COMMONWEALTH BANK ACHIEVES WGEA EMPLOYER OF CHOICE FOR GENDER EQUALITY AND ANNOUNCES NEW GENDER TARGET

Commonwealth Bank has been awarded the Workplace Gender Equality Agency Employer of Choice for Gender Equality citation for the second year in a row.

Commonwealth Bank today is making a further commitment to women in senior leadership roles by announcing a new 40 per cent target for women in Executive Manager and above positions by 2020.

Commonwealth Bank CEO, Ian Narev, said “Women comprise nearly 60 per cent of our workforce. We have a business and moral imperative to build an inclusive culture, and gender equality is a key focus for us. To focus our efforts and create accountability we have set a new target of 40 per cent for women in senior leadership positions by 2020. To achieve this, one in every two new appointments at these levels will be female.”

Group Executive Human Resources, Melanie Laing, said “Our gender targets sit alongside a range of initiatives to recruit, retain and develop women in leadership roles across the Group - such as mentoring, career resiliency and development opportunities, as well as parental leave support, flexible work and leave options for all our employees.

“But this is not just a women’s issue. We believe a top down approach to improving the representation of women in leadership positions is critical to drive change,” Ms Laing said.

Building an inclusive workplace where all employees can make choices to achieve the balance that works for them at all life stages, is a key goal of the Bank’s three year Diversity & Inclusion Strategy.

Outcomes of the strategy so far include:

• 35 per cent of senior leadership positions are held by women (Executive Managers and above), as at July 2015;
• 42 per cent of all management roles (Branch Manager to CEO) are held by women;
• 3 members of the board are women;
• 5 members of the CEO’s leadership team are women;
• 51 per cent of graduate intake are women; and
• 45 per cent of our workforce say they work flexibly.

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