6. Valuing our people

What’s the issue

An engaging, sound and healthy work environment encourages high quality performance as well as high employee satisfaction and loyalty. This is in the interest of both customers and shareholders. To maintain our position as the relationship bank SEB must attract, develop and retain the best people so that we can provide the best service and experience to our customers.

Why it’s important to SEB What we want to achieve What we’ve done so far

Why it’s important to SEB

We believe that all people want to develop. Employees who are encouraged, challenged and take responsibility for their personal development, will grow and contribute to the long-term success of our business. The well-being of our employees is essential for our ability to perform.

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What we want to achieve

Our goal is to offer our employees and potential employees the very best work environment with equal opportunities to develop their individual careers, regardless of gender, ethnicity, age, sexual inclination or religion. Our ambition is to have each gender represented by at least 50 per cent at each level within our organisation and to increase the proportion of employees with foreign backgrounds recruited to SEB.

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What we’ve done so far

In this section we present some of our achievements with a sustainable perspective, that SEB has accomplished so far. They range from very broad initiatives to small steps in our daily work.

Employee survey

SEB has conducted comprehensive employee surveys for more than a decade. In 2011, 89 per cent of our employees, answered the survey, and the result showed improvements in all major areas compared with 2009. Employees rated own empowerment and engagement highly, and a large majority, 73 per cent, would gladly recommend a friend to apply for a job at SEB. 79 per cent would recommend a friend to become an SEB customer. Almost as many – 74 per cent – provided positive responses in areas such as corporate culture, employee engagement and confidence in management.

An engaging workplace

We use several channels to maintain an open and ongoing dialogue with our employees. Apart from the Intranet we use an internal professional collaboration platform for communication and feedback. It enables employees to connect with colleagues globally, to share knowledge, ideas and success stories.

Through the group-wide employee engagement programme “You are SEB” we have strengthened our focus on customer insight and on increasing the collaboration among our people. During 2011, employees and managers within SEB have participated in dialogues focusing on our values, how we meet customer expectations and how we can become better at cooperating within the organisation.

A developing, performance driven workplace

Our employees are expected to take considerable responsibility for their own work, individual development and career. Performance is continuously followed up through structured dialogues between managers and employees which focus on evaluating past performance planning achievable goals for the future. An important part of the dialogue is to highlight the connection between the individuals' objectives and performance and SEB's overall group objectives, strategy and vision. 

In 2011, 83 per cent of all employees stated that they had had this dialogue and 85 per cent that they had received constructive feedback on their performance.

Employee training and development are important to SEB, helping us to maintain our competitiveness and stimulate our employees by not only setting them challenging and developing tasks, but also providing them with knowledge.

Passionate people and leaders

We put high value on exemplary leadership as part of our ongoing efforts to create leaders for long term responsibility for our customers, business and our social impact. We want our leaders to lead by helping their colleagues to develop and reach their full potential. We are looking for passionate people with an entrepreneurial spirit. During 2011, 450 managers within SEB participated in one of the leadership programmes.

Source: YouTube, Charles Schwab hired his customers, leadertools

A healthy & family-friendly workplace

We want our people to enjoy a good balance between work and private life and we therefore provide a number of work-life balance solutions, adapted to local conditions, rules and regulations. Examples include home and family services for parents, parents’ insurance and preventive health care benefits. In Sweden, where 40 per cent of our workforce is located, we offer benefits in the form of extra compensation for parental leave and continued support of household services.

Employees who are supported by their companies return from parental leave sooner, are absent from work less and are often more productive. In a broader perspective, achieving a sustainable, innovative economy is not possible in the long-run without family-friendly working conditions.

A diverse workplace

We encourage diversity through our internal job market, where all vacant positions are advertised. Diversity should also be taken into account when nominating people for management and leadership training courses. We continuously recruit employees with foreign backgrounds to our branch offices in Sweden, since this enriches our internal culture with additional perspectives and make it easier for customers with foreign backgrounds to bank with us.

An equal workplace

We actively work to identify, develop and encourage women to take senior positions in SEB. As a routine, there must always be at least one female candidate for all senior positions. In 2011, the share of women in managerial positions was 43 per cent and 51 per cent of all participants in any of SEB's basic leadership programmes were female.

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