Kiwibank: ‘Widening the gate’ with revamped recruitment guidelines
Kiwibank has a commitment to ensuring that its people reflect its customers and communities across Aotearoa because having a diverse workforce means that its customers and community are looked after in the right way. Kiwibank Recruitment Manager Maddock Price states, “At Kiwibank, we have a lot of Māori and Pasifika customers, so we need to have a diverse team to support them, right from different languages and cultures and tikanga, all of it.”
This needs to begin with inclusive recruitment strategies to remove barriers and attract the most diverse candidate group possible. Kiwibank launched its new DEI recruitment guidelines and strategy in 2023, which takes a targeted approach to ensure Māori and Pasifika are represented fairly across the organisation, along with other underrepresented groups. Price notes “we need to open up the net as wide as possible”. This means asking meaningful questions such as “How do we recruit? What standards do we put into our process?”
The guidelines support having clear and localised targets for individual teams and areas of the nationwide business based on data on current ethnic representation in specific parts of the business. Price notes that “Our branches are different to the contact centre to digital and tech... Some of our teams are doing really well so we just want to keep doing that.”
The new guidelines focus on a value-based reassessment of business areas, replacing the usual one-size-fits-all approach. Recruiting with diversity in mind means tailoring the process for each role. This does not mean sacrificing ‘quality’ and ‘must haves’ but critically reviewing what is necessary for each job. Price says, “We must have certain hard skills or soft skills. We are not going to compromise on that.” But the list of essential skills should be free of things that are not actually essential for the role, providing more opportunity for those who are often dismissed.
Part of encouraging a wider range of people to apply for jobs is also about communicating better to underrepresented communities in ways that speak to their culture and values. “We do things like showing a role’s purpose through good imagery, videos on how their roles can positively impact Māori and Pasifika communities, hapū, iwi, churches, and family. Māori and Pasifika have a holistic worldview that encompasses impact on their community,” said Price.
Culturally grounded placement intermediaries have also been important in diversifying recruitments and providing post-placement support. Price notes, “There are so many organisations doing the hard mahi… we are aiming to lean into what they are doing and that great partnership, and figure out from our side what we need to do to make it work, and more importantly how do we make it successful for those who do come on board.”
Senior leadership support has been essential in driving the DEI agenda at Kiwibank, where “[we] have women and Māori and Pacific leadership targets, and the executive team are held accountable for that.” Similarly, the DEI recruitment guidelines were launched by the Chief People Officer. Price notes, “It has to come from the top... As soon as our CPO launched [the guidelines and strategy]... and then I came in – to talk about actually how to achieve this strategy, it resulted in immediate buy-in. “Without that [senior support and launch] it would have fallen flat.”
The DEI recruitment guidelines will be an important lever to widen the gate for Māori and Pasifika, and for Kiwibank to meet its workforce diversity targets. There are already initial indications that revised recruitment processes are diversifying the candidate pool.
Case Study Summary
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Kiwibank aims to have its workforce reflect the communities it serves, with specific targets being 11.8% of all kaimahi to be Māori, and 9.2% of all kaimahi to be Pasifika, representing population proportions. The approach has been to use specific recruitment guidelines to ensure representation improves in localised and targeted ways, team by team.
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Launched from the top by senior leadership, implementation and support across the organisation led by DEI-focused recruitment manager and team.
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To diversify recruitment one business area by business area. When Māori and Pasifika representation varies widely across the organisation, it means that hiring processes cannot be uniform. The new DEI recruitment guidelines support:
Data driven representation targets for different teams.
Diverse shortlists.
Diverse interview panels.
Flexibility around processes to ensure that underrepresented groups feel more comfortable going through recruitment.
Reassessing what is actually required in specific job descriptions, to remove biases and ‘widen the gate’ for different types of jobs team by team.
Working with culturally competent placement intermediaries for recruitment, onboarding support and pastoral care.
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Guidelines and targets launched by leadership with high visibility in the organisation, meaning a good level of buy-in from operational leadership. Support for implementation and understanding is led by key DEI recruitment staff as part of their core role.
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Guidelines launched 2023, to be reported on against targets in 2024 – initial reports are that shortlists and hiring are diversifying.
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Strong support from CEO and senior leadership tier, including resourcing of the work and its implementation. Senior leadership is accountable for delivering leadership representation targets.
Clear guidelines and localised targets help teams plan and reform recruitment.
The tight labour market in recent years provided an enabling environment for the organisation leaning into diversifying talent acquisition and investing in diversity, including substantial work on Māori outcomes.
Kiwibank Mātauranga Māori Award Finalist for Diversity Awards NZ
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New DEI recruitment guidelines
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Kiwibank
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