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| Janette Azzopardi (front), Giovani Cugnetto (seated, rear) and Nadia Montalto (standing), assisting customers at the National’s King Street call centre, Melbourne. |
This year was a major turning point for the National’s people, leadership and culture. Public debate and media coverage around the National’s culture was high, particularly in the context of the unauthorised foreign currency options trading.
This led to major changes at executive management and Board level, which created an environment in which our emphasis has been on getting the right people in the right jobs and nurturing a culture that focuses on the way things are done – not just the end result.
Our first step was to develop a framework within which all parts of the National will work – our Corporate Principles. These Principles are underpinned by behaviours that explicitly state what is required when working for the National.
We sent a clear message to our people that we reward on both results and behaviours. We broadened the Group Executive Committee performance plans to reflect key aspects of our business performance: employees, customers and community, financials and process quality and capability leverage.
All performance plans for upper level management will have the same format and include behaviour and compliance requirements. If either behaviour or compliance is rated unsatisfactory, the individual will lose any potential variable reward, and the performance rating of that person’s manager may also be downgraded. This is supported by the global reward strategy that ensures fair and consistent rewards to reinforce the Corporate Principles.
We continued our work to strengthen relationships between managers and direct reports, encouraging more open and honest conversations. Activities included coaching and skill-building around role clarity, setting objectives, regular feedback, linking performance to pay, and realising people’s potential through development.
Recognising that senior leaders are the catalysts for change and need to role-model the newly defined behaviours, we concentrated on building leadership capability, recruiting exceptional senior executives and Board members, while continuing to develop internal capabilities.
Building on the success of past leadership programs, we launched a program for first time leaders, ‘Leadership Essentials’, and an online Masters of Business Leadership with Charles Sturt University. We evaluated and tracked the performance of upper level management against their peers and have taken innovative approaches to developing global leaders.
We asked those not in customer-facing roles to question “What value have I added to the end customer?” each day, and made a concerted effort across the National to concentrate activities around helping our people deliver to customers.
Our workplace relations remained strong and we continued to give our people a voice through union representation and face-to-face forums and feedback lines.
We hosted a global conference of financial services unions – the first of its kind. The outcome of this was a set of principles – “National Australia Group and Global Unions Engagement Strategy”. These highlight the strength of our union relationships and the commitment by both parties to a constructive and consultative process.
While there is still some way to go, we have put in place the framework to make the National the company we all wish to work for. Put simply, we believe that if our people are happy, then our customers will be too, which will ultimately reward shareholders.
Click here to download a PDF of the Concise Annual Report 2004 (2,596KB)
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