Ms Livesey, the only female employee left on AMPs eight-member key executive team, late on Wednesday hosted a virtual town hall meeting via Microsoft Teams for about 100 staff from the People and Corporate Affairs division, where female employees blasted the company for its cultural problems.
I think there are many people who are in AMPA [AMP Australia] who would say that there is behaviour that needs to be addressed in the organisation and it’s absolutely critical that we actually don’t walk past that behaviour, but that we do raise it, Ms Livesey said.
‘Constantly agitate for change’
And let me reassure you, I am the most vocal member of GLT [global leadership team] as you would expect around what is and what isn’t acceptable behaviour. And I will constantly agitate for change, and constantly agitate for consequence management where behaviours are not acceptable.
One AMP capital employee participating in the discussion said the division was getting a lot of calls from clients today, a lot of investors are equally upset and that the matter reverberates beyond our organisation out to our clients and to those that partner with us, that invest with us.
Ms Livesey said she had heard similar reports from a number of AMP divisions around feedback from asset consultants and feedback from clients and investors.
One employee questioned why the company promoted someone with the history of Mr Pahari to the chief executive position, the only leadership role that carries the ability to earn an uncapped performance bonus.
We keep saying we’re going to change our culture, and then things happen. And oh, it’s another learning opportunity, she said.
Is Boe truly the best that we can do? Why didn’t we just keep him in the money making job? Why would you put him in a leadership, the Top of the Pops of the leadership team, when he’s got this? He does not talk to people very nicely and he doesn’t have a good attitude and you just look at his picture he’s terrifying like why was that the choice?
Ms Livesey said Mr Pahari was the appropriate appointment for the role given the future direction of AMP Capital.
The woman said it was a demotivating appointment. I bet there are 100 women who could have done that CEO job better than he can, she said.
Get rid of him! Get a woman in there! Put [a female AMP employee] in his spot. How we change culture is by doing shit and not just talking about doing shit.
AMP has been under tremendous pressure following the collapse of its life insurance and financial advice units, and after the royal commission revealed it manipulated a regulatory report destined for the Australian Securities and Investments Commission reviewing its fees-for-no-service scandal.
AMP Capital remains the cornerstone of the broader AMP Groups strategic endeavours, and was the only division to report a positive profit trajectory last year. Mr Paharis infrastructure funds were responsible for the lions share of the profit.
An AMP spokesman said AMP leaders regularly held meetings with their teams and encouraged people to speak up and express their views, and that a range of meetings had taken place this week to discuss Mr Paharis appointment.
Mr Pahari has made it clear he regrets his comments and their impact on his former colleague. He has addressed the matter openly with his teams, and will continue to engage with them. We remain committed to ensure our organisation is a safe place to work and that peoples views are respected, AMP said.
One senior employee told Ms Livesey she was starting to think the matter was AMP’s #MeToo moment and said it was tough that the lone female executive had to be the face of the companys response to the team.
Lost many female executives
I think [AMP chief executive] Francesco [De Ferrari] and the board have to front this themselves because it’s feeling like the organisation’s got a tin ear about this right now and that they did hope, perhaps, it would just go away, she said.
She complained the company had recently lost many female executives and board members. I’ve had people say to me, I’m worried for Helen [Livesey], she’s the last woman standing, she said.
Another senior AMP Capital employee said we need to be careful about saying that Mr Pahari was the companys succession plan.
Those of us who work in Capital know that that is simply not true,” she said. “And it might make sense in the context, as you say, of the future direction of the business. But right now, we don’t know what that is.”
Another AMP Capital employee asked for the division to be included in any future announcements affecting the business.
It did put us on the backfoot quite significantly, both with Boe’s announcement Friday-week ago, but also not being brought in early enough today for us to be able to respond to how our people would react, she said.
One senior AMP People and Culture manager said the announcement of Mr Paharis appointment happened quite suddenly compared to the significant lead time between the announcement of Stephen Dunnes retirement, in 2015, as boss of AMP Capital and the appointment of prior leader, Mr Tindall.
We all felt quite confident that there was a robust search program going on [in 2015]. We don’t have that visibility this time, she said.
Ms Livesey said Mr Tindall had flagged his intention to retire and the company continually monitored available external and internal executives for the purposes of succession planning.
For Francesco, in the board’s view in this instance, was that an internal appointment was much better from a stabilising-the-organisation perspective, than going externally to the market, she said.
