Background

Customers benefit from the strength of and continued investment from the parent company, combined with local management, strategy and decision-making. Senior management live and work in Northern Ireland.

What Danske Bank did

In 2016, the bank’s CEO, a Board Member of Business in the Community and Chair of the bank’s Responsible Business Board, set out a new Vision – ‘to be recognised as the best bank in Northern Ireland for our employees, our customers, our stakeholders and society’. A strategy – known as ‘EXCELL’ was developed as the vehicle for us to realise this vision, with targets set in each area.

With a long history of supporting the communities in which it operates, this was the first time CR was formally integrated into the core business. The business invests in CR through employee time and skills, people development programmes, sponsorships, matched funding, health and wellbeing initiatives, membership costs, business growth initiatives and more. It also provides pro bono work to its partners, on a needs basis.

Danske uses PR and social media extensively to communicate what it is doing externally to all of its stakeholder groups. It believes that engaging, developing and empowering its 1,400 employees is critical to achieving its vision, and, from the outset, there has been a strong top-down and bottom-up approach.

Environmentally, the bank supports the transition to a low-carbon economy and intends to reach carbon neutrality by reducing its own energy consumption – in buildings, through the purchase of energy-efficient IT and office equipment, and in promoting behavioural change.

Impacts and Outcomes

• Employee engagement is at 79%
• 80% of employees said they found volunteering activity very rewarding
• Reduced absenteeism year on year from 4.19% to 4%
• £230k invested and £13k paid in rewards since launch of Professional Education Pathway
• 119 employees took on new roles within the bank; and there were 40 completely new roles created
• 18% reduction in costs
• 100% powered by renewable electricity
• £272k invested in business and agri sponsorships
• £70k raised for Action Mental Health in 2017
• 778 employee supported volunteer hours
• 150 hours contributed delivering our SMART programme in classrooms
• Launched new Graduate programme ‘Achieve your Ambition’
• Provided 43 work experience placements
• Target for a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2018 has already been achieved, with a 29.3% reduction being achieved in the past
• 190 solar panels installed on roof of head office, saving 17 tonnes of greenhouse gases.
• Reduced waste to landfill by 175 tonnes and recycled 571 tonnes across all properties in 2016
• The digitalisation of documents for personal customers has saved the print and postage of approximately 181k documents annually.

For more information, please email alison.falls@danskebank.co.uk