AMP was founded on a simple yet bold idea—that every individual should have the power and ability to control his or her life.

For more than 160 years, we’ve dedicated ourselves to making this possible. And while we’ve grown and changed over the decades, one thing has remained the same—our unwavering sense of purpose to help people own their tomorrow.

Today we are a leading specialist wealth management company in Australia and New Zealand, helping our customers with:

• financialadvice

• superannuation,retirementincomeandotherinvestmentproductsforindividuals

• superannuationservicesforbusinesses

• administration,bankingandinvestmentservicesforself-managedsuperfunds

• incomeprotection,disabilityandlifeinsurance

• selectedbankingproducts,and

• investmentsinshares,fixedinterest,property,infrastructure,multi-manager andmulti-assetfunds.

DCA 30th ANNIVERSARY FOUNDING MEMBER CASE STUDY: AMP

The power of conscious conversation

AMP talent and diversity deep dives: the power of conscious conversationAMP’s talent and diversity ‘deep dive’ process has helped us to accelerate the representation of women at senior levels of our business, increasing diversity of thought.

The power of this initiative lies in ‘deep dive’ conversations about leadership, talent and succession,whichoccurbi-annuallyatthe most senior levels of our organisation.

These conversations are designed to ensure we have the leaders we need to deliver on our business strategy—both now and into the future—by identifying andfillingleadershipcapabilitygaps without bias, whether conscious or not.

The conversations occur between our CEO, our Group Leadership Team (CEO direct reports),ourGroupExecutiveofPeopleand Culture and Director of Talent Management and Diversity, and our People and Culture Business Partners (senior HR professionals working with each Group Leadership Team member).

AMP has applied a gender lens to our deep diveconversationstoimprovetheunder- representation of women in senior roles and create a more gender balanced leadership team. Over time, we anticipate introducing a broader rangeofdiversityconsiderationsintothemix (e.g. age, cultural diversity etc.).

PEOPLE AND CULTURE BUSINESS

PARTNERS (SENIOR HR

PROFESSIONALS)

TALENT MANAGEMENT

TEAM

CEO PLUS GROUP EXECUTIVE, PEOPLE AND CULTURE, AND DIRECTOR, TALENT MANAGEMENT AND

DIVERSITY

INDIVIDUAL MEMBERS OF

THE AMP GROUP LEADERSHIP TEAM

(CEO DIRECT REPORTS)

ALL MEMBERS OF THE AMP GROUP

LEADERSHIP TEAM (CEO DIRECT

REPORTS)

DEEP DIVE CONVERSATIONS HAPPEN BETWEEN SENIOR

AMP LEADERS TWICE A YEAR

Overview

Our deep dive process helps us monitor emerging business, talent and succession opportunities and organise our people for optimal performance. It occurs over several months twice a year, and involves our CEO, Group Leadership Team (‘GLT’) members, and People and Culture Business Partnersmeetingtodiscussin-depth:

• criticalleadershiproles,includingkeycapabilitiesandexperience

• successionpoolsandtalentpipelines,includinganycriticalgapsincapabilityand/orexperience

• developmentneedsandoptions,includingactions to enable mobility.

The deep dive process has FOUR KEY STEPS:

1. The groundwork: People and Culture Business Partners work with their aligned GLT member to prepare for each business unit’s deep dive meeting. This typically involves a focus on talent pools, development, succession, inclusion and diversity, pay equity and actions aligned to the AMP people strategy.

As part of their preparation, each GLT member completesanin-depthdeepdivepackoutliningkey data and proposed actions. The talent management team subsequently analyses these packs and collates the information to formanAMP-wideview.

2. Whole of business perspective: at this point, People and Culture Business Partners also meet to discuss talent mobility and how they can think ‘outside the square’ about internal moves and development across the organisation.

3. Business unit deep dive meeting: each GLT member meets with the CEO, GroupExecutiveofPeopleandCulture and Director of Talent Management and Diversity to share their talent insights and proposed actions.

It involves each GLT member: (i) outlining theirrelevantbusinesslandscape;(ii)definingpeople goals in line with business strategy; and (iii) mapping their senior people against these goals, identifying possible gaps and solutions.

As part of this discussion, the CEO challenges assumptions and checks for possible bias in decision making.

4. Our People Day: a few weeks later, the CEO and full GLT come together for what we call our People Day. This is the forum where we discusskeyinsightsandfindingsfromthetalent process to date, and agree actions across all of AMP.

The process itself isn’t about having the right answers—rather asking the right questions to raise awareness, challenge beliefs and expectations and promote more equitable actions and outcomes.

For example, ‘How could we structure this role to attract a more diverse and talented candidate pool? Why couldn’t Jane do that role? What opportunities can we provide to position her for success?’

Deep dive conversations uncover opportunities and challenge assumptions that can be made, helping our senior women step into sometimes unexpected new roles.

For each deep dive process, we apply a different diversity lens, such as gender targets, pay equity, inclusive leadership, what constitutes ‘high potential’ talent and so forth.

For example, in a recent process we introduced a stronger focus on ‘potential’, encouraging leaders to reflect on how they evaluated their people. This was done with a view to removing bias in the way people were previously identified as high potential.

During another deep dive process we invited GLT members to rate their senior leaders’ inclusive leadership capabilities on a scale of 1 to 4 and then provide tangible examples of times they had demonstrated these capabilities. This had a number of benefits including:

• further developing our leaders’ understanding of inclusive leadership capabilities and how to best demonstrate and assess these capabilities

• encouraging our leaders to diversify their view of what constitutes ‘leadership material’

• reminding our leaders to take inclusive leadership capabilities into account when identifying high potential talent, and

• building leader engagement around diversity and inclusion more generally.

The GLT must have a deep understanding of their people to complete this process successfully. AMP has developed a suite of materials to help them work through this in a structured, considered way, and we have also skilled our People and Culture Business Partners to coach leaders directly, actively addressing potential bias and diversity outcomes.

MonitoringAt the outset of each deep dive process, the Talent Management team works with People and Culture Business Partners to review strategic objectives, decide on a diversity focus and determine what, if any, additional resource materials may be required.

Introducing this deep dive talent process has helped increase the number of women in senior leadership roles across AMP by 10 per cent over the past four years.

Outcomes achievedAMP’s talent and diversity deep dive process has helped to accelerate the representation of women at senior levels of our business. It has directly improved female development, mobility and succession, and created a heightened awareness of potential obstacles women may/can experience progressing to more senior levels.

Our deep dive process has also increased diversity of thought at senior levels by introducing alternative perspectives and approaches. We believe this diversity of thought improves our productivity, performance and profitability.

Lessons learnt In analysing our deep dive insights, we’ve found that AMP’s female successors are stronger against our leadership capabilities than our male successors, and our male successors tend to have stronger experience than our female successors. As a result, we now have a specific focus on creating opportunities for female talent to diversify their experience and male talent to develop their capabilities in key areas. To do this well, you must be willing to both take a risk on building experience and capability, and actively support people through the initial development stage.

Being overt about gender diversity as part of the deep dive process has reinforced our focus and commitment to deliver the best possible results and opportunities for AMP’s women, customers and business alike.

And while it may seem obvious, an aligned leadership team with a firm belief that diversity of thought is both necessary, and achievable, is key.

Perhaps the greatest insight, however, is also the simplest: to make this process work, you must really know and understand your people. Genuinely, and deeply.

Plans for the futureThe representation of women in middle management roles remains an equally important priority in our work to achieve gender diversity at all levels of AMP. In 2016, AMP will expand the scope of the process to identify talent much deeper in the organisation. This will allow a clear view and understanding of our talent pipeline and subsequent development needs.

CREATE OPPORTUNITIES

FOR FEMALE TALENT

BE OVERT ABOUT

GENDER DIVERSITY

KNOW AND UNDERSTAND YOUR PEOPLE

10% INCREASE IN WOMEN IN SENIOR LEADERSHIP ROLES

OVER $40,000 RAISED FOR CARE AUSTRALIA

RECOGNISED AS BEST-PRACTICE IN THE INDUSTRY

RAISING AWARENESS AND DONATIONS THROUGH INTRANET NEWS PAGE

REGULAR REPORTING

OF STRATEGIES & OUTCOMES

ACCELERATING THE REPRESENTATION

OF WOMEN AT SENIOR LEVELS

CREATING A MORE GENDER BALANCED LEADERSHIP TEAM

Diversity Council Australia225 George Street, Sydney NSW 2000Phone:(02)93225197Fax:(02)92558372Email: sydney@dca.org.auwww.dca.org.au