Scentre Group included in Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index

Scentre Group today announced that it was one of 325 companies globally, and one of nine in Australia, included in the 2020 Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index (GEI). This marks the first time Scentre Group has been included in the index and supports the company’s focus on talent, diversity and inclusion.

The GEI showcases leadership on gender equality across multiple dimensions and tracks the financial performance of public companies committed to supporting gender equality through policy development, representation, and transparency. The index measures gender equality across five pillars: female leadership and talent pipeline, equal pay and gender pay parity, inclusive culture, sexual harassment policies and pro-women brand.

Scentre Group CEO Peter Allen said: “We are pleased to have been included in the GEI for the first time this year, recognising our ongoing commitment to creating a more equal and inclusive workplace,” Mr Allen said.

“We are addressing gender equality on a number of fronts to ensure we drive strong employee engagement and retention and improve our productivity and business performance. This includes a Board-endorsed Diversity and Inclusion policy, an executive team endorsed D&I strategy and an active D&I Council driven by employee-led Working Groups. We think this balance between governance and targeted action fosters a culture that is consistent with our aspiration to be ‘the place where talent thrives’.”

Mr Allen said Scentre Group has a Gender Equity Working Group as part its D&I Council to remain focused on targets and address any perceived barriers for women to achieve more senior executive roles.

“As CEO, I have a direct engagement program which includes Welcome Breakfasts to support onboarding and retention, a parental leavers lunch and other informal forums where I can hear from our people on the issues that are top of mind for them,” he said.

“We provide equitable pay for like roles by gender and have continued to increase the proportion of women at all levels of management, with women currently representing 44 per cent of all people managers and 28 per cent at senior executive level.

“In 2019, we continued our advocacy for parental leave equality. We recently updated our Parental Leave Policy to provide more options for our employees to ‘share the care’ including doubling the number of paid leave for secondary carers from two to four weeks and reducing the qualifying service requirement for paid parental leave from 12 months to 6 months.

“Our plans and actions are delivering progress, but there’s a lot more to be done. Being transparent with our data and sharing our performance externally keeps us on track as we strive to do better.”

Scentre Group has been endorsed by the Australian Workplace Gender Equality Agency as an employer of choice for the past two years. The company has been awarded Bronze status for the past two years at the Australian Workplace Equality Index Awards. CEO Peter Allen has been a Property Male Champion of Change since 2015.