The Bank's People
Our people strategy is to deliver excellence in customer service through ‘Engaged people who are empowered, motivated and skilled to deliver’. During the year, we have completed a number of activities that give effect to our people engagement strategy.
- A performance management system provides staff and their managers with an opportunity to engage in regular conversations about job performance. During the year the Bank's system was reviewed to align it more closely with the Bank's business objectives. Performance will be measured against business outcomes as well as our People Principles - clear and decisive, empowered and accountable, learn and grow, trust and team spirit, discipline and excellence and challenge and innovate. In other words, what is achieved and how it is achieved will be relevant to performance assessment. The changes in the system go to the heart of the connection between excellence in customer service and an individual's own performance. The relationship between individual and team performance and recognition and reward has also been strengthened.
- In conjunction with the closer alignment of our people systems with business performance objectives a program of process simplification is underway which draws on the techniques from "Lean Manufacturing" and "Six Sigma". These methods support employee engagement by encouraging staff participation in the improvement of work systems which can reduce cycle times and costs.
- Our suite of employee equity plans has been developed to ensure alignment with shareholder interests. One example is the Employee Share Acquisition Plan, which provides staff with a grant of up to $1,000 worth of free shares if the Bank meets its overall performance targets. In eight of the last nine years, an annual grant of shares has been offered to staff. In respect of the year just ended, all eligible employees will receive shares to the value of $1,000.
- There is ongoing review of the Bank's performance and remuneration systems to ensure good quality people continue to be attracted to the Bank and motivated to excel in customer service.
- Retaining and managing talented individuals plays a key role in contributing to employee engagement and excellence in customer service. Talent management systems have been enhanced. The role of the Manager one Removed has been simplified while talent reviews have been broadened to enrich the assessment of potential high performers. Significantly, these new approaches have already led to decisions to extend and expand certain roles and choices about who should fill them.
- The Bank's leadership program is being comprehensively redesigned around the Bank's People Principles. The redesigned program will be implemented during the last calendar quarter of 2004.
- As a committed Equal Employment Opportunity ("EEO") employer, the Bank has focused on enhancing the quality and accessibility of its EEO resources. The information manuals available to staff to help them balance their work and personal commitments have been reviewed and are being simplified. The Bank's EEO intranet sites have also been reviewed and a new site will be launched early next year.
- The Fair Treatment Review system provides staff with the opportunity to raise issues they feel affect them unfairly. The system has been enhanced by introducing a specialist EEO investigations stream and simplifying the system.
- To enhance the current range of flexible working practices - for example, part-time work, job share, career break, twelve weeks paid maternity leave - the Bank has proposed to offer staff the option of purchasing up to four weeks of additional leave per year as well as taking long service leave in more flexible ways. These proposals further underline the Bank's commitment to providing staff with the opportunity to balance their personal commitments with their work.
- The Bank's annual workplace survey took place in May. The survey enables employees to confidentially identify issues about leadership in their work teams. The overall result for the Bank was an improvement in the raw score from last year. Despite this improvement there was a slight slip in the percentile ranking measured against the Gallup database. (See table below).
Commonwealth Bank percentile ranking in Gallup database(1)
(1) Source: The Gallup Organization. Percentile scores are calculated relative to benchmarked companies. This survey was not conducted on behalf of the Bank during 2000.
- Staff were asked to volunteer gender demographics when responding to the 2004 staff survey. The overall results show no significant difference in the responses of men and women. The absence of a difference suggests that the Bank's people engagement strategies are contributing to an inclusive workplace culture.
- The safety management system is currently being reviewed and streamlined to provide our people with a more effective, although easy, method for achieving a healthy and safe work environment. New ergonomic guides have been developed to ensure a stronger focus on the achievement of outcomes, rather than the ticking of boxes and completion of forms. The new guides have been well accepted by our people and the relevant regulators.
- Our safety orientation and safety leadership forum are currently being integrated into the Bank's new learning curriculum; this will ensure that all new people and leaders are well versed in the Bank's safety requirements and behaviours.
- Major changes have been made to the Bank's superannuation arrangements with the merger of three UK funds into one taking effect in July 2003 and the merger of the two Australian funds in October 2003. These mergers have achieved much greater simplicity for members.
- Work has also been undertaken to achieve best practice corporate governance in relation to executive remuneration, employee equity and staff superannuation.