Total Rewards
Employees have said that their relationship with RBC goes beyond pay and benefits: it encompasses their entire experience on the job – including competitive pay and benefits, career development potential, and a supportive and dynamic workplace environment. We recognize this range of employee needs through a “Total Rewards” approach, outlined here.

Support for work/life needs
RBC provides an array of work/life options that respond to employees’ evolving priorities, including dependent-care support, flexible work arrangements, time-off or leave policies, wellness programs and educational support.

More than one-third of employees now benefit from formal and informal arrangements, such as flextime, reduced hours, modified work weeks, job sharing, flexiplace and phased retirement.

We also offer an employee assistance and work/life support service, available to all employees and their families worldwide, accessible by telephone and online, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Other innovative programs include:

• a Community Leave program, in which employees can earn up to 50 per cent of their annual salary for up to one year while working for a charitable organization;
• a post-secondary scholarship program for employees’ children. In 2004, we awarded scholarships of $1,000 each to more than 100 students;
• retention and career transition services to assist employees affected by organizational change.

Continuous learning
RBC clients require the best in expertise and capability and, in 2004, RBC invested $129 million in employee learning worldwide. Employees have access to a wide array of tools, such as anytime/anywhere e-learning, accessible from work or home.

We also offer experience-based learning through projects, work assignments and individual coaching. We provide orientation, internal career development, accreditation, external seminars and conferences.

Many RBC employees are professionally accredited or annually re-certified. For example, since 1999, more than 10,000 licensed mutual fund salespeople, including certified financial planners, participate in an Annual Investment Review designed to test and reaffirm their knowledge.

Our “one company, many careers” approach promotes the movement of talented people within and across RBC’s diverse businesses and functions. About one-quarter of our employees take on new positions and challenges each year. An online career tool helps employees manage their careers and easily search and apply online for positions. In 2004, we expanded the scope of this tool for our employees in the United States. We receive more than 22,000 resumes a month from prospective employees.

Reward and recognition
RBC has a strong history when it comes to recognizing employees. In fact, we were one of the first Canadian banks to implement a formal reward and recognition program in 1988. RBC Performance allows employees worldwide to recognize their colleagues’ outstanding performances by awarding points that can be redeemed for merchandise and travel. Top performers are rewarded with a one-week business convention and, from these, the best of the best are awarded RBC’s highest honour: the LEO award.

We celebrate major employment milestones through a service awards program, through which employees can select from a range of awards. In 2004, about 10 per cent of the awards given were to employees who have worked at RBC for 10 or more years.

For nearly 25 years, RBC has conducted regular employee surveys to gain feedback that enhances our human resources programs, allowing us to attract and retain talented employees around the world, such as Simon Hutchinson, Lyndal Quilkey and Sienny Sutedja, three of the nearly 220 employees at RBC Global Services in Australia.

Benefits
We offer flexible benefit and pension programs to meet the needs of our diverse workforce.

In 2004, a common benefit platform was launched for all RBC businesses in Canada to enhance employee choice and provide the flexibility to select the benefits that are right for employees and their families. The common benefit program will be launched in the U.S. in 2005.

Pay
Our compensation programs – salary, commissions, variable-pay and performance-based incentives – are benchmarked to the external market.

Compensation is aligned to an employee’s level of skill, knowledge and performance, with performance expectations and appraisals across the company in alignment with our client vision.

We also offer employee savings and share ownership plans. Over 80 per cent of eligible employees are RBC shareholders.

Listening to our employees
RBC has conducted regular employee opinion surveys since 1981, and we compare our survey results with top performing North American companies.

We not only celebrate our successes, but also take action on areas for improvement as identified by our employees. In our 2003 survey, for example, employees said they wanted more support in managing their personal and work responsibilities, so in 2004 we introduced a new program through which employees can buy up to one additional week of vacation. We also tested an emergency backup childcare program.

Employee feedback also helps us direct our training priorities and investments. For example, employees confirmed that their managers play a pivotal role in their relationship with RBC and their ability to serve clients. We are committed to a continued focus on building managerial excellence by enhancing our formal and informal training for this group.

For more information, visit rbc.com/careers

Health and safety
Maintaining a supportive, safe and productive work environment is a fundamental goal of our health and safety policies, which apply to our entire workforce.

A 12-member executive committee is responsible for setting policy on behalf of the entire corporation, while each business develops and monitors its own initiatives in this area. All departments and branches must assign their own health and safety representatives, some 1,500 employees in all.

In 2004, RBC implemented new health and safety training for 7,000 managers, involving a four-hour online course, with a final exam they were required to pass with a minimum grade of 80 per cent.

Employee Ombudsman
RBC promotes open communication and encourages employees to resolve issues locally whenever possible. To assist in this process, we provide tools such as manager and employee helplines. If extra steps are required, we have an Employee Ombudsman, the employee arm of our Office of the Ombudsman, which provides employees with a confidential and objective way to deal with unresolved concerns.