Great Southern Bank’s fresh purpose, brand and three-year strategy is helping us grow our business and deliver on our purpose to help all Australians to own their own home. We are actively embedding our values, keeping team members focused on their contribution to our purpose and strategy:
- Customer obsessed – keeping the customer in mind in everything we do,
- Genuine – being genuine and inclusive,
- Growth – challenging ourselves to innovate, adapt and grow, and
- Impact – being accountable for delivering impactful solutions for our customers.
A motivated and engaged team
Our employee engagement score – measured by reputable global organisation Gallup – climbed by 0.17 points during the year to 4.39 (on a scale of 1 to 5). We now sit just outside the top 25 per cent of Gallup organisations globally.
Supporting team members’ mental health and wellbeing – particularly through the pandemic – has contributed positively to this engagement, with our training and conversation toolkits for leaders cited as best practice in the Harvard Business Review. We also offered ‘healthy hybrid habits’ to support our teams’ wellbeing, including encouraging shorter meetings, walking meetings and dedicated focus time each week.
Celebrating what makes our teams unique
Our Employee Resource Groups continued championing diversity and inclusion with a particular focus on our culturally diverse backgrounds, gender, the LGBTIQ+ community and promoting work-life balance. Our unwavering focus on diversity and inclusion earned us external recognition from the Diversity Council of Australia as an ‘Inclusive Employer’ and Work 180 as an endorsed employer for ‘All Women’. We now have 52 per cent of our senior leadership roles held by women.
Promoting and recognising talent
We continued to celebrate the contribution of our people through the annual Jack Harvey awards, named after a pioneer of one of our earliest credit unions. NSW State Manager Nicole McCarthy received the top prize for her leadership of the NSW branches through the pandemic.
Our first ever Learning Week in January 2022 was enthusiastically received by team members, placing a spotlight on professional development and knowledge sharing. Looking ahead, investing in our people will be key to retaining great people and fostering a more customer-focused bank.
A rising star in customer-owned banking
Ariana Clee is not afraid to admit she is ambitious and driven to succeed. As Great Southern Bank’s Senior Manager, Digital Adoption and Usage, Ariana is leading initiatives to help improve customer confidence in digital banking, which in turn supports financial wellbeing.
As a woman in a digital leadership role – a traditionally male dominated technical field - Ariana hopes she is setting an example for others to follow.
“I feel very fortunate to have been able to pivot from marketing and communications to a career in digital, without having to take a side-step or step back career-wise,” she says.
Ariana’s career is testimony to the power of following your passion, and the opportunities to flourish in the customer-owned banking sector. After starting her career in a bank branch, Ariana spent several years working her way up through the ranks at different mutuals. She now leads a commercially important digital workstream for Great Southern Bank, and remains passionate about the sector and the positive impact it has on customers, team members and communities.
A proud Maori woman, Ariana also co-chairs Great Southern Bank’s 195+ Flavours Employee Resource Group (ERG), which is dedicated to celebrating cultural diversity.
“You can’t be what you can’t see. Through my role as co-chair of the ERG and as a leader in digital, my aim is to increase that visibility for women and people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and create space for them to develop into leadership roles.”