white. there was only one female. it was more than clear that change needed to start at the top for it to have any meaning amongst the staff of the bank. so where do we stand today in terms of equity representation within the board of directors and the bank as a whole? the following statistics are taken from the bank ’ s annual report on the employment equity plan to the department of labour and has accordingly become a public document and is available for public scrutiny. as of the 31st march 2006, the board of directors was composed of ten ( 10 ) black directors and four ( 4 ) who were white. of these, five were female. the secretary of the bank is a black male. the board has a committee of non - executive directors which is chaired by a female director. the executive team is made up of five ( 5 ) black members out of seven ( 7 ). there is a vacancy for a deputy governor and hopefully this could be occupied by a female. the monetary committee ( mpc ) has seven members. at the moment five ( 5 ) are black and two ( 2 ) are white. the secretary of the mpc is a black male. this is quite a nice mix, ` me thinks `! the total workforce of the bank comprised 56 per cent blacks and 46 per cent women. the management levels of the bank comprised 43 per cent blacks and 36 per cent females. the strategic general management level comprised 51 per cent blacks and 20 per cent females. the figures speak for themselves. you can draw your own conclusions. so what were the successful strategies that supported these transformation objectives? they focused mainly on the manner in which the bank aligned its workforce movements with its strategic employment equity objectives. in general the bank ’ s staff turnover rate hovers between 5 and 8 per cent. in 2005, the bank ’ s black turnover rate was 6. 18 per cent and that of females was 4. 51 per cent with the bank total turnover rate at 5. 62 per cent. in 2006, the bank ’ s black turnover rate was 6. 64 per cent and that of females was 5. 56 per cent with the bank total turnover rate at 7. 07 per cent. the following discussion is focused on the bank ’ s workforce movements since its first employment equity plan in 2000. who has the bank been recruiting? the following recruitment percentages answer this question : table 1 recruitment by race and gender % blacks % females the executive team at that time was comprised of the governor, three deputy

significantly reduced to just 3 in 2006. some officials from the department of labour have often cited the consultation mechanism of the bank as a benchmark that other organisations could emulate. the bank ’ s eecb has hosted various organisations that were keen to learn about how the bank ’ s consultative mechanism functioned so harmoniously. further, the bank ’ s change management unit was instrumental in establishing the employment equity forum – a platform at which employment equity practitioners from the bank and various other organisations including telkom, escom, sabc and the big - four banks meet to discuss, debate and demystify employment equity issues and prepare for challenges going forward. the bank is committed to more than just achieving its numerical goals. we are convinced that supporting our staff to develop their skills and proficiencies to their full potential is a more important objective than just pursuing a numbers game. in the last year we have conducted both a skills audit and a bank - wide organisational culture and climate survey primarily because we wanted to establish the developmental needs of our employees and also to determine empirically, what makes employees want to stay in the bank ’ s employ and what issues may coerce or indeed induce them to resign. the findings of both audits have resulted in the need for a strategic response from the bank to mitigate against the issues that have been identified. over and above these interventions, the bank has revised all of its policies to ensure that we remove all vestiges of unfair discrimination against the designated group and also to ensure that we kept abreast with best practices both nationally and internationally. the bank has a generous study aid policy for both employees and their children. we have committed programmes that focus on abet. staff is encouraged to attend conferences both as participants and also as delegates in the country and internationally. maternity benefits have been significantly improved. the bank has joined the bankseta in its letsema project through which we fulfil some of our corporate social responsibilities. we have a dedicated programme that focuses on graduate recruitment ( this is our cadet programme ). the bank views the policy revision process as an ongoing endeavour. our philosophical views on transformation are documented in the bank ’ s vision 2010 which says that “ the responsibility to effect change lies not only with management, but also with all staff – every one should be an agent of change. ” the operative phrase here is that “ everyone should be an agent of change ”, not to sit around and whinge and complain, but to do something positive to