We have continued to maintain a diverse, agile, inclusive and engaging workforce who are inspired by our core values and vision. We are dedicated to maintaining a workforce free of violence, harassment, violation of laws, unsafe and disruptive behaviours. The bank offers a competitive remuneration which includes benefits like Health Management Organization (HMO) coverage, pension scheme, work-life balance and grievance mechanisms. We also regularly review our employee retention strategy to help us retain our best staff and encourage them to utilize the various learning platforms (online & offline) for skills and knowledge development. We have continued to enhance our parenthood leave which includes maternity and paternity leave.
In order to improve team bonding and internal collaboration, the bank has continued to invest in our annual sports and games tournament ‘’Wemalympics’’. This initiative contributes to our employees’ physical fitness, mental well-being and social interactions while fostering the development of other essential skills such as teamwork, tolerance, courage, resilience, and innovation.
Wema Bank believes that diversity and inclusion in our workforce are critical to our growth as a forward-looking organization. We strive to create an enabling environment for everyone regardless of gender, age, and religious or ethnic background. We also endeavor to treat all employees with fairness and respect; and give them equal opportunities to grow and succeed. We have a long-standing commitment to gender diversity and have made a lot of progress in this regard. For instance, the number of women on the Board of Directors is currently at 30% while the female officers makeup 47% of the workforce as at the end of 2019. Also, 79% of the entire workforce are millennials which reflects the changes in the Nigerian demography.
Wema Bank encourages whistleblowing, which aims to create a work environment where employees can raise concerns on ethics, governance, irregularities or malpractices, without fear of victimization and with an assurance that their concerns will be taken seriously. The whistleblowing procedure ensures anonymity for whistleblowers to protect them from victimization and harassment. All reports are investigated, and necessary sanctions applied for violations.
Wema Bank is an equal opportunity employer with no tolerance for discrimination in its workforce. Continually, we ensure that we respect human rights in our business operations and activities. Our credit processes also include screening transactions for human right issues. There is continuous communication to ensure that staff are aware of their basic rights. On a monthly basis, we reiterate the need to escalate abuse and other related issues that contravene human rights.
We recognize that a healthy workforce is a productive workforce. Hence, we take paramount care of the health and wellness of our employees by providing access to quality health care. The Bank has an onsite fitness center and a creche facility for use by our staff. We developed an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) designed for wellness to help them deal with work-life stressors and general life issues, also to achieve sound psychological and all-round health. Members of our workforce also engage in daily routine exercise sessions at specific times during work hours to ensure that they are physically and mentally fit.
As part of our commitment to protecting our employees and customers, we carry out periodic fire drills to ensure that all staff, customers and visitors in our premises understand the safety procedures in the instance of fire outbreak and also to test how effective our fire evacuation process is. The fire drills are carried out using a comprehensive action plan, specified procedures, enhanced safety technology and cooperation of all security personnel.
All staff are trained on sustainability with emphasis on local and global trends, and the impact of our business on climate change. We developed a new mandatory training module on Environmental and Social Risk Management for experienced and new hires, while also training our Board of Directors on global sustainability trends.
Our training programmes are a mix of in-house, classroom and computer-based sessions via our robust e-learning platform. We value our competent workforce and ensure that we make deliberate significant investments in their training and capacity building.