RBC recently hosted its third annual Culture and Community Day, an event held annually in Europe where RBC colleagues come together to learn, understand and celebrate our purpose and culture. This year, Allison MacKinnon, Managing Director, Debt Capital Markets hosted a panel which explored perspectives from two of the largest UK corporate clients, grocery retailer, Tesco and mining corporation, Rio Tinto.
Both companies shared their views on the importance of corporate culture in creating high-performance and inclusive teams that can drive improved commercial outcomes and support positive social change.
Team culture is about winning hearts and minds
Rio Tinto is a leading global mining company with a need to ensure operational resilience in competitive and fast-moving commodities markets. Maurita Sutedja, Group Treasurer, Rio Tinto spoke of the importance of company culture within her organization and the need to develop a unity of mission by bringing your people with you on your corporate journey. This can be particularly important at times of significant change and transformation. “When you’re engaging in change management you need to win hearts and minds or else you won’t be able to get the best out of your team” she says.
This can mean supporting change within your organization, such as the company’s publication of an external review of its workplace culture in 2022, which aimed to enable cultural change across its global operations.[i]
Sutedja, who spoke of her pride to be an Asian woman in a leading role within the organization, said that she was proud of being part of an organization that strives to improve its internal culture. “Owning and recognizing where we aren’t doing as well and making sure we show respect to employees at every step of the way is key,” she says. “To make this kind of change sustainable you need to embed it into the tenets of your leadership,” she adds.
Sutedja explained that Rio Tinto is guided by values of care, courage, and curiosity. She believes it is important to empower and encourage colleagues to deliver the best outcomes for the company, while also ensuring they feel supported by leadership. “You have to create an environment where people are challenged to try new things while also feeling that you’ve got their back,” she explains.
Fostering a healthy internal culture doesn’t just deliver the best outcomes for the organization, but also facilitates relationships with key stakeholders such as banking partners. “Rio Tinto is a long-cycle company,” says Sutedja. “We don’t just look at relationships in terms of three or five years, but over multiple decades,” she continues. She emphasizes the need to foster genuine relationships with partners, rather than taking a purely transactional approach.
Supporting social mobility by building inclusive cultures
There are many dimensions to diversity and inclusion, from questions of gender parity to empowering underrepresented communities and facilitating social mobility. Tesco was one of the first companies to publish data on the gender pay gap, explains Andy Henley, Group Treasury Director, Tesco PLC, as part of the company’s wider commitment to diversity and inclusion. “Other companies have dipped their toes into this space, but with Tesco it feels like part of the fabric of the organization,” he says. He explains that the concept of diversity has broadened in scope in recent years and that it is important for companies to embrace social change.
“We have all types of colleague groups represented within Tesco, including an LGBTQ+ network and a Black Advisory Group,” he explains. As well as facilitating diversity and inclusion, Tesco is now offering enhanced leave allocations to employees, including extensions to maternity and fertility leave, as well as a new kindship leave allowance introduced in 2023.[ii]
Social mobility is a core concern for the retailer, which has a significant presence on every British high street. The company places a strong emphasis on social mobility, explains Henley, with senior leaders within the organization being the first in the family to go to university or having started their careers on the shop floor.
Breaking out of corporate silos
Another cultural challenge is the need to break out of a silo mentality when it comes to managing teams. Henley says it is important to offer team members opportunities to take on new roles or to engage in role swaps with colleagues in order to enhance their experience.
“It’s a beautiful thing to be able to do because you get to give people an interesting new experience while providing a safety net,” he says. Henley’s team also offers opportunities for senior team members to partner with more junior members of staff in order to break out of institutional silos within the company. “By giving junior people on the team more exposure, they experience learning by osmosis and that makes a massive difference,” says Henley. “Corporates need to work with their banking partners to enable this to happen,” he explains.
Henley believes that for companies to perform at their best, they need to create a welcoming culture that is open to all. “88% of respondents to our Every Voice Matters survey reported that they feel that they can turn up at work and be themselves without feeling judged,” he says. “I think it’s also on us as leaders to be authentic and bring our real personality to work,” he adds. Sutedja agrees with the need to have an open and dynamic approach to career development. She believes it’s important to give people both a depth and breadth of experience within your teams. “We want to give people options so that they are empowered to grow within a financial organization and are brave enough so that they don’t limit their career path,” she explains.
Creating a positive internal culture also means ensuring positive relationships with clients and stakeholders. Henley says this is a reason Tesco values its working relationship with RBC Europe. “Having the right cultural fit and working with people who get your organization and understand your teams is hugely important,” he explains. “RBC is an organization that Tesco wants to work with, and we look forward to discussions with their team.”
[i] https://www.riotinto.com/news/releases/2022/Rio-Tinto-releases-external-review-of-workplace-culture
[ii] https://www.tescoplc.com/tesco-is-first-uk-supermarket-to-give-kinship-carers-same-support-as-adoptive-parents/
