Maintaining a strong culture

In order to retain our social licence to operate, we need to maintain our strong culture – one that is values-driven and risk-orientated. Our culture ensures our people and stakeholders are united by their shared attitudes, values and behaviours.

We pride ourselves on our commitment to conduct business ethically and to the highest possible standard. By embedding an aligned culture at every level of the organisation and throughout our value chain, we will be able to deliver on our vision to be Australia’s bank of choice by feeding into prosperity, not off it.

Belonging at BEN

Diversity of experience, mindset and background inspires our best ideas, helps us to challenge the status quo and to identify better ways of working. In a dynamic operating environment, diversity makes a difference.

We are continuing to build a culture where our employees – no matter who they are or how they identify – are safe, supported, connected and empowered to bring their whole selves to work and to contribute to making Bendigo and Adelaide Bank the bank of choice.

Our Belonging at BEN strategy helps us enhance diversity and inclusion for our people, customers, and communities. See our Belonging at BEN Strategy at the bottom of this page.

Senior leaders leading the way

Our leadership and action set the tone and our leadership team actively champions the priority dimensions of the Belonging at BEN Strategy.

Each Executive plays an active role in the championing, education, awareness raising and driving change required in their priority dimension. Our Senior Leaders are also playing an active role in chairing and sponsoring our Employee Network Groups, acting as allies and raising awareness.

Our people are passionate about inclusion and our Employee Network Groups play an important role in driving an inclusive culture and delivering on our Belonging at BEN strategy. They are voluntary, employee-led groups that bring together team members who share an interest in a specific dimension of diversity. We have a range of Employee Network Groups, including:

• BEN Pride – our network for LGBTIQ+ employees and their allies.
• Women in Business – our forum dedicated to driving gender equality.
• BEN Ability – our access and inclusion network.
• MOB at BEN – for our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employees.

Bringing our people together and uplifting their capabilities

We engage across brands, geographies and divisions to energise one another. There are times when we have serious and important content to communicate, and times when we welcome the opportunity to have fun. We share our big wins, our little wins and where we have tried and learned along the way. Using internal platforms and channels we bring to life the stories of our people, customers and communities through virtual and in-person events; learning and immersion sessions; leadership forums; Executive roadshows; working groups; employee networks; morning and afternoon teas; social media interactions; news updates; podcasts; and newsletters.

We are committed to our people’s career growth, which means supporting them with the right culture, capabilities, skills and learning opportunities to help them succeed. We provide our people with learning and development opportunities to help them have the skills required for today and be ready for the changing demands of tomorrow. Learning happens in many different ways, every day: through practice, people and programs. Some learning is mandatory and must be completed on a regular basis as part of our commitment to compliance, and we also encourage our people to participate in formal and informal learning that is of interest to them and helps them grow their careers.

Continually uplifting our risk management

We are in the business of risk, so managing risk is everyone’s business. We help manage risks on behalf of our customers. As we grow, it is important we continue to invest and deliver increasingly mature risk management practices. We are vigilant, confident and prepared to identify, raise and respond to risks and issues when they arise to protect and meet the needs of our customers, regulators, all other stakeholders and our Bank. We continue to improve and embed our risk frameworks and practices to be a better, stronger bank by proactively investing in the enhancement of our risk capability across our people, governance, risk and compliance and data.

Governance culture

We continue to ensure that our decision making is risk based and responsible, drawing on deep industry specific knowledge. Our operations are underpinned by robust governance and our Bank-wide compliance management system protects our people and stakeholders.

We maintain an ethical culture of integrity, transparency and accountability through the obligations outlined in our Code of Conduct. The Code is a charter designed to ensure our people are fully aware of their obligations as employees, to their colleagues, our customers, partners and communities. It is supported by specific and detailed policies, procedures and frameworks. We work to strengthen our processes around compliance, risk and audit, and industry guidelines on an ongoing basis. Our foundation for good governance comes from our policies, systems, risk management and leadership.

Modern slavery

We understand that modern slavery can occur in many forms and encompasses eight types of serious exploitation including trafficking in persons, slavery, servitude, forced marriage, forced labour, debt bondage, deceptive recruiting for labour or services, and the worst forms of child labour. Child labour includes situations where children are subjected to slavery or similar practices, or engaged in hazardous work, such as forced labour, child labour, domestic servitude, sex trafficking, and human trafficking. We also note that Asia Pacific is the highest risk region globally for Modern Slavery occurrence. We acknowledge that modern slavery is about risk to people.

We use the guidelines set out in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), which identify that companies may adversely impact human rights either through their own activities or as a result of their business relationships. Our approach to reducing the risk of modern slavery within our operations is guided by our Group Anti-slavery and Human Trafficking Policy. This policy outlines our commitment and process for managing the impacts of our business activities and operations and the governance and oversight in place to support these commitments. It is supported by our Modern Slavery Statement (released annually) and our Code of Conduct and Supplier Code of Conduct.

Speaking up

Ensuring our people feel safe at work is critical. Key to this is ensuring we have mechanisms in place for our people to raise concerns. Our Speaking Up Program, which includes the operation of our Whistleblower Policies, addresses this. This Program supports a culture of integrity and ethical behaviour and provides employees and stakeholders with clear channels to raise concerns. The Group Whistleblower Policy and the Community Bank Whistleblower Policy set out clear processes and the protections available for those who want to raise a concern regarding suspected misconduct.