People & Culture

People are the key asset to any organisation, they are the ones that develop relationships with clients, innovate our products and processes, as well as collaborate to create and deliver the best service possible. It therefore makes sense that we should invest in them, giving them the support, guidance and infrastructure that means they value the time they spend at ABN AMRO Asset Based Finance (ABF).

The People & Culture Transition Team is a diverse representative group of colleagues from our business who take responsibility for the initiatives that support this, on top of their normal day jobs. We do this in close alignment and collaboration with our ABN AMRO Bank stakeholders and partners to ensure we fully align to the Bank strategy. Our Mission statement is to open up space for others to succeed, and this covers colleagues, clients and our internal and external partners. We will know we are successful when we see that we are retaining, developing and attracting a diverse group of people, who contribute to an inspirational and aspirational ABF culture.

Diversity and inclusion

Being included feels like it should be a right we all have, but this is not always the case, and it’s something that ABF takes incredibly seriously. Each of us should have an equal voice and perspective, and have the same chances as the person next to us, to succeed. We also know that a diverse workforce that reflects the societies that we serve, is more innovative, engaging, creative and productive. This is an environment we all want to work within, so we are working hard to ensure that we operate in a diverse and inclusive way in everything we do.

To deliver on this, we have separated our approach into two distinct pillars:

AWARENESS. This is about educating ourselves, creating a greater level of understanding and removing some of the unconscious bias that can hold us back. We are developing learning opportunities in collaboration with our ABN AMRO Bank partners that give our colleagues a greater awareness of the value of diversity and inclusivity.

EMPOWERMENT. We feel strongly that the best people to influence this movement, should be those people that are most affected. Their stories, perspectives and experiences will shape how we look at these workstreams, and what we do next. The ABF Diversity & Inclusion Think Tank is a group of ambassadors who meet to discuss internal and external perspectives, and to challenge and provide feedback on our ABF approach.

COMMITMENT. This is where we create process change to ensure that there is a shift in how we do things. This starts with recruitment in ensuring we have diverse applicants and interview panels, so that we get to assess new colleagues from a different perspective. It also allows us to define what skills would benefit ABF over and above the technical ones that are often the first to be considered.

Wellbeing

Our mental and physical wellbeing is at the centre of who we are, and as a responsible employer we want to ensure that we are having a positive impact on this. Over the last few years, this is an area that has been highlighted, and there will be few of us that have not been impacted in some way. With the addition of remote and isolated working, as well as juggling home and work life, we need to provide space for colleagues to support them. In more recent months we have also added Social Wellbeing and Responsibility to this workstream, to tie together the excellent work that many colleagues do in society to support great causes. ABF is part of the communities across a number of countries and we want to help colleagues to give something back, and also to tie in with our sustainability strategy.

There have been a number of developments created to support our colleagues. This was started with the Go and Open Space Hour, which is a dedicated hour in the day where we encourage everyone to stop calls, meetings, messages and email. This allows us all to have space to invest in ourselves in any way that is valuable. We have seen people take up hobbies, spend more time with family, read and go on a run. By popular demand this was moved from a pilot to a formal part of the working day in Q1, 2021

In the first few months we partnered with VIRGIN PULSE to encourage physical exercise. Within this we created a Steps Challenge, where international teams of colleagues, over 300 in all, "competed" to travel around the world. This not only encouraged us to step outside more to get fit, but also created a great collaboration opportunity when we needed it the most. We will be looking to build on these initiatives and have developed a Wellbeing Team to engage with colleagues on what opportunities they would like to see and take advantage of.

Culture

As an international organisation we operate as a number of vibrant sub-cultures, but it is also important that you know what to expect when you step into the ABF Culture. To do this we have created opportunities for Leaders to share their own experiences of working across nationalities, and to explain their own approach. By showing how we are seen by others, and often how perceptions are created, we start to build a greater level of understanding and collaborative spirit. Also, when it came to defining ABF, as always, our first call was to ask our colleagues. in Late 2020, we asked all of our colleagues to consider what was important to them, what they saw around them today and what they would like to see. This has created our culture strategy which aims to ensure ABF can attract, develop and maintain the best people for our clients.

International Culture Awareness workshops have been run in each of the ABF countries (France, Germany, UK and Netherlands). Here, the leaders in each country have an opportunity to share stories of what they value, as well as what challenges them about the cultures in other countries. This then allows them to have a facilitated dialogue to better understand why these exist, and how to adapt and flex best to their own approach. This has been supported by the Barrett Culture Values Assessment (CVA), which asks all colleagues in ABF to share their own personal values, to describe the culture that exists in ABF and what their desired ABF culture would look like. This then provides us with a number of potentially limiting values that are holding us back, as well as a list of desired values. These outputs contribute to the ABF Culture Strategy for 2021, which will be delivered using deep dive analysis and action planning from across the organisation.