Australia and New Zealand Banking Reviews in Australia

Pros

The ability to try different kinds of roles and enhance your skill set

Cons

In a large organisation you are only a tiny fish in the ocean.

Advice to Senior Management

Enhance your talent pool in Australia

Pros

The salaries and benefits of working at ANZ are excellent. The facilities in some areas are very good and it's a good place to be exposed to large numbers of specialists in one field.

Cons

There is a great deal of focus on "how" things are done here rather than the actual outcomes achieved. People seem to be rewarded for 'box-ticking' rather than actual achievement.

In my experience it was very difficult to find hard data and implement solid measurement to support decision-making and change, which shocked me as someone new to banking---I guess I expected this to be a place with a genuine respect for numbers, but I didn't see that.

Despite two relatively recent restructures, there still appeared to me to be far too many chiefs and not enough 'do-ers'--- I encountered quite a few people who were "managers" with no direct reports or genuine managerial responsibility, which I guess is not a-typical of large organisations today.

Overall, I encountered a lot of talented people relegated to doing menial and sometimes downright counter-productive things. For someone looking for a genuine challenge and the ability to make a difference, this is far from the ideal workplace.

Advice to Senior Management

Take your branding inside: if you really want to simplify things for customers you need to figure out how to simplify things for staff first. It's just far too difficult to get anything done internally and this impacts the morale of high achievers. Less focus on process and more focus on tangible outcomes would do wonders for productivity.

Pros

good name in the market, it's a great bank to be from, good range of role you can try out before deciding what you want to do.

Cons

not like the old days anymore, people use to build career with banking house like this, now it's all about cutting cost and bs your way through to the end of the year so you can get a tiny bonus. pity

Advice to Senior Management

get real and start treating people like people not like numbers, lots of good people left because they see no career progression with in the bank.

Pros

Good remuneration, nice people, large organization and hence opportunities

Cons

Poor management discipline, bureaucracy, poor comms, no training, no accountability or consequences for poor performance

Advice to Senior Management

Add more discipline in running the organization, bust bureaucracy, train your senior leaders to instill consistent culture snd values, fire senior leaders if they do not deliver on both medium term results and in promoting "stated" organizational values NOT their own values

Pros

Peers were friendly and helpful

Cons

Lack of clear leadership in my department

Advice to Senior Management

Hire the right senior managers - ones that are competent in their field

Pros

Good training program. Flexibility and benefits

Cons

Abit archaic in approach. Can be too bogged down in re tape

Advice to Senior Management

Be more entrepreneurial

Pros

Super Regional Strategy
Strong Leadership
Oppurtunities for Career growth

Cons

Sometimes challenging to work through various stakeholders (but typical of large global organisations)

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on the strategy and supporting people to deliver the strategy

Pros

Allows good work life balance, salary and some interesting projects

Cons

Lack of transparency, highly political, style over substance, bureaucratic, bad reporting systems and technology, ongoing retrenchments, cost cutting

Advice to Senior Management

Make appropriate investments in technology and management reporting; shift culture from management consultancy environment with meaningless powerpoints

Pros

ANZ large and there is plenty to do

Cons

Management are moody, and pressure flows down :-). Make sure you always have someone to blame.

Advice to Senior Management

Managers should take responsibility for their decision.

Pros

Pays well, good work life balance, interesting software development problems to solve in some areas, incredibly dull in others

Cons

Amazingly silly decisions made by senior management at times. The review process is a farce, strong teams are implicitely discouraged by grading on a curve amongst tiny sample groups.

Advice to Senior Management

Change the review process, become a meritocracy.