Employee engagement
Internal communication
Leadership for sustainability
Flexibility
Women in the workplace
Indigenous employment strategy

Our culture can be seen in every action an IAG employee takes. Put simply, a culture can be described as 'the way we do things around here'. Whether interacting with customers, or making a decision about a system or process, our people act in ways that reflect our organisation's culture.

By reinforcing our desired culture with sound people practices, IAG's employees will deliver a consistent experience for our customers, shareholders and the community that will ultimately work towards creating a sustainable business.

Our people strategy is underpinned by our purpose and values. The goals of this strategy are:

• attracting and retaining the right people;
• creating a culture that promotes and supports high performing people;
• developing and improving the capability of our employees; and
• ensuring that we have simple and efficient processes and systems in place to support our people.

The strategy incorporates a number of initiatives to achieve these goals.

KEY WORKPLACE INDICATORS

We have taken steps to reduce absenteeism and staff turnover. At the same time, we have also focused on increasing employee engagement and offering greater flexibility for our people. In the 2005 financial year, our overall headcount has declined. This is due to the employee hiring rate remaining lower than the leaving rate. This has been made possible primarily through improved efficiencies in our organisational structure.

Employee engagement

Our employees have the chance to let their voice be heard through our annual employee survey. The 'Your Voice' survey measures engagement - how passionately people feel about working for IAG. It also gauges how aligned our employees are to our purpose, values and strategy. The survey provides rich information on our people's perceptions of leadership, change management, risk culture and sustainability initiatives.

We believe that if our people feel passionate about working for us and they understand our purpose and strategy, then the business will be more successful in the long term.

Eighty six per cent of our people participated in the 2005 'Your Voice' survey. This year the survey included some new and specific questions around sustainability. The results indicate that 73% of respondents value our focus on balancing our social, environmental and financial responsibilities and believe the actions the company is taking in these areas will position us for long-term success.

rewardhelp:
IAG's reward and recognition programme is designed to recognise and reward behaviours that support the business's values. In the 2005 financial year more than 24,000 nominations were received across the categories of Helping Others, Leadership, Achievement and Sustainability & Innovation. In the 2006 financial year, we will be working to improve the number of nominations in the Sustainability & Innovation category which currently stands at 3%.

The culmination of the rewardhelp programme is the IAG Excellence Awards - an event where the nationwide finalists in each category celebrate their achievements with the IAG Executive team. This event was held for the first time in November 2004.

Internal communication

We use internal communication to continuously reinforce our purpose and values and to ensure our people are kept abreast of major developments. These are brought to life in channels such as employee magazines, an intranet, leadership forums, and in the CEO's annual Forum and Expo which is attended by 600 employees from across our business.

In 2004, the launch of IAG's Sustainability Report was supported by an internal communication campaign that aimed to help employees understand what sustainability at IAG means. The campaign incorporated a roadshow, website and development of an educational sustainability animated cartoon.

Two-way conversation: IAG employees are encouraged to share their thoughts and ideas directly to their managers and through channels such as CEO mailboxes, sustainability focus groups, employee forums and staff consultative committees.

Leadership for sustainability

We use a number of tools to assess whether our people are in the right roles. We also assess whether we have leaders in place with the ability to deal with the high levels of complexity that are required to make decisions that will keep the business in shape for the long term.

One way we assess the ability of our people to manage this complexity is through the Talent Matrix process. This process involves a series of discussions where an employee's financial and people management performance is evaluated by the next level of management alongside their customer outcomes and values. The Talent Matrix process is conducted twice a year by management. In the 2005 financial year, more than 2,000 managers and leaders were reviewed as part of this process, including all IAG's senior management.

The IAG Executive team takes a prominent external role in leading the sustainability agenda within Australia and internationally. Internally, IAG also works to incorporate sustainability as part of our own leaders' responsibilities. For instance, it is a key component of our leadership forums and our leadership development programmes.

Sustainability Champions
IAG's network of Sustainability Champions takes a strong and very visible leadership role throughout the business. They help engage other employees around IAG's mission to become a sustainable organisation and also drive the environmental action-planning process.

Our Sustainability Champions are adept at taking the Group-wide philosophy and 'making it real' for their division. They often act as the central point of contact within a division for co-ordinating a wide range of activities from setting performance targets to implementing energy-saving action plans and arranging volunteer days.

Andrew, a Sustainability Champion in our Technology Services division explains, "So many people believe sustainability is just about being green. While managing our environmental impact is important, it's only one element. Part of my role is to help the people in Technology Services see how sustainability relates to their job. That's not hard to do. The systems and processes we develop to sell a policy or manage a claim, are critical to delivering an exceptional experience for our customers. We're also responsible for more tangible examples like installing more energy-efficient PCs and printers that print double-sided."

Andrew also sees the importance in empowering others to take action. "Anyone can be a leader in sustainability and the great thing is, it's not prescriptive. You just need to get on and do it," he says.

Flexibility

We have established a joint IAG/Finance Sector Union Work & Life Taskforce. The purpose of this taskforce, as outlined in the 2003 IAG Enterprise Agreement, is to support our organisation's strategy for achieving a work/life balance and to provide feedback to IAG's management team on the issues that may impact on an employee's working life.

The taskforce has begun an organisation-wide flexibility project. The purpose of this project is to:

• investigate the flexibility and work/life balance needs of our people;
• determine the gaps between our current flexibility policies, use and access;
• establish the facilitators and determine barriers to the effective implementation of flexibility; and
• prioritise and recommend actions.

As part of the project a series of interviews with senior management and an organisation-wide flexibility survey will be conducted.

Women in the workplace

In 2005, IAG was awarded Employer of Choice for Women status by the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency (EOWA). Although we accept that we have not resolved all our Equal Employment Opportunity issues, this status is an acknowledgement that we are recognising and advancing women in the workplace. The EOWA status has been awarded to only 115 organisations nationally.

We have also established an IAG Women's Forum. The forum meets quarterly and is chaired by the CEO. It comprises ten senior women from different parts of the business.

The objectives of the forum are to:

• provide information and insights into the issues for women in the IAG workforce;
• discuss strategies for improving the success of women in IAG; and
• support the implementation of change initiatives arising from forum discussions.

Indigenous employment strategy

We extended our commitment to the Commonwealth Government's Corporate Leaders for Indigenous Employment Project in July 2005 when we launched our Group-wide Indigenous employment strategy.

This strategy promotes direct action to attract indigenous applicants for permanent positions within IAG. This is a significant commitment, especially given the low numbers of indigenous Australians working in the finance and insurance industries.

As part of this strategy, our Diversity Specialist will engage indigenous communities, and the intermediary agencies that work with them, to 'spread the word' on employment opportunities. At the same time, our managers will be educated on the unique and positive benefits which indigenous employees can bring to their teams.

We aim to reflect Australia's diverse population in our own workforce. Approximately two per cent of the nation's population is indigenous, which would equate to having around 230 Indigenous people working at IAG. We currently have 23.

Case study: IAG and the ageing population
Case study: An expo of career possibilities

We want our employees to achieve their career aspirations and have the chance to be the best they can be. PATH - IAG's career discussion process - helps our people decide the right time to embark on career development. It supports people as they make decisions about which direction their career might take. We also believe each employee should take responsibility for managing his or her career.