What are the material issues the company has identified?

In its 2018 Sustainability Report Housing Bank identified a range of material issues, such as financial performance, governance, ethics and compliance, customer experience and satisfaction, combatting financial crimes. Among these, promoting employee development stands out as a key material issue for Housing Bank.

Stakeholder engagement in accordance with the GRI Standards

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) defines the Principle of Stakeholder Inclusiveness when identifying material issues (or a company’s most important impacts) as follows:

“The reporting organization shall identify its stakeholders, and explain how it has responded to their reasonable expectations and interests.”

Stakeholders must be consulted in the process of identifying a company’s most important impacts and their reasonable expectations and interests must be taken into account. This is an important cornerstone for CSR / sustainability reporting done responsibly.

Key stakeholder groups Housing Bank engages with:

To identify and prioritise material topics Housing Bank engaged with its stakeholders through the following channels:

Stakeholder Group	Method of engagement
Customers	·      Various communication channels ·      Regular questionnaires and surveys ·      Receiving, analysing and addressing customer complaints
Shareholders	·      Annual reports and sustainability reports ·      Bank website ·      Annual general assembly meeting ·      Bank rating by international rating agencies
Employees	·      Community service and volunteering (Ataa Al Iskan team) ·      Annual employee satisfaction survey ·      Periodic interaction via phone calls, e-mails and meetings ·      Receiving and following up employee complaints ·      Annual performance evaluation ·      Training and development
Government entities	·      Periodic reports submitted to government agencies ·      Laws and regulations ·      Supporting initiatives of interest at the national level
Suppliers	·      Meetings ·      Contracts
Society	·      Various media (audio, visual and written media) ·      Social Media ·      Annual reports and sustainability reports ·      Community initiatives ·      Supporting environmental and social activities

What actions were taken by Housing Bank to promote employee development?

In its 2018 Sustainability Report Housing Bank reports that it took the following actions for promoting employee development:

• Providing theoretical and practical training opportunities
• Housing Bank provides theoretical and practical training opportunities to prepare employees and raise their professional performance levels, so as to qualify them to carry out various banking activities both inside and outside the Kingdom of Jordan. Training is offered in various fields of banking, financial, investment and administrative work, in addition to conferences, seminars, and specialised forums. The training programmes and courses resulted in approximately 24 training hours per employee on average during 2018, with a focus on the actual needs of Housing Bank and its employees. Additionally, in 2017 and 2018, Housing Bank provided training courses to raise awareness of the environment and social issues, such as the annual Social Responsibility Conference, the design and installation of solar energy systems and renewable energy alternatives, as well as dispatching a number of employees to attend the Fifth Renewable Energy Investment Forum. In 2018, Housing Bank also enhanced the culture of learning by continuing to annually send a number of employees to obtain academic and professional certificates from leading national and international institutes, universities and training centres.

• Establishing a training and development centre
• Initially, when Housing Bank was first founded, employee training used to be outsourced to external training centres inside and outside of Jordan. However, as the number of employees, branches, and business operations grew, a specialised training department was established in 1980 to serve as a centralised internal training centre for Housing Housing Bank’s training centre supervises the management and organisation of several training courses and seminars inside and outside of the Kingdom of Jordan, which address various aspects of banking, administrative, and financial work. As a result of Housing Bank’s success in the field of training, some local and Arab institutions have dispatched their employees to join the training courses held by Housing Bank’s training centre, thus developing remarkable relationships between training centres in the Arab World. Over the course of its interactions and cooperations with Jordanian scientific institutions, Housing Bank also hosted a large number of university and college students in order to familiarise them with its activities and train them on its various on-site workings.

• Launching the “Tamkeen” platform for electronic training
• In a move to enhance performance efficiency and achieve high levels of productivity, Housing Bank launched the “Tamkeen” platform for electronic training and qualification of its employees, in cooperation with Salalim, a leading company in electronic training and learning. The “Tamkeen” platform enables employees at all functional levels to participate in specialised training courses held by the platform and to electronically obtain certificates after passing the required tests. Tamkeen seeks to provide regular and continuous training to employees, with the aim of refining their basic banking skills and knowledge and enabling them to operate banking mechanisms and specialised concepts, including but not limited to: compliance, anti-money laundering and information security, as well as creating an institutional environment and culture conducive to education and skill acquisition. Tamkeen’s learning programmes can be accessed by employees anytime, anywhere, which allows for increased efficiency in the learning process and causes minimum disruption to Housing Bank’s processes in all divisions and departments. The “Tamkeen” platform also offers bonuses and rewards to employees for outstanding performance throughout, as a positive incentive for further training and development.

Which GRI Standards and corresponding Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been addressed?

The GRI Standards addressed in this case are:

1) Disclosure 404-1 Average hours of training per year per employee

2) Disclosure 404-2 Programs for upgrading employee skills and transition assistance programs

 

Disclosure 404-1 Average hours of training per year per employee corresponds to:

• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4: Quality Education
• Targets: 4.3, 4.4, 4.5
• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5: Gender Equality
• Targets: 5.1
• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
• Targets: 8.2, 8.5
• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 10: Reduced Inequalities
• Targets: 10.3

 Disclosure 404-2 Programs for upgrading employee skills and transition assistance programs corresponds to:

• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
• Targets: 8.2, 8.5

 

78% of the world’s 250 largest companies report in accordance with the GRI Standards

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References:

1) This case study is based on published information by Housing Bank, located at the link below. For the sake of readability, we did not use brackets or ellipses. However, we made sure that the extra or missing words did not change the report’s meaning. If you would like to quote these written sources from the original, please revert to the original on the Global Reporting Initiative’s Sustainability Disclosure Database at the link:

http://database.globalreporting.org/

2) https://www.globalreporting.org/standards/gri-standards-download-center/

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