We work with many different customers and clients across Africa and we believe that our success will only continue if we focus on our diverse customer base. To do that, we need people who understand and reflect both the broad range of our customers' needs and the different societies we operate in.

As an organisation we also have to understand and value the diverse needs of our people. So we're building an inclusive and engaging culture where empowered, motivated and customer-focused people have the scope to create the best solutions for our clients, customers and shareholders. During 2011, our main focus was on gender and disability.

Disability

We're working towards becoming a 'disability positive' organisation. This means building an inclusive work environment that supports our employees with disabilities and ensures they have the opportunity to reach their full professional potential. To achieve this, we need to be confident in how we recruit, manage and develop employees with disabilities. We also need to engage positively with customers who have disabilities, to ensure they have full access to our range of products.

Gender awareness

One of our pioneering initiatives is the Tutuwa Community Trust, which awarded 10 million ordinary shares in the Standard Bank Group to small and medium-sized enterprises that were at least 50% black-owned small and medium-sized enterprises (BSMEs). Each BSME shareholder received around 40,000 shares worth R1.8 million.

Gender awareness

We're well aware of the need to make the most of the diverse skills, knowledge and expertise of the people who work for Standard Bank, as well as ensuring that we hire people from the widest variety of backgrounds and experiences. To achieve this, we've focused on creating a more inclusive environment for women across the bank through a range of initiatives, including:

Sponsorship and membership of Women in Banking and Finance, Women in Finance and African Women Chartered Accountants Forum. These external networks provide professional support for women in the industry.

We're reviewing recommendations for improving our maternity policy so that it's consistent across all our African operations.

We launched Maternity Coaching Workshops to help retain female employees and support them and their line managers through all stages of maternity and their return to work.

We introduced women's networking forums to help and support professional development for women in the bank. These programmes will also give our female employees the chance to become future coaches and mentors to new employees.

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