Independence Group Sustainability Report 2019

and work collaboratively to provide relevant and purposeful education pathways to serve meaningful career pathways for our burgeoning resources industry. IGO shares this belief and supports CoRE’s focus on providing students with meaningful career development. In FY19 we facilitated a number of site visits and support for Professor Lisa Harvey-Smith, the Australian Government’s Women in STEM ambassador, and her tour of the Goldfields following the launch of the Decadal Plan in 2019. Empowerment and ownership At IGO, we believe all employees should have the opportunity to be owners of the IGO business and share in the collective wealth that we create for our shareholders. We also believe that empowerment is key to employee motivation and the ability to gain satisfaction from the work we do. The importance of this statement is reflected in our 2019 engagement survey results where “having the freedom to do your role in the way you want to” rated the sixth most important factor for people’s motivation. This was rated after (1) work/ life balance, (2) learning and development, (3) good relationships, (4) career development opportunities, and (5) having a sense of purpose. Given the importance of empowerment to our motivation, our engagement survey results provide great insights and show pleasing progress on how we feel about empowerment at IGO, including: • 88 per cent said that they had the flexibility to choose how to best complete their work, representing a 14 per cent increase from 2018; • 84 per cent said that, at work, their ideas and opinions count, representing a 22 per cent increase from 2018; and • 80 per cent said they had the right tools and technology to do their job, representing a 23 per cent increase from 2018. Diversity and inclusion IGO recognises the value of diversity and inclusion and the impact this has on the working environment, organisational capability, performance and the creation of sustainable shareholder value. In accordance with our Diversity, Inclusion and Equal Employment Opportunity Corporate Governance Standard, we strive to apply fair and equitable employment practices and provide a working environment that encourages all employees to reach their full potential. Diversity is also important to ensure that IGO is representative of the communities in which we live and work. We value the diverse backgrounds, skills, talents and perspectives of our people. We recognise that achieving a diverse and inclusive community takes time and focus. In FY19, the difference that we are making and our achievements to date are evident from what our people told us: • 90 per cent of employees in our engagement survey said that IGO has a work environment that is accepting of diverse backgrounds and ways of thinking; and • 93 per cent of employees said that they feel that IGO values diversity, including age, gender, ethnicity, language, education qualifications, ideas and perspectives. Gender balance IGO actively supports improvements to the industry’s gender ratio by seeking to find innovative ways to attract and retain increased female representation into both the mining industry and our business. In FY19, we made continued progress in the implementation of initiatives designed to improve the diversity and inclusion of succession planning and retention. Key highlights for the year include: • the award of 27 per cent* of internal promotions to female candidates, along with 60 per cent of manager promotions being awarded to female candidates; • achievement of an improved gender diversity balance for new graduates recruited for FY20 of which 38.5 per cent were female; • successful trial of a school holiday care program for parents with young children in the IGO Perth office; • a positive response to our newly implemented Paid Parental Leave Standard which had eleven participants in FY19, of which 64 per cent were male; • the launch of our Flexible Work Standard and expanded flexible working options in the IGO Perth office and exploration of opportunities for further rollout at remote sites; • achievement of a 21 per cent improvement on diversity and inclusion question ratings in the annual engagement survey; • subsequent to year-end, the Board progressed the appointment of an additional female non-executive director; and • active involvement of several IGO Executive Leadership Teammembers, including our Chief Executive Officer, in formal mentoring programs for young female professionals in the industry. Despite the many challenges to achieving a year-on-year improvement to female representation across the business, in FY19 we maintained a gender balance that is more than equitable than many mining industry employers. Our latest Gender Equality Report for FY19, lodged with the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, successfully achieved a notice of compliance for the seventh consecutive year and details the many ways we are making a difference to achieving gender equality at IGO. This report is available on our website and comments on the report are welcome by emailing igofurther@igo.com.au Aboriginal employment We continue to actively support the employment of both Aboriginal people and people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds across the business. However, we could have done better. It has been a challenging year in terms of increasing Aboriginal representation in our business, we have had some pleasing results with our existing programs and people including: • maintaining Aboriginal employment at approximately three per cent of employees; • Aboriginal employees collectively recorded the highest engagement score across the business; • implementation of a number of additional Ngadju traineeships; and * Note this figure was incorrectly reported in the 2019 Annual Report. IGO SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2019 — 31