Constantly looking for areas to further improve diversity

Moving meetings to different times or finding a spot to work that’s further away from that busy corridor: small changes can mean an immediate and huge improvement for colleagues with autism, dyslexia or intellectual giftedness, explains ABN AMRO’s Head of Diversity & Inclusion Nicole Böttger. The bank is investigating what to do differently for neurodivergent people: those colleagues with a brain that ‘works differently’. “It helps neurodivergent colleagues to better fulfil their potential.”

The focus on neurodiversity is one of the themes that the bank’s Diversity & Inclusion team are working on. Nicole continues, “As an organisation, we’re becoming a closer and closer reflection of society’s diversity, in terms of gender, orientation, culture, age, occupational impairments and neurodiversity. Everyone should have the opportunity to develop their talents.” These efforts are supported by clearly defined goals. “Our Diversity & Inclusion ambitions are explicitly included on the Executive Board’s agenda.”

Focus groups

A lot of progress has already been made, explains Agnies Lobbezoo, who works for ABN AMRO as a Senior Consultant Diversity & Inclusion. “The bank’s eager to share these experiences with other organisations that haven’t come as far yet. Years ago, gender diversity became the starting point for the bank’s diversity policy, but by now we’re concerned with diversity in numerous other areas.”

The focus group approach works, Nicole has observed. “This is borne out by the results. Women make up half the members of our Supervisory Board and 42 percent of the layer immediately below the Executive Board. Numbers of colleagues with ethnically and culturally diverse backgrounds have also increased across every layer of the bank.”

Talent finds a way

Agnies explains that the understanding that’s gained about diversity is used to hire talented individuals with an occupational impairment or a refugee background. “We’re proud of our Reboot programme, which helps people with a refugee background to find jobs working for the bank.” These people are given training, language lessons and individual coaching. The programme is a success: every year since it was first launched in 2017, the bank has hired dozens of refugees with temporary residence status.

“The B-Able programme helps people with an employment disadvantage,” Nicole continues. “We’re constantly running into new issues. For example, can colleagues with a visual or hearing impairment use all our business software? If we provide an adapted program, the bank needs to test it first. The intentions are good, but we still have plenty of work to do.”

The bank brings in expert social partners to advise it where necessary. “Colleagues in many parts of the bank are also working on diversity and inclusion, and their efforts amplify the positive impact that we’re achieving,” Agnies adds. “Other important tools are our diversity circles and other employee networks that focus on matters such as gender equality, cultural diversity, occupational impairments, LGBTiQ+ and now also neurodiversity. These networks serve as ambassadors for their themes and identify areas for improvement.”

Great results

Good reporting shows how an inclusive and diverse culture contributes to a company’s positive social impact, Agnies highlights. “We have plenty to report on; we’ve been doing this for a long time, and we’ve achieved loads of great results. We report those results externally as well as internally.” The goals and results have also been included in ABN AMRO’s annual reports going back several years.

Nicole continues, “We constantly monitor and improve our activities: every calendar quarter, we map out what we’ve achieved in terms of our diversity goals.” An additional advantage is that this makes it easier to comply with the reporting obligations under the ever-more-stringent laws and regulations. “Just take the requirements under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which has come into force for many large companies in 2024. We still need to do quite a lot, for example to collect all our data points, but even so we were able to issue a statement on it in our 2023 annual report.” The bank’s focus on gender diversity also puts it ahead of the legislation governing the balance between men and women at executive levels in the business sector.

In addition,in 2017 ABN AMRO became one of the few companies in the Netherlands to map out the cultural backgrounds of its people. Agnies explains, “This information helps in various ways, like in identifying potential differences in our reports on equal pay and opportunities for promotion.”

An inspiration to other organisations

Nicole and Agnies take pride in the inspiration that ABN AMRO’s diversity policy provides to other organisations. Nicole continues, “We expect our partners and vendors to make diversity improvements too. For example, during the years ahead ABN AMRO will shift the focus of its sponsorship policy for the art and culture sector to emphasise equal opportunities for women in art.”

Understanding each other

Diversity without inclusion is impossible. The bank wants to be an open company where everyone is free to be themselves. Agnies says, “We encourage colleagues to get to know each other better – even if they’re quite different.” This is illustrated by the Ramadan Experience that colleagues can sign up for. “We put non-Muslim colleagues in touch with colleagues who observe Ramadan. We also highlight the Chinese New Year and the Hindu Holi festival. This helps us all to better understand our colleagues’ culture and traditions, and we’ve seen some wonderful connections grow out of this. Those connections are making the bank a more inclusive and better organisation.”