Founded in 1817 as Australia’s first bank, Westpac Banking Corporation provides consumer, business and institutional banking services along with wealth management and administration to customers across Australia, New Zealand and Asia.

Recognising that the future of work and the way people want to work is changing, Westpac moved to completely rethink its traditional corporate environment and migrate 10,000 corporate employees to agile environments and behaviours. With the attraction and retention of talent and the stimulation of innovation identified as essential for Westpac’s future growth; a strategic HR program called WorkSMART was developed to drive technological and operational change at Westpac.

Led by the HR team, WorkSMART recognises the importance of empowering employees to choose how, when and where they work by transforming Westpac’s corporate environment, tools, systems, policies and culture. Employees were engaged in consultation workshops with a focus on understanding what employees wanted. This engagement process enabled the WorkSMART team to build a comprehensive change experience that encompassed the requirements from across all project streams including technology, property, operations, paper reduction and behavioural change.

Subsequently, a 12-month high-quality, integrated, pre and post-move cultural change program was developed for individuals and leaders, which encouraged role modelling and embedded new ways of working. This program included educational workshops, a new WorkSMART dedicated intranet portal and an executive program, designed to build executive awareness. Anchored around neuroscience principles, workshops set leaders up to succeed in the new agile environment and to become champions of change, flexibility and collaboration. Technological changes and paper independence where also prominent in assisting employees to become more agile and collaborative around the workplace.

The implementation of WorkSMART has seen the introduction of new, agile environments in the workplace, alongside new technologies that have increased collaboration. Following the shift, the percentage of employees who felt that their workplace encouraged collaboration doubled to 88%, and the percentage of employees who felt technology supported their work increased by 43%.