learning to increase their skills and capabilities, including self-directed learning through OWL.

At the senior leadership level, 30 current or former senior leaders (Senior Executives, Executives and senior managers) had a formal consequence applied in 2019 for Code of Conduct breaches or findings of accountability for a material event, or otherwise left the bank after an investigation had been initiated. The 30 employees represent ~ 1% of the senior leader population. The consequences applied included warnings, impacts to performance and/or remuneration outcomes and cessation of employment.

Senior leader consequences in 2019¹

Individuals are included under all categories that are relevant meaning one individual may be reflected in multiple categories.

Changes to remuneration

A key focus this year has been the redesign of the way we financially reward and manage the performance of our people to better support our purpose, culture and values. The changes include rebalancing the way we pay our people so that variable remuneration is a smaller part of take home pay. For the majority of employees, variable remuneration will be based on Group performance only (i.e. no individual bonuses). These changes will apply from financial year 2020, and are more closely aligned to our desired culture, with increased focus on collaboration and team performance, as well as individual growth and development.

We are implementing the recommendations from Stephen Sedgwick’s ‘Retail Banking Remuneration Review’, which is focused on strengthening the alignment of retail bank incentives, sales practices and good customer outcomes. Recommendations that ANZ is delivering independently are 90% complete and will be fully implemented well ahead of the October 2020 deadline. We continue to work with industry to progress the recommendations for third parties and principles to underpin customer metrics. Management provides regular updates to the Board Human Resources Committee on progress.

Diversity, inclusion and wellbeing

We are making progress on our priority to build an engaged, diverse and inclusive workforce. We want our workforce to reflect the communities we serve and believe that leveraging the diversity of our people will allow us to innovate and improve customer experience.

This year our efforts have focused on enabling social and economic participation through providing employment opportunities for people from under-represented groups (including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, people with disability and refugees). Overall, we are broadly on-track to meet our target to recruit >1,000 people from these groups by the end of FY20, reaching 734 since 2016.

Our Spectrum Program is designed to offer employment opportunities to the autism community (sometimes described as part of the neurodivergent community) to build fulfilling careers in areas such as cyber security, coding and testing. This year we welcomed additional participants and nearly half of our original cohort moved into permanent ongoing employment with ANZ.

734 people employed from under-represented groups (since 2016)

We recognise that addressing the barriers preventing women from being fairly represented in senior roles is the key to closing our gender pay gap. We have a target in place to increase the representation of Women in Leadership to 34.1%² by the end of the financial year 2020. This year representation has increased by 0.5% (up from 32% as at September 2018). Our progress is monitored monthly by the CEO and an Executive Committee.

A summary of our policy position on Diversity and Inclusion can
be found at anz.com/corporate governance.

We continue to make strong progress in supporting our people’s safety and wellbeing. Our Health and Safety policy, and associated programs, ensure that we provide an environment that enables employees to participate fully in the workplace and perform at their best. This year we have increased our focus on employee wellbeing, encompassing the areas of mental, physical, social and financial wellbeing.

We also provide opportunities for our people to contribute to the communities in which they live and work through our giving and volunteering programs. For further detail see page 30.