Diversity & Equal Opportunity

Diversity and inclusion

During the year, our focus was to fully embed diversity and inclusion (D&I) into our way of working, driving accountability and empowerment throughout the organisation. This was achieved in a number of ways, including by:

• embedding D&I along all touch points of the employee life-cycle
• strengthening governance, ensuring consistent, structured, hiring practices (including the implementation of diverse hiring panels and requirements for all recruitment partners to provide gender-balanced shortlists)
• developing team-specific D&I goals to align with organisational goals, with performance reviewed and reflected in the end of year remuneration of leaders

We also continued to roll out and embed our D&I philosophy and key initiatives through:

• delivering the Inclusive Manager Program (IMP) to 493 people managers over 25 sessions
• developing and delivering on action plans for each of our key pillars via working groups for mental health, domestic and family violence and the LGBTI Left, Right & Scentre Allies network
• education for new working groups, which included:
  • mental health education for 35 senior managers to assess viability of offer to educate a collection of mental health ‘first aiders’
  • employee breakfasts, led by executive sponsors to raise awareness about mental health, were attended by 126 employees during the year
  • four LGBTI Allies training sessions increasing total number of trained Allies to 174
• delivering over half of our first Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) commitments including cultural awareness education for 100 employees, installing acknowledgement plaques and conducting a Welcome to Country ceremony at each Australian centre
• launching mental health guidelines and resources to support employees
• establishing a D&I calendar noting significant dates to be recognised across our business
• refreshing the role and composition of the Champions of Change group, whose role thus far has been to embed D&I through employee roadshows and focus groups, collecting feedback on opportunities and barriers to creating an inclusive culture. In addition the Champions role focussed on:
  • ensuring D&I is embedded as an item in all Strategic Asset Plans and discussed during asset review meetings
  • leading by example and role modelling inclusive practices and behaviour
  • attending, speaking at and contributing to days of significance

The Group measures diversity through various gender diversity and cultural heritage metrics, and we measure inclusion through our employee survey and people metrics. As a result of the focus on creating a culture that allows our people to be the best version of themselves by bringing their whole selves to work, our employee survey results in 2017 have shown significant improvement. All teams at Scentre Group, bar one, increased their scores for work/life balance by 1% – 35% and their Diversity and Inclusion scores by 5% – 23% since 2016.

Psychological safety, a key focus of the D&I education conducted throughout the year was measured in the employee survey and scored 80% “favourable” against the line item “I feel free to bring my whole self to work without fear of negative consequence”, an increase from 66% in 2016.

Our female percentage of managers and directors within our senior managers’ group increased from 16% last year to 22%. The increase of female employees overall reflects the Group’s efforts and focus on female recruitment and retention, while the increase of females within the senior management group reflects our focus on female professional development.

Since 2015 our D&I strategy has been internally focussed on our culture, our people and work practices. While continuing our work to support these initiatives, we are now well-placed to expand the reach of our agenda externally to define what Scentre Group stands for within the community more broadly.

There are a number of future objectives supporting this goal.

Customers

In 2018 we will explore how we can align our internal culture with our external Scentre Group and Westfield brands in order to create an inclusive, safe and supportive environment in all of our centres to the benefit of our employees and our local communities.

Partners

We will engage with our business partners to align our D&I initiatives with those in our supply chain, particularly those organisations that interface closely with our customers.

Community

Our Purpose “creating extraordinary places, connecting and enriching communities” provides us the opportunity to mobilise our centres with a calendar of events that recognise cultural days of significance within local communities.

As part of our community engagement we will continue the implementation of our RAP, including our ongoing relationships with the Aboriginal Employment Strategy and AFL Sports Ready and the placement of a further 25 trainees in the Group’s Indigenous employment program.

People

Continuing this year’s progress, we will seek to achieve 25% – 27 % representation of females at the senior executive level (general manager and above) to further diversify our executive leadership in the organisation.

Also, to help us continue to embed D&I practices in the business we will also target the following goals in 2018:

• broaden the role played by the executive sponsors of our D&I Working Groups (RAP, LGBTI, mental health, domestic and family violence and sexual assault) so they are able to more actively promote our DNA
• establishment of working groups to explore ways to identify and remove barriers to the inclusion and advancement of people with disabilities and from different cultural backgrounds
• embed leadership accountability for creating an inclusive culture by establishing KPI measures for all senior and executive leader roles
• review our cultural values (DNA) to ensure they reflect our aspirations and beliefs on D&I
• broaden the focus of our Allies group which currently supports our LGBTI initiatives to also support our mental health and domestic and family violence and sexual assault initiatives
• extend the role of our Champions of Change to coach our leaders so that they better support their teams in embedding inclusion as a way of working every day
• implement a second module of the Inclusive Manager Program that focuses on managing, developing and recognising our people
• educate all of our people about diversity and inclusion by implementing a suite of four D&I digital guides and the completion of our Code of Conduct online learning module
• introduce a staff award for inclusion as part of our company-wide recognition program