Bank urges staff to leave work loudly

In companies where work hours have a degree of flexibility, many workers who leave early to pick up the kids from school, or to look after an elderly family member, do so rather quietly.

Often, they try to look as though they are heading off to an important appointment.

But not at Westpac, which has adopted a ‘‘leave loudly’’ policy as part of its attempt to help workers juggle their work and home lives.

Gina Dellabarca, Westpac’s general manager for human resources and corporate affairs, outlined the bank’s flexible working departure policy.

‘‘When you are going out to watch the kids’ sport or something, just leave,’’ she said, but most importantly: ‘‘Tell everyone you are leaving.

‘‘Don’t try to look like you are going to a meeting, when you are really not,’’ Dellabarca said.

‘‘We want to celebrate that people do leave loudly when they are going to do something, especially as leaders, so staff know, actually, ‘I can fit in those things that matter to me, and I can work around that’.’’

The actions of leaders in an organisation are critical to getting staff to embrace change, a research report from Global Women showed.

The adoption of more flexible working at Westpac came as a result of women taking a greater role in managing the bank.

Deloitte, which authored the report, found that organisations with more women in senior positions were more likely to have flexible working arrangements for staff.

Half of the bank’s leaders are now women.

But it wasn’t always that way. In 2010, Gail Kelly, then chief executive of Westpac in Australia, said publicly that Westpac needed to do much better in seeking women for leadership.

Kelly was the first woman to head a bank in Australia, having become the chief executive of St George Bank in January 2002.

In October 2002, Westpac New Zealand got its first female CEO in Ann Sherry, who had started at the bank in the 1990s under former chief executive Bob Joss. It was Joss who began a drive to recruit more women. senior

The result was a rare moment in Australasian gender equality, with Australia pipping New Zealand to the post.

‘‘We put in place work policies that were far more flexible for all staff, not just for women,’’ Dellabarca said. ‘‘We find that’s a far more engaging way of having the workforce feeling like they are balancing what they need to.’’

Many of the Westpac men had embraced flexible working.

‘‘I don’t hear men saying, ‘I think it’s terrible I’ve got 50 per cent women in my business unit.’ I think they think that’s great,’’ Dellabarca said.

Westpac’s male/female parity in leadership is not reflected across the wider economy.

A Westpac report last year found women made up 46 per cent of the workforce and 29 per cent of management positions.

It also claimed that fully tapping the leadership potential of women could lead to an $881 million boost to GDP.

Westpac is not the first company to make public statements about leaving loudly.

Last year Robbert Rietbroek, the chief executive for PepsiCo in Australia and New Zealand, issued his loud and proud call.