Workplace relations

Our approach

We foster a workplace environment where staff are encouraged to express their ideas, opinions and concerns provided they align with our core business values and our Employee Code of Conduct and Ethics.

Employment conditions

The minimum employment conditions of our staff in many of our locations are derived from industrial instruments and agreements negotiated with employees and unions, along with our human resources policies.

In 2010 in Australia, following consultation with employees, we negotiated a new two-year collective employment agreement with the Finance Sector Union. The agreement contains the minimum employment terms and conditions for more than 23,000 Australian-based employees in Groups 4, 5 and 6. Key aspects include:

  • formalising our existing parental leave offering with a guarantee of 12 weeks paid parental leave, in addition to payments from the government’s parental leave scheme
  • providing ANZ with more flexibility with rosters to meet customer needs
  • a new dispute resolution process to help quickly resolve employee grievances
  • strengthening our existing commitment to consult with staff and the Finance Sector Union on major workplace changes.

In New Zealand, staff are either covered by our collective employment agreement, negotiated with financial services union FIRST union (formerly Finsec), or covered by individual employment agreements. Currently, 5,531 New Zealand employees are covered by our collective agreement.

In some of our operations in the Asia Pacific region, including the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and Samoa, approximately 1500 employees, which is the majority of employees in these countries, are covered by collective agreements made between ANZ and the representative union or staff representative group.  We are currently working consultatively with employees in Fiji to negotiate a new collective agreement.

In Singapore, a small number of employees are covered by a collective bargaining agreement.

Human rights

 ANZ’s approach to human rights’ details a set of standards which help us to develop a culture of respect in the way we treat our employees, work with our clients and suppliers, and contribute to the communities in which we operate.

Our standards reflect what we already do to respect local cultures and priorities, comply with local laws and go further in situations where we have the responsibility, skills, resources and expertise to do so.
Freedom of Association

We respect the right of employees to join, or not join, associations of their choice. We do not interfere in an employee's decision to associate or not associate, and we do not discriminate against the employee or a representative of the employee. These commitments are upheld in our Freedom of Association Policy.

We believe our employees have the right to freely hold and express opinions provided they do not infringe on the fundamental human rights of other people. We do not make any distinction between employees based on their membership or lack of membership of a representative organisation.

We recognise the right of our staff to bargain collectively and to take industrial action, providing these actions conform to the laws of the country in which we are operating. We respect that under relevant workplace relations legislation unions have certain rights of entry into the workplace and access to relevant information.

If local laws prohibit us from applying our Freedom of Association Policy, we will comply with domestic law while, to the extent permissible, applying the spirit of our commitment within our business.
Code of Conduct and Ethics
ANZ's Employee Code of Conduct and Ethics (PDF 368kB), together with our business values, provide guidance on how to understand and overcome ethical challenges at work. Our Code of Conduct and Ethics is based on eight guiding principles and applies to all employees (permanent and temporary), contractors and consultants 
Communication and dispute resolution

We seek to engage constructively with representative unions in the countries in which we operate. In Australia and New Zealand, we have established regular consultative forums with the Finance Sector Union and FIRST union (formerly Finsec), involving senior ANZ business representatives. These forums enable information sharing and communication about employee relations matters that may affect our people.

Our people are encouraged to have their say through multiple communications channels and face-to-face forums. These include our annual ‘My Voice’ employee survey, direct mail access to the CEO and division heads and a CEO blog.

Where these channels are not appropriate for raising a particular concern, external mediators may be engaged to help resolve disputes.

Whistleblower Protection

Our Whistleblower Protection program enables all employees, contractors and consultants to confidentially report concerns about conduct, practices or issues they are concerned about without fear of reprisal, dismissal or discrimination. Our commitments are outlined in our Whistleblower Protection Policy (PDF 30kB).

Translated versions of our policy are also available to employees including Mandarin, Vietnamese, Khmer (Cambodian) and Bahasa (Indonesian).

2011 results

We completed a review of all of our human resources policies (“People policies”) to improve governance and global alignment of policies affecting our people. As a result of the review we reduced significantly the number of People policies in place from more than 2000 to just over 100 policies. A majority of these policies are global in scope, and many have been tailored for individual countries to take into account differing cultures, conditions and legislative requirements across the 32 countries in which we operate.

During the review process, all global policy owners were made aware of our human rights standards and their obligation in developing any new policies in line with these standards.

In 2011 we introduced a new service called ANZ People Assist, which is the new first point of contact for staff regarding human resources queries, consolidating a number of employee contact centres into one.  The ANZ People Assist team has been established in ANZ’s Manila hub, where there is a multi-lingual team (English and Mandarin) and is available to staff in many ANZ locations, including Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and our hubs in Manila and Bangalore.

Collective employment agreements

During 2011 we continued discussions with unions and staff associations in the Pacific to ‘modernise’ collective agreements. A key milestone this year was the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the union in Samoa to formally recognise the relationship with ANZ and the union.

Code of Conduct and Ethics

All employees, consultants and contractors are required to complete a training and compliance course on our Code of Conduct and Ethics annually. Declaration that the course has been completed confirms that each individual understands the Code’s principles and has complied with them over the previous 12 months. We achieved a 96% completion rate for this essential training and compliance program.  In 2011 we implemented a central reporting and follow-up function to ensure we achieve the highest possible completion rate each year.

In 2011, there were 1,297 alleged breaches of our Code of Conduct and Ethics across the Group. This has slightly increased from 2010 due to the increase of headcount over the 12-month period.

The majority of breaches of our Code relate to ‘Compliance with the Code, law and ANZ procedures’ and more specifically the inappropriate use of our email and intranet systems. Outcomes arising from breaches of the Code included 209 dismissals, 75 resignations, 149 staff being counseled and a number of reprimands. We continue to improve our reporting systems and increase awareness of the ethical standards expected of all our employees.

Discrimination incidents

There were 36 discrimination incidents in 2011; 25 involving ANZ employees and 11 involving customers.

Outcomes:

  • Reprimanded: 3
  • Withdrawn by employee: 2
  • Withdrawn by customer: 5
  • Resolved: 17
  • No action required: 7
  • Open: 2

Whistleblower Protection

In the year ended 30 September 2011 there was an increase in reports relating to our Whistleblower Protection Policy, due to improved reporting processes and data capture.  The majority of reports did not uncover any significant issues.  In the small number of cases where our policies were breached ANZ took swift and appropriate action including dismissal and in some instances referral to police.

We continue to investigate nine incidents.

Reports 2011 2010 2009
Received 40 18 12
Closed 37 16 10
Remain under investigation 9 6 4

The future

We will engage in discussions with unions in Australia and New Zealand regarding our collective agreements, which are due to expire during 2012.  

In our Asia Pacific operations, we will continue discussions and negotiations with representative unions and employees regarding new collective employee agreements, for example in Fiji, PNG and Solomon Islands.

We will continue to review and improve our People policies in 2012 to ensure they remain globally relevant and easy for employees to find and understand. We also intend expanding our ANZ People Assist service to other ANZ locations during 2012 to ensure our staff can access consistent support for human resources queries.

In 2012 we will also work to further embed the values underpinning our human rights standards in our policies, processes, actions and decisions that guide how we interact with our people and communities (see our approach to human rights).

2010 results

Collective Employment Agreement

In 2010, following consultation with employees, we negotiated a new two-year collective employment agreement with the Finance Sector Union. The agreement contains the minimum employment terms and conditions for more than 23,000 Australian-based employees in Groups 4, 5 and 6, and will run for a two-year period covering the 2010 and 2011 remuneration reviews.

Under the agreement we paid salary increases of 4% for eligible employees in 2010 and will also pay 4% increase for 2011. Other key aspects include:

  • formalising our existing parental leave offering with a guarantee of 12 weeks paid parental leave, in addition to payments from the government’s parental leave scheme
  • providing ANZ with more flexibility with rosters to meet customer needs
  • a new dispute resolution process to help quickly resolve employee grievances
  • strengthening our existing commitment to consult with staff and the Finance Sector Union on major changes.

Code of Conduct and Ethics

All employees, consultants and contractors are required to complete a training and compliance course on our Code of Conduct and Ethics annually. Declaration that the course has been completed confirms that each individual understands the Code’s principles and has complied with them over the previous 12 months . We achieved a 98% completion rate for this essential training and compliance program.

In 2010, there were 1,294 serious breaches to our Code of Conduct and Ethics across the Group. This has slightly increased from 2009 due to the increase of headcount over the 12-month period.

The majority of breaches of our Code relate to ‘Compliance with the Code, law and ANZ procedures’ and more specifically the inappropriate use of our email and intranet systems. Outcomes arising from breaches of the Code included 195 dismissals, 69 resignations, 174 staff being counselled and a number of reprimands. We continue to improve our reporting systems and increase awareness of the ethical standards expected of all our employees.

Whistleblower Protection

In the year ended 30 September 2010 there was an increase in reports relating to our Whistleblower Protection Policy, and we continue to investigate six incidents.

Reports 2010 2009
Reports received 18 12
Reports closed 16 10*
Reports remain under investigation 6 4

* Two cases carried over from 2008.

The future

With new two-year agreements reached in Australia and New Zealand, we plan to negotiate new collective employee deals in a number of Pacific countries, such as Fiji and PNG, in 2011.

We will refresh our suite of People policies in 2011 to ensure global consistency and make it easier for employees to find and understand our policies.

Throughout 2100, we will also work to further embed the values underpinning our human rights standards in our policies, processes, actions and decisions that guide how we interact with our people and communities.

2009 results

ANZ has continued to build on its constructive working relationship with the Finance Sector Union (FSU) in Australia, Finsec in New Zealand, and with counterpart unions in Asia Pacific and the other countries in which we operate.

In Australia, we resumed discussions with the FSU on a new collective agreement to cover the majority of ANZ's Australian staff.

In New Zealand, we met quarterly with Finsec's Council to discuss employee relations issues that affect our people. A new collective employment agreement was successfully concluded in New Zealand in 2009.

In 2009 ANZ also worked with representative unions in Australia and New Zealand on a package of assistance for employees impacted by the relocation of some roles and functions to our operations in India.

In the Asia Pacific region, ANZ is looking to create new partnerships with unions in these countries to help achieve our aim to become a super-regional bank by 2012.

This year we made enhancements to our Whistleblower Protection Policy and processes, including the introduction of a 24 hour external hotline staff can use to report any issues covered under the Policy. Details of the Whistleblower Protection Policy, including obligations to report issues covered by the Policy, were also covered in our Code of Conduct and Ethics training and general compliance training, both required to be completed by all ANZ staff. Information on the Policy and its requirements was also made more prominent and accessible to staff through ANZ's intranet site.

Whistleblower Protection 2009

Reports Number
Received 12
Closed 10*
Remain under investigation 4

* Two cases were carried over from 2008.

The future

In Australia, ANZ aims to reach a new agreement with the Finance Sector Union in 2010 as part of ongoing discussions that resumed in 2009. In New Zealand, negotiations will be held with Finsec in 2010 to renew the collective employment agreement.

We will continue to engage constructively with representative unions on issues that affect our people, by establishing forums or other appropriate consultative processes where union's have expressed a willingness to engage constructively with ANZ.

 

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