Creating a more accessible and inclusive bank

One in six Australians and one in four New Zealanders live with a disability. These are our family members, friends, neighbours and colleagues.

Labour force participation for people with disability remains a huge challenge. The unemployment rate for Australians with disability is 10 per cent - more than double the rate of other Australians (4.6 per cent) - and the figures are similar in New Zealand.

Disability continues to be the largest category of discrimination complaints before the Australian Human Rights Commission.

Improving outcomes for people with disability requires a whole of community response – from government, the community sector, small and large businesses, and individuals.

Our commitment to accessibility and inclusion

ANZ has released its Accessibility and Inclusion Plan 2023-2025 which includes an expanded set of commitments to drive and embed accessibility and inclusion across the bank.

Four key focus areas outline opportunities and actions that will enable us to better serve all customers and create an inclusive workplace for our people.

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Our refreshed commitments extend to New Zealand where the bank has more than one million customers and 8400 employees.

For Dr Chandra Harrison, Managing Director Digital Accessibility at Access Advisors New Zealand, the latest plan is an important way to help organisations understand and implement digital accessibility.

“We look forward to working with ANZ to replicate the success from Australia here in New Zealand. It’s great to see a comprehensive and proactive plan for accessibility and inclusive design. Articulating the commitment in a clear way will help facilitate implementation,” she says.

The plan’s 14 commitments and detailed actions are designed to truly integrate accessibility across all parts of the organisation as digital transformation takes hold.

Initiatives include accessibility reviews of digital forms and collateral, ensuring marketing campaigns are inclusive and represent people with disability, piloting communication access tools in our branches and addressing gaps for people with disability working in hybrid work environments.

With an emphasis on elevating the voice of lived experience, many people have helped shape ANZ’s focus to build a more accessible bank. Our Accessibility and Inclusion Plan is the culmination of extensive consultation with ANZ employees, including the ANZ Abilities Network, and our partnerships in the wider community.

Empowering the voice of employees

With a clear purpose to make ANZ’s workplace and culture more supportive of people with disability, ANZ’s Abilities Network is a contact point and voice for employees living with disability.

Established in 2005, the network now has more than 100 members representing employees across Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Fiji and Singapore.

The group continues to raise awareness around accessibility and inclusion including providing AUSLAN classes, giving staff an opportunity to try tools like Assistive Touch iPads and sharing the experience and impact of visible and invisible disabilities on peoples’ lives.

More than 400 people with disability have joined ANZ’s workforce since 2019 and 354 jobseekers with disability have participated in the Positive Action towards Career Engagement (PACE) Mentoring program.

To date, more than 3000 ANZ employees have completed disability confidence training, each year 14,000 employees participate in mental health awareness training and ANZ now has an in-house Auslan interpreter fluent in Australian sign language.

Annual ANZ Abilities Network STAR awards have been celebrated every year since 2005 and recognise people who go above and beyond to make the bank more inclusive and accessible for employees, customers and the community.

Improving employment opportunities at ANZ for people with disability, from early talent right through to leadership, is an important part of ANZ’s Accessibility and Inclusion Plan.

A disability- confident workforce

ANZ was involved in early-stage discussions for the IncludeAbility project with the Disability Discrimination Commissioner Dr Ben Gauntlett.

There are now two IncludeAbility pilot employment programs underway, in Western Australia and regional New South Wales, which aim to increase meaningful employment opportunities for people with disability while closing the gap between people with disability and people without disability in the workplace.

Dr Gauntlett says, “we want organisations throughout Australia to understand that employing people with a disability is a critical human rights issue. It’s not just about being a charitable, good thing to do, it is about making sure that your business or organisation is fit for purpose for generations of Australians now and in the future.”

ANZ’s latest plan sees a shift to more of a proactive rather than reactive strategy.

“We’ve got to move from focusing disability policy on talking about the ‘why’ to talking about the ‘how’,” says Dr Gauntlett.

“It’s about implementation. And telling stories about where things have worked out well, not just the egregious situations.”

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ANZ’s accessibility commitments provide a framework for practical, measurable change to make the bank more inclusive for everyone in the community.

Read more about ANZ’s Accessibility and Inclusion Plan 2023-2025

Meg Dalling is Customer Vulnerability and Accessibility Lead at ANZ