QBE Insurance Group Limited
Annual & Sustainability 2020 Highlights
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In line with our QBE DNA and culture, the safety and wellbeing of our people around the world have remained our priority throughout QBE’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We implemented contact tracing protocols and global tracking of confirmed employee cases, ensuring specific support measures were in place for employees in high risk categories, including our international assignee population. As we moved to working from home globally, we provided our employees with the necessary equipment and support mechanisms. Feedback from across the organisation was that our employees were grateful for our approach and the priority we placed on supporting our teams and efficiently equipping them for remote working.
To support our ongoing crisis response, a multifunctional and global crisis management team (CMT) was formed, consisting of Human Resources (HR), communications and business continuity teams. The CMT met frequently, through the critical crisis time from March to May, with a clear cadence of 1:1 conversations directly with each QBE locality using a consistent crisis response checklist. The CMT focused on:
Across our business, the health, safety and wellbeing of all employees, contractors and visitors are key priorities. The following policies continue to support our efforts in this area:
Our Group and divisional CEOs take executive‑level responsibility for these topics. All people leaders at QBE are responsible for improving employee awareness of, and access to, relevant policies, processes and support.
Our global WHS Leadership Team exchanges initiatives and ideas from members’ respective locations to enhance the offerings available to staff and contractors, and to mitigate risks that may arise. The team regularly reports their work and findings to the Group Board.
QBE Asia was selected as a Top Insurance Workplace in 2020 by Insurance Business Asia in recognition of our response to COVID-19 and for our continued focus on fostering a diverse and empowered workplace that positively affects our people.
Across our business, we launched a series of initiatives including virtual events, webinars and 1:1 wellbeing coaching. Examples of topics covered included burnout, nutritional advice, resiliency in times of uncertainty, looking out for co‑workers and stress management. We introduced wellbeing check‑ins within teams across QBE to drive a culture of care and reduce the stigma associated with poor mental health. Our Employee Assistance Programs in each division played a major role in our COVID‑19 response.
Physical wellbeing has proved more important than ever with many countries experiencing, often severe, movement restrictions. We delivered webinars focused on physical wellbeing, eating healthily and stretching. In Europe, we partnered with nutrition expert SuperWellness and PureGym, a mobile fitness app offering virtual high intensity training workouts, and offered yoga sessions and screen break videos. In North America, we expanded the wellbeing rebate program that reimburses health‑related activities and community agriculture programs to encourage employees to take care of themselves while working from home.
This period of economic uncertainty has highlighted financial wellbeing as a key concern for our employees. We have provided resources and webinars to support our people on different aspects of financial wellbeing. This included 1:1 financial reviews, webinars on financial wellness, classes on budgeting, training on retirement planning (including superannuation and pension fund management) and estate planning.
We are committed to supporting a diverse and inclusive workforce by recognising and responding to people’s needs at different stages of their lives. As employees transformed their homes into offices, we launched resources to support working from home, with tailored learning programs on leading teams virtually and guidelines for creating ergonomic workspaces. Our Flex@QBE Principles guide how we approach flexible working, considering both the needs of the business and the preferences of our employees. We understand that people have had to take on additional responsibilities and stresses during the pandemic. We introduced additional sick leave for those who exhausted all other leave entitlements. In North America, we introduced caregiver leave, which provides unpaid job‑protected leave for up to 12 weeks, plus 10 days with pay.
During 2020, we introduced several initiatives to protect vulnerable employees. In Europe, we provided additional domestic abuse resources and support. In Australia Pacific, we launched the ‘Care & Connect’ series to provide leaders with the knowledge and resources to support their teams’ individual needs through remote working. We also expanded our policy to offer 10 days dedicated Family & Domestic Violence leave and launched a Family & Domestic Violence First Responder national network across Australia and New Zealand to support our people. Across all our divisions, we monitored who was going into the office and conducted wellbeing checks where these were deemed necessary to gauge whether employees were safe working from home.
