“Our new 10-year strategy recognizes that our people are the gateway to providing remarkable customer experiences, and that in order for us to succeed, we need the right people with the right skills and mindsets, aligned to the right culture.”
< Corporate Social Responsibility
Working for the greater good
Work should be more than a place where you put in time from 9 to 5. It should be the place that fires your passion, ignites your purpose, and inspires you to do more every day. It should allow you to be part of a team that personifies diversity, inclusion, and compassion. It should support your individuality, celebrate your accomplishments, and nourish your wellness and potential. That’s exactly the kind of workplace we aspire to create for every ATB team member. Our recent selection as the #1 place to work by Great Place to Work® Canada tells us our team members think we’re getting it right.
Our new 10-year strategy recognizes that our people are the gateway to providing remarkable customer experiences, and that in order for us to succeed, we need the right people with the right skills and mindsets, aligned to the right culture. There will be changes ahead, but we know our team members are up to that challenge. We also know that when we support and empower our people, they are able to take care of our customers.
When the COVID-19 crisis arrived, making sure our people were safe became our first priority. Those that could work from home found ways to collaborate and keep work moving, and we quickly set up processes to protect the team members that needed to be on the front lines to serve customers in our 314 branches and agencies. Once our people were taken care of, we immediately got to work taking care of our customers—because taking care of our customers is the purpose that unites us.
Creating an inclusive, supportive workplace is one of our key measures of corporate social responsibility. Here are some of the ways we accomplished that this year.
Helping Hands
In this year of economic challenges, ATB team members responded by pitching in across their communities. Helping Hands was there to amplify their actions. For any team member who volunteers 40 hours or more in a year, Helping Hands donates $500 to the cause of their choice. If the volunteering involves fundraising, ATB chips in 20% of their goal up to a maximum of $500.
This year, ATB team members donated more than 35,000 hours of their time to causes they cared about, resulting in over $106,000 in donations to charities.
Everyday Heroes and President’s League
The Everyday Heroes rewards program gives ATB team members an easy way to give meaningful kudos in the workplace. Any team member can give another ATB team member social recognition points (essentially a virtual ‘high five’) and Everyday Heroes points, which can be redeemed for everything from gift cards to gadgets. Team members can also nominate their peers for quarterly awards, which are presented four times each year along with some bonus points. Last year more than $1.4 million worth of high-five-powered rewards were claimed.
Quarterly award winners are also eligible for induction into the President’s League. League inductees are invited to a personal reception with the executive team, monthly surprise and delight gifts and a celebration where their achievements are recognized.
Inclusion and Diversity
Our external commitment to inclusion and diversity is echoed in our internal support for these values. We live what we say. So much so, that through a combination of engaged executive leadership and grassroots initiatives, ATB team members have built six uniquely different networks, all unified in their desire to empower every team member to courageously be themselves and to be allies for each other. These include:
- An Indigenous network;
- An LGBTQ2+ network;
- A group for team members who are new to Canada;
- A group for ATB team members of Filipino heritage;
- Ellevate, a group for empowering women at ATB; and
- The Ability team, for team members with disabilities.
These groups created opportunities for like-minded people to connect with and support each other. They also help guide ATB on how we can improve our communication and attract talent and customers in this increasingly diverse province.
Learning and Leadership
If we want great leaders, we need to invest in the next generation of leaders at the start.
We make this investment in many different areas, from our leadership framework to our formal feedback systems to our appetite for courageous conversations. Our learning systems are some of our most powerful and important tools in this mission. We’ve invested in cutting-edge experiential learning tools like Degreed, a digital platform, to help each ATB team member learn exactly what they need, when they need it.
Mental Health and Wellness
We want every ATB team member to have the health services they need to live their best life. That includes mental health services, which too often carry an unwarranted stigma. Mental illness can impact a life, a family, and a community just like any physical illness can.
To help to reduce the stigma, we incorporated a strong focus on mental wellness in our total health strategy this year. That included joining in two big national campaigns, National Depression Screening and Not Myself Today, which work to promote mental health.
To support our leaders and all team members, ATB adopted the Mental Health Commission of Canada's best-in-class workplace mental health training called The Working Mind. ATB’s internally certified trainers delivered more than 50 sessions to ATB leaders and provided customized follow-up to cement the learning. Custom surveys captured data to track an increase in resilience, decrease in stigma, and tangible behaviour change.
We’ve also created two grassroots internal ATB teams, the Mental Health Action Team and the Wellness Leadership Committee, that are made up of leaders from across ATB.
This past year we launched Wellness Wednesdays, a monthly video series led by our President and CEO. Each video invites ATB team members to learn about a different aspect of health, like physical, mental, spiritual, and financial.
The Man Van Plan
We continued our partnership with the Prostate Cancer Centre to bring 11 Man Van clinics to rural Alberta, including first-time appearances at Siksika First Nation, Maskwacis First Nations, and at the ATB Financial Classic, where they were also the charity of choice. The only mobile prostate cancer screening clinics in the world, these manly motor vehicles offer convenient blood testing with confidential results, making it quick and easy for Albertan men (including ATB team members) to access prostate cancer screening wherever they live. This year the vans also offered a mental health “stress check,” an important addition for the many men who are hesitant to discuss mental wellness.
After five successful “Summer Tours,” ATB locations have now hosted an amazing 59 Man Vans and tested more than 2,700 Albertan men.
Creating an “ALL IN” environment
| Metric | FY2019 | FY2020 | FY2021 target | Action plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Employee engagement 1 | 91% | 86% | 76% cultural health index score (moving to new form of measuring team member engagement) | Evaluate our key performance indicators and consider moving to a cultural health index to measure our workplace performance. |
| Percentage of ATB team members who responded positively to the statement: “I feel good about the ways we contribute to the community.” | 95% | 95% | 96% | Raise CSR awareness among team members via the Greater Good strategy. |
| Percentage of ATB team members who responded positively to the statement: “I am offered training or development to further myself professionally.” | 84% | 84% | 88% | Foster an environment of learning, seeking out and sharing of new ideas, and continuous improvement. |
| Absenteeism 2 | 5.1 days | 8.2 days | ≤ 6 days |
Fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace
| Metric | FY2019 | FY2020 | FY2021 target | Action plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Compensation ratio men vs. women 1 | 1.02 | 1.01 | Parity | Ensure compensation plans are fair and equitable. |
| Senior executives who are women (11 of 29) 2 | 38% | 38% | Parity | Work towards more balanced gender representation, along with other dimensions of diversity, on our executive team. |
| Board directors who are women (6 of 12) | 50% | 50% | Parity | Support our existing Board diversity policy. |
| Diversity indicators among all team members (as a % of population) 3 | No current data | Increase representation of Indigenous people, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ2+ team members. | Identify gaps in hiring, especially of people with disabilities and Indigenous people. Continue to grow awareness and create an inclusive workplace through team member networks, and set specific targets for our diversity indicators. | |
| Women | 63.5% | |||
| Indigenous peoples | 2.3% | |||
| Visible minorities | 29.2% | |||
| LGBTQ2+ | 3.1% | |||
| Persons with disabilities | 3.1% |
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