Figure 31: QIC Real Estate’s approximate employee numbers as at 30 June 2023

We also have a highly successful and constructive relationship with Savills. Savills provides employees who work in our shopping centres under QIC General and Centre Management, as well as National team members in our Property Administration, Alternative Income and Marketing teams. As at 30 June 2023, we had 192 Savills employees working across our shopping centre assets.

While these staff are employed by Savills, we see them as part of our team within QIC Real Estate. We work closely with Savills to ensure that our People & Culture policies are reflected across the employee base. As an example, during FY23 we extended a wellbeing program offered through an external consultancy, Bendelta, to both QIC and Savills Shopping Centre employees to ensure we provided consistent support across the Shopping Centre teams.

At QIC, we believe that our people perform at their best when they feel valued, happy, healthy and encouraged to bring their whole and authentic selves to work every day. This year, QIC refreshed our diversity, equity and inclusion strategy that supports our five strategic pillars of diversity and inclusion -gender equality, LGBT+, accessibility, cultural and linguistic diversity (CALD), and First Nations people. We further strengthened our commitment to diversity and inclusion through our certification as a Family Inclusive Workplace, an initiative by Parents At Work (PAW) in partnership with UNICEF Australia, giving organisations the tools, frameworks and support they need to become more inclusive and supportive of employees’ competing work and family needs. A Family Friendly Workplace culture positively impacts the quality of work-life for everyone and contributes to the wider health and wellbeing of our society and economy; increasing productivity and reducing stress, absenteeism and gender inequality.  

This year, we commenced our strategic relationship with the Australian Business and Community Network (ABCN), a not-for-profit organisation that connects business with low socio-economic status schools through mentoring and partnership programs. QIC has completed four programs with state schools in Southeast Queensland, in addition to six team members taking part in the three-year Accelerate program, which involves mentoring students from year eleven, through to their first year of tertiary studies.

Over the past year, we launched Q-Ability, a committee that aims to create a disability confident workforce, and a space that is accessible for all. As part of our early activities towards creating a disability confident workforce, Q-Ability are launching an internal storytelling campaign to share people's lived experiences with disability, disability caring and other barriers, and how this can impact their work lives directly or indirectly.

FY23 also saw the completion of the Respect@QIC project, and the launch of a new Sexual Harassment standard with supporting training for all team members focused on sexual harassment and other forms of unwanted behaviours in our workplace. We also launched our Domestic & Family Violence (DFV) Purple Ribbon Advocates program, and the Recognise, Respond & Refer e-learning module to create awareness of the 16 Days of Activism United Nations campaign.

We continue to deliver our Inclusive Leadership Workshop, which focuses on our five strategic pillars of diversity and provides employees and shopping centre staff employed by Savills with real life examples and practical actions to build on our inclusive culture in every interaction and conversation. In FY23, 12 Inclusive Leadership Workshops were held, which were attended by 171 QIC Real Estate and Savills employees. This represents 684 hours of training.

Our employee-led networks and working groups - Balance, QPride, Young Professionals, QLife, Q-Ability, and Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) – continue to drive engagement and awareness.

The importance of these strategies and resulting initiatives continue to be a focus as we sustain our energy and momentum across the broad spectrum of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Wellness at QIC.

QIC's Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Wellness Working Group

QIC's working group for diversity, equity, inclusion, and wellness, which has representation from across the business (including several QIC Real Estate employees), met a number of times through FY23. This group helps shape QIC’s diversity, equity, inclusion and wellness initiatives, provides feedback to the Board and Executive, and ensures that QIC’s pursuit of a truly diverse, equitable and inclusive workforce is embraced and sustained.

QIC Real Estate gender initiatives

QIC Real Estate established a Gender Plan in 2021, which is reviewed annually with the Real Estate Senior Leadership Team (SLT). This plan documents a set of goals to increase female representation within all areas of Real Estate and promote targeted opportunities to help females succeed. Some key achievements of our Gender Plan in FY23 included:

• Launching the second year of the Real Estate Female Sponsorship Program which provides the opportunity for twelve emerging female leaders each year to be actively sponsored by a member of QIC Real Estate's SLT. The objective of the program is to build a pipeline of females to assume future leadership roles, increase the retention of our high-performing females within Real Estate, and improve the experiences of inclusion for females within our business. For Sponsors, the Program aims to increase our inclusive leadership capability to support cultural change and provide an opportunity to strengthen and develop the behaviours and habits to successfully sponsor diverse talent. 
• Participation in the Property Champions of Change (PCC) project, which is an industry led initiative made up of 24 members across the property sector. The PCC members use their individual and collective leadership to increase gender equality with a focus on leadership, talent development, public advocacy and accountability. Specifically, Real Estate's Gender Plan targets the PCC's Panel and Pitch Pledges:
  • Continued adoption of the Property Champions of Change 'Panel Pledge', which strives to achieve a 40:40:20 gender balance as speakers, panellists, and attendees. This pledge aims to substantially improve women's representation in public and professional forums. 
  • Continued adoption of the Property Champions of Change 'Pitch Pledge', ensuring that at least one woman is part of the bid and receiving teams on both sides of any transaction within Leasing and Capital Transactions. 
  • Attraction of two new female talent into the Capital Transactions and Leasing Executive teams by June 2023. 
• Undertaking a gender pay equity review to understand more deeply gender pay equity across similar roles within Real Estate.
• Updating and publishing a Real Estate Gender Diversity Infographic internally as at June 2023. 
• Developed an action plan for each Real Estate Executive team member on how they will implement/action feedback from a Leadership Shadow Exercise 2022. 

Other Real Estate gender initiatives undertaken in FY23 include: 

• Participation in the Property Council of Australia '500 Women in Property' Program. In FY23, seven female QIC Real Estate employees (including our Savills partners) were selected to participate in the program. 
• Representation from Real Estate on the Property Council of Australia's Diversity and Inclusion Committees in Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria. 

Figure 32: Participants of QIC Real Estate’s FY23 Female Sponsorship Program and QIC participants in the FY23 Property Council of Australia’s 500 Women in Property Program with QIC CEO, Kylie Rampa 

Managing policies and practices 

QIC's Human Resources & Remuneration Committee considers matters relating to human resource management policies and practices, including employee remuneration, performance management, organisational structure, and design and succession planning at the senior executive level and for other business-critical roles. 

Performance and reward

The key feature of QIC's performance-based reward framework is that performance payments are linked to investment outcomes as well as to the individual's contribution to defined goals which reflect stretch targets.  This includes ESG related goals for teams and individuals who play a leading part in delivering our ESG strategy.

To measure individual contribution, a formal Performance Management Program (PMP) exists for all employees which sets out processes for planning, communicating, monitoring and reviewing an employee's or team's performance and work-related behaviour. Performance related conversations happen regularly throughout the year and culminate in a formal annual review for all employees.

Ongoing assessment and approval of remuneration

The HR & Remuneration Committee advises the Board on appropriate levels of employee remuneration after conducting an annual review of corporate and individual performance and considering industry comparisons and independent advice. The Board then determines the remuneration of the CEO. An Employment and Industrial Relations Plan is approved annually by QIC’s shareholding Ministers as part of the SCI development process. This plan outlines people priorities and areas of emphasis for the coming year.

Global Senior Leaders Forum

In March 2023, our executive committee and QIC senior leaders came together in Brisbane for our inaugural Global Senior Leaders Forum. It was the first time this group of senior leaders had come together physically, post-pandemic to connect, collaborate and collectively discuss how QIC can continue to be high performing, support our people, all whilst delivering investment outcomes for our clients.

Over the 1.5-day forum, our leaders heard from speakers across QIC, external clients, a keynote speaker and took part in round table interactive discussions, panels, Q&A, and a leadership masterclass, together with participating in informal networking opportunities across the group.

Real Estate Senior Leadership Team 

Through FY23, QIC Real Estate’s Senior Leadership Team (SLT) continued to play a crucial role in driving Real Estate’s strategy, which encompasses elements such as gender diversity and cultural alignment.

The SLT is a passionate group of 52 experienced professionals who each bring their diverse experience and skillset across the property sector to collaborate as a high-performing cohort. This team is brought together at offsites twice a year where they align on key organisational values to champion and cascade throughout the wider QIC Real Estate team. The SLT also connects each month to share key updates on business achievements and how we are measuring against our strategic goals.

The concept of Culture Ambassadors was established to identify and implement changes to help improve Real Estate’s culture as an early outcome of the SLT. The Culture Ambassadors play a significant role in leading, influencing and shaping our culture and gender initiatives.

In early 2023, applications opened for a new cohort of Culture Ambassadors to be made up of individuals from both our SLT as well as members of our next levels down from the SLT. Working closely with the Real Estate P&C team, our six Cultural Ambassadors refreshed the Real Estate Culture Plan which outlines Real Estate’s focus areas in relation to continuing to spotlight the importance of culture and understanding for our people across Real Estate.

The Culture Plan has four key focus areas which are:

• Communication and connection
• Talent mapping/Mapping and skills development
• Diversity and inclusion (beyond gender) 
• Productivity and burnout avoidance. 

The SLT continues to have a strong focus on inclusion, equity, and diversity, and delivered a number of actions through the Gender Plan to support this including:

• Standard set of gender metrics and lead indicators shared with Executive team and SLT each quarter
• 'Listen and Learn' sessions with QIC Real Estate's Managing Director on gender equity
• A continued focus on gender balance during recruitment, including gender balance shortlists and gender diverse interviewing panels. 

Shopping Centre Management Mentoring Program

This year, we partnered with Savills to deliver the 2023 Shopping Centre Management Mentoring Program, which supported 29 mentor-mentee relationships. The mentee cohort was made up of Centre Management team members employed by Savills, with senior QIC Centre Management employees making up the group of mentors.

The program provides the opportunity for QIC Real Estate team members to create further avenues for growth.

RE Academy

The RE Academy, a bespoke version of Salesforce's myTrailhead platform, forms part of our commitment to the ongoing development of our people and their learning.

RE Academy provides short learning modules on a range of aspects of the QIC Real Estate business, and has become a highly valued tool to assist with onboarding new employees and expanding the knowledge and skillset of current team members on our internal processes.

In FY23, 26 modules were added to the RE Academy, and out of these modules, 755 badges were awarded to QIC Real Estate and Savills employees for module completion.

Building a Culture of Thriving Shopping Centre Teams

This year, QIC Real Estate engaged an external consultancy, Bendelta, to partner with Shopping Centre teams to co-create a strategy for immediate and ongoing support of Shopping Centre teams. The program, Building a Culture of Thriving Shopping Centre Teams, is designed to support the teams’ wellbeing and performance and involved QIC and Savills Shopping Centre employees.

The program commenced with a virtual masterclass hosted by Bendelta, which was focussed on wellbeing and preventing burnout. The interactive masterclass was designed to provide practical tools to manage the unique stresses that occur in our work, and to help create sustainable wellbeing practices at work and home.

Each team was also invited to join a three-hour face to face session with Bendelta which involved reflecting on their experience of the past six months, creating connection and providing an opportunity for sharing and listening, unpacking HBDI thinking styles and preferences profile, and co-creating their future together. QIC Real Estate is continuing to work with Bendelta to co-create phase two of the program, to ensure Shopping Centre teams continue to draw on the program’s learnings and ensure the ongoing support for the Shopping Centre teams.

Professional development

QIC recognises that our people deliver our success, therefore we need to set our people up for success through professional development opportunities. Investing in the growth and development of our people is one of our key employee benefits and career development is a key part of our Employee Value Proposition.

Our goal is to deliver a contemporary learning and development offering to ensure our people have the capabilities to deliver exceptional outcomes for QIC now and into the future. We aspire to a culture of continuous learning with proactive employees participating in knowledge and capability building and sharing.

We provide a number of in-house, online and externally delivered professional development offerings, working with referred and best practice providers. These programs continue to expand as the needs of the business evolve and some include:

• Inclusive Leadership Workshop
• Emerging Leaders Program 
• QIC Leadership Excellence Program 
• Supporting Mental Health at Work
• Communicating with Influence
• Service Excellence Program
• Negotiation Skills
• Writing for Impact
• Writing Effective Business Documents
• Core and Advanced Presentation Skills
• Foundational Finance Workshop
• Towards a Mentally Healthy Culture at QIC
• Building a Culture of Thriving Shopping Centre Teams

QIC also provides every employee with access to virtual self-paced learning through LinkedIn Learning and virtual facilitated learning through Coursera and ICML, as employee benefits to advocate continuous learning.

A breakdown of training undertaken by QIC Real Estate employees in 2023 is provided in the table below:

Emerging Leaders Program

QIC's Emerging Leaders Program offers personal and professional development to its emerging talent. QIC has seen a very positive shift in leadership performance as a direct result of this investment. In addition, we have seen emerging talent step into levels of higher accountability and complexity.

In FY23, QIC held two Emerging Leaders Programs, which saw 12 Real Estate team members participate.

Flexibility

QIC embraces flexible working for all our people, which is brought to life through each person's unique circumstances. At QIC we trust, empower, and support our people through flexible working principles. In return, and through individual accountability and strong leadership, this trust and commitment is mutual – as measured through strong individual and collective performance.

QIC implemented a refreshed approach to flexible working in 2023. Flexible working means having flexibility in how, when or where our people work, and all QIC employees have access to a hybrid working model.

QIC also offers formalised access to flexible working arrangements and benefits for all employees to support them in balancing their work and home lives, with options including but not limited to compressed work weeks, part-time arrangements, variable working hours, paid parental leave for primary and non-primary carers (non-gendered), an additional week of carer's leave, and purchasing extra annual leave.

Employee Assistance Program

QIC recognises that employees may require additional support to help them manage personal and work pressures at various times and to assist with this, QIC offers an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) which provides confidential short-term personal counselling to all employees and their immediate family members.

Outplacement support

QIC employs an outplacement services provider to help facilitate career transitioning and employability following instances of contract termination or redundancies.

At QIC Real Estate, people are at the core of our success. As an organisation, we are strongly committed to providing a physically and psychologically safe environment for everyone who works for or comes into contact with our business.

The QIC Workplace Health & Safety (WHS) team is a critical part of our business and has had a year of significant activity over the past 12 months. Some of the key initiatives and focus areas for the past 12 months are listed below.

WHS Management and reporting within QIC Real Estate

The QIC Real Estate WHS and Wellbeing Subcommittee continued to meet during FY23. This forum brings together a broad membership from across the business, with representatives from the senior leadership cohort to centre management teams, with a focus on delivering initiatives to address WHS issues and/or risks identified from various data sources, such as incident reports and workplace inspections.

Information on our WHS performance is reported quarterly to QIC Real Estate’s Executive Committee.

Work Health & Safety Management System

QIC's WHS Management System (WHSMS) standards are under review as part of a formal review cycle. Additional standards and forms have been released to support business practices.

A first line WHS audit and assurance program is set to be launched in Q2 FY24 to monitor compliance against the QIC WHSMS.

Technology supporting safety outcomes

In FY23, QIC renewed its subscription to a software platform that is used to capture WHS incidents, hazards, contractor compliance, risk registers, learning, tasks and workplace inspections. Additionally, QIC Real Estate further strengthened its contractor pre-qualification checks by outsourcing this process to a specialist external third-party provider.

Learning and training

QIC Real Estate, in partnership with the Australian Institute of Management (AIM), have developed a Management Business Risk (WHS) module to contribute to the national certification of Operations Managers and Service Managers. The content has been designed to focus on QIC processes and management practice, ensuring training directly improves our business and provides a strong baseline for our teams to deliver a consistent approach across the portfolio.

As part of ongoing awareness training and site safety induction, we continue to build on WHS compliance and upskilling of our shopping centre personnel.

Psychological safety

To further support mental health awareness, QIC Real Estate continue to utilise a post-incident crisis management provider to support centre teams, retailers and the public following a traumatic event. QIC continues to provide health and wellbeing awareness training (e.g. webinars) utilising specialist clinical psychologists.