NAB has been recognised by The Workplace Gender Equality Agency as an employer of choice for gender equality.
NAB Group CEO Andrew Thorburn said: “It is fantastic to be recognised as an Employer of Choice for Gender Equality. We are making progress – and will continue to do so – for the benefit of our people, of our business and of our customers.”
“The culture of an organisation is so crucial to the performance of the organisation. The reality is that the finance industry is historically male-dominated and we need to drive change.
“We need people with different experiences and different points of view. And we need to create a supportive environment, where they can engage in fierce debate.
“Our ambition is to be the best bank, with the best people, who provide our customers the best advice,” he said.
Andrew says the biggest single driver of cultural change comes from senior leaders and their behaviour, which is why NAB has set targets to increase the proportion of women in executive management roles.
Michaela Healey, Group Executive People, Communications and Governance discussed the citation and the importance of gender diversity at an American-Australian Chamber of Commerce event earlier this week.
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Michaela Healey, NAB Group Executive People, Communications & Governance
“NAB has been recognised as an employer of choice for women, now 7 years in a row. That’s an outstanding achievement because the conditions and criteria have become far more stringent for this recognition.
“During the last couple of years at NAB, we’ve really been focussed on flexibility, ensuring that there’s fairness in our recruitment processes, that the way in which we seek candidates, interview candidates and select candidates reflects the diversity of our community and our employee base.
“We’ve made a couple of key changes in maternity leave, ensuring that people get recognition for long service while they’re on maternity leave. That people, when they return from maternity leave, receive a review of their pay. And some of the areas we’ve really made a difference are in things like domestic violence – recognising that we have a domestic violence policy and that things are going on in people’s lives and that they’re things that we, at work, are willing to be supportive of.
“But there’s so much more that we need to do. There’s room for improvement and, particularly in an industry like financial services, that has been traditionally male-dominated, we need to do a lot more to ensure that we offer a truly inclusive place to work.”
Karen Hayes – CEO Guide Dogs Victoria
“At Guide Dogs, unlike every other industry I’ve worked in, we have about 70 per cent of our workforce that are women. So we’re at the other end of the equation, sort of looking to say: how do we get a bit more of a balance at the male end of the equation? But one of the things that I’m very conscious of is the need to be very flexible in terms of our work practices.”
Fiona McGauchie – Egon Zehnder
“If you take political sensitivity and making clever choices as part of that, honestly I think we all think if we do a good job someone will notice and you’ll get promoted. But in fact you can be terribly clever about how you allocate your time. So, face time, being in certain meetings, not being in other meetings, using your flexibility in a very clever way to acknowledge your organisation’s way of doing things and to be there for the right things, is a very important way to be flexible.”
Michaela Healey, NAB Group Executive People, Communications & Governance
“It’s important that the flexibility is not just for mothers of young children. So I’m delighted that one of my colleagues from the Executive Team at NAB has just moved to working three days a week as he transitions to retirement. He’s a highly esteemed banker and he’s been quite open that he is using the extra two days a week to spend more time with his grandchildren.
“Gender equality is a priority for NAB because it’s really important that as a large corporation and particularly a bank, we can be a role model for other organisations. It’s also important that our workforce is reflective of the communities we live in and the customers that we serve.”
