RBC: Speak Up for Inclusion

Opportunity. This was the word that came up again and again from RBC employees as they shared their experiences working at the bank with our evaluation committee. RBC’s global culture change initiative, Speak Up For Inclusion, began with a refresh of the bank’s five-year Diversity & Inclusion Blueprint, which outlines RBC’s overall strategic diversity and inclusion priorities. This initiative focuses on helping people succeed while making a positive impact on clients and in the communities across 36 countries where the bank operates.

The initiative is driven by RBC’s Diversity and Inclusion Center of Expertise (D&I CoE) and supported by senior leaders on the bank’s Diversity Leadership Council, chaired by RBC’s President and Chief Executive Officer, Dave McKay.

While senior leaders set the tone from the top, RBC’s Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) empower employees to create functionally and regionally specific efforts to help the bank achieve its diversity and inclusion (D&I) goals. A “hub and spoke” approach to managing their D&I strategy, programs, and performance using a decentralized organizational model reflects the belief that D&I should be embedded in each part of the business.

Highlights of RBC’s initiative

• RBC’s Leadership Model — a set of behaviors used to measure the performance of all leaders at the bank — integrates inclusive leadership and talent development with performance management, helping to build a strong global culture of mentoring and sponsorship.
• The Speak Up for Inclusion video series encourages everyone in the business community to call out discrimination and give space to the voices and experiences of people from underrepresented groups in the workplace.
• Robust leadership development programs such as Women in Leadership and Ignite help advance the careers of high-potential women and people of colour. Other development programs, such as RBCx, an intensive, immersive innovation program, bring talent from across the organization to tackle business challenges and act as a springboard for participants to move into their next roles.
• RBC’s 41 ERGs — with over 27,000 members globally — advise RBC’s D&I strategy and play a major role in grassroots workplace inclusion efforts.

Women’s representation on RBC’s board of directors increased from 31% in 2015 to 38% in 2019 — and as of the end of RBC’s fiscal year 2020, it was at 47%. From 2015 to 2019, the representation of women executives in Canada rose from 38% to 46%.