Corporate Social Responsibility Report 2019
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Diversity management

GRI:
  • [103-1] Explanation of the material topics and their boundaries
    Material topic: Diversity and equal opportunities in the workplace, including equal pay for women and men     Explanation of the material topics and their boundaries
    Material topic: Diversity and equal opportunities in the workplace, including equal pay for women and men

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  • [103-2] The management approach and its components
    Material topic: Diversity and equal opportunities in the workplace, including equal pay for women and men     The management approach and its components
    Material topic: Diversity and equal opportunities in the workplace, including equal pay for women and men

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  • [103-3] Evaluation of the management approach
    Material topic: Diversity and equal opportunities in the workplace, including equal pay for women and men     Evaluation of the management approach
    Material topic: Diversity and equal opportunities in the workplace, including equal pay for women and men

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Other guidelines:

Diversity and respect for human rights are integral elements of our corporate culture.

We want to build an inclusive and diverse working environment. We strive to maintain a gender balance in management positions and on the management board and to close the pay gap between men and women. Our activities also focus on supporting and promoting the employment of persons with disabilities.

The following policies govern the protection and promotion of diversity within the bank:

General Code of Conduct

General Code of Conduct is an overarching document that sets standards and promotes the attitudes and rules of conduct of Santander Group employees. The Code is founded on the Simple, Personal, Fair values and is a set of rules that apply to all employees of our bank, regardless of their functions.

Respect and Dignity Policy

The policy specifies how to create a diverse work environment where ethical principles are observed and the personal dignity of each employee is respected. The document is intended to counteract negative phenomena of discrimination, mobbing or harassment. An annex to this policy is the document entitled ″Support for Parents″, which describes the bank’s activities for the benefit of persons who are absent from work for a long time due to pregnancy or taking maternity, parental or child-raising leave.

Diversity Policy with regard to the composition of the bank’s Management Board

The policy includes a commitment that the bank will make every effort to ensure that candidates for members of the Management Board and key executives have a broad range of qualities and competences and have independent judgements and opinions. In addition, the Policy provides for gender balance in the composition of the Management Board and declares that there shall be no discrimination between candidates for Management Board members.

Human Rights Policy

The policy formulates a number of principles with respect to different stakeholder groups, including the bank’s commitment to ensure that all employees have equal opportunities for access to work and promotion and to prevent unequal treatment based on age, gender, race, religion, origin, marital status or financial situation.

The bank’s commitments as a signatory to the Diversity Charter

The commitments relate to building an organisational culture based on respect for diversity, developing policies and mechanisms that effectively support equal treatment and management of diversity in the workplace, promoting the benefits of diversity among stakeholders (employees, local communities, shareholders, customers) and reporting on actions taken and their results.

Sustainable Development policy

The policy provides for respect of diversity and prohibits discrimination based on sex, race/origin, age or any other grounds, and prescribes equal treatment of employees and the pursuit of a balanced representation of women and men in all functions and responsibilities.

Development programmes for women implemented in 2019

  • The Supervisory Board aims to achieve a level of at least 30% of women in the Management Board by 2025 and to increase diversity in terms of geographical origin.

As part of the programs, women leaders built their personal brands based on inspirational and mentoring sessions dedicated to leadership. We developed activities for the benefit of the women’s community and supporting women in the workplace in the roles of experts and women leaders within and outside the organization.

Female Side of Business

This is a program initiated in 2018 by women for women. Its aim is to increase the number of women in managerial roles in Santander Bank Polska. We want women to get involved in building a community of women in Santander Bank Polska and the whole Santander Group, take up professional challenges and invest in their personal development without fear.

The programme is one of the activities within the Diversity & Inclusion project currently taking place across the Santander Group and adopted as part of our bank’s HR strategy. The programme also contributes to the implementation of the Diversity Charter provisions by the bank.

Project activities:

  • mentoring

  • incentive meetings

  • networking meetings

Santander W50

This mentoring program is aimed at experienced managers and specialists. Its goal is to support preparation for top positions in companies and organizations by, among others, defining areas for development, building self-awareness, developing an individual mentoring plan or providing participants with substantive knowledge on project management and team management methods.

Monitoring of women’s and men’s pay

 

As part of its efforts to promote equal treatment of women and men, the bank monitors the remuneration of employees on the basis of gender using EPG (Equal Pay Gap) and GPG (Gender Pay Gap) indicators. For more information about it and about remuneration of women and men in Santander Bank Polska go to: Salaries and benefits

Support for women in collaboration with partners

  • Together with Vital Voices Poland and the Lesław Paga Foundation, we are a partner to programmes dedicated to women. The bank’s female employees act as experts, mentors or take part in mentoring processes.

  • In 2019 we were a partner of the Female in Tech Summit, Europe’s second largest conference for women in technology.

  • We are implementing the ″Two Hours for the Family″ campaign organised as part of the International Family Day. The bank’s employees hiterd under contracts of employment can take advantage of the additional two hours of justified absence from work to spend extra time with their families.

  • We support women in SMEs. We conduct inspirational meetings for employees and clients from the SME sector in different parts of Poland. They are an opportunity to share business practices and stories, as well as to create networks and joint CSR activities.

  • We have launched women’s communities on the SantanderGO platform (#WeHavePower and #SantanderWomen), where women can share experience and create social groups (e.g. groups for moms).

  • We have organized, among others, Women’s Tech Week under the tagline ″Women write the code of Santander’s future″. Through the stories from our experts working in the jobs of the future (Data Analyst, UX, Cybersecurity, etc.), we refuted myths about women’s low interest in the IT area. We also talked about juggling professional and family life.

Plans for 2020 on development projects for women

#SantanderWomen

In 2020 we plan to launch the #SantanderWomen initiative. We want to create a professional community of men and women based on values such as: solidarity, mutual help and support for activities enabling women to take up managerial positions. The aim of the initiative will be to inspire and develop activities aimed at women and not only. Within the community, we plan to launch newsletters with interesting articles and hold inspirational meetings.

Promotion of employment of persons with disabilities

Since 2018 we have been carrying out the Differently Abled programme preparing our organization for employing persons with disabilities. In this programme we raise awareness of the needs and rights of people with disabilities and break down barriers related to their employment.

  • The bank employed 87 persons with disabilities under employment contracts as at 31 December 2019.

Our activities in 2019:
  • We provided communication and education on the needs and rights of persons with disabilities, including workshops on savoir vivre in contacts with persons with disabilities and published a series of articles ″Share your knowledge on disabilities″ addressed to HR employees and managers.
  • We encouraged employees to disclose information about their disability and, as a result, we offered a financial allowance for this group of employees in April 2020.
  • We have expanded our cooperation with institutions (universities, foundations and other institutions) supporting employers in hiring people with disabilities in training, consultation and recruitment.
  • We were the main partner of the ″Night Listing″ event of the Wrocław University of Technology the aim of which was to collect money for the scholarship fund for disabled students.