Connected with the business

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Clearly, one of this institution’s chief competitive advantages is its people and its culture. With that unique personality, which is not imposed from above but rather part of our history, our Group has attained the position it holds in the market today. The world is changing rapidly, and technology with it; digital transformation and the need to identify and build new labor skills are the greatest challenge we will face in the years ahead. The speed of technological advance has brought an array of unprecedented products and services to the market, defying the status quo of skills and competencies that our employees require in order to help us remain leaders in our industry. We must remain connected with the business, prioritize talent availability, and create the right mechanisms for securing their commitment and retention.

We have developed a results-oriented culture, promoted new leaderships and skills aimed at confronting the latest digital trends and innovations, which now, more than ever, have become essential. The comprehensive advancement of our employees is our priority, and we want to provide a climate that can support their personal and professional growth, always within a healthy, ethical climate that prioritizes their safety.

Values like integrity, trust, respect and loyalty are fundamental pillars in our continuing success, in line with our vision of being a great ally to grow strong together with Mexico.

Number of employees

Company	GFNorte
	2019	2020
Banking	24,124	24,681
- Bank	21,119	21,671
- Warehousing	39	39
Leasing and factoring	235	242
Aspe	2,731	2,729
Companies in the U.S.	179	197
- Uniteller	156	174
- Banorte Securities	23	23
Savings and Retirement Banking*	5,864	5,042
- Afore	4,180	3,375
- Insurance	1,556	1,542
- Pensions	128	125
Total*	30,167	29,920

* Includes outsourced personnel

Diversity and equal opportunity

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Diversity and inclusion

Banorte has a set of practices and initiatives to identify and create equal opportunities for the various groups that make up our workforce. Our intent is to recognize, value and respect the contributions of each of them. Through our Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, we build a culture that promotes innovation, growth and competitiveness in our diverse workforce. Our human resource policies incorporate elements of equality, and we offer the same opportunities for development and growth to all of our employees.

We have built an inclusive workplace environment that develops our employees’ talents, and in recognition of this effort, we have been included in Bloomberg’s Gender Equality Index.

Workforce by age range and gender

Gender	Age range	Total
		2019	2020
	< 30 years	6,660	5,859
	30 - 50 years	7,297	8,122
	> 51 years	1,143	1,088
Total women		15,100	15,069
	< 30 years	6,285	5,365
	30 - 50 years	6,567	7,412
	> 51 years	1,697	1,559
Total men		14,549	14,336
Total*		29,649	29,405

* Does not include outsourced personnel at Afore, Insurance or Pensions businesses

Workforce by job category and gender

* Does not include outsourced personnel at Afore, Insurance or Pensions businesses

Talent Attraction Program with a Diversity Focus

This program was created to develop practices by which we can enhance diversity and inclusion in our organization as a way to better serve all of our stakeholders. Through this program, we will:

• Diagnose and train our talent attraction people and other people in areas seeking job candidates to recognize their own unconscious bias.
• Review our job postings and include a diversity of profiles in our short lists.
• Modify internal human resource policies

Banorte Women’s Circle

In 2020, we created two groups for women seeking opportunities for advancement: the first group was created by the Risk Strategy and Planning area, and the second by the Sustainability and Responsible Investment area. This year nine workshops were given on personal and professional development, in order to share knowledge, ideas and opinions. The workshops were attended by more than 300 women employees from various parts of Mexico. Through this space, we want to encourage women to network inside and outside of Banorte, generate mutual support dynamics, and hear the voices and experiences of the women who work at the organization, and on this basis, to continually improve our corporate practices.

Target Gender Equality

Grupo Financiero Banorte joined the Target Gender Equality initiative promoted by the United Nations Global Compact and UN Women, whose purpose is to accelerate the progress of gender equality. Through this program, we measure the current status of gender equality in our operations and services using the Gender Gap Analysis Tool of the Women’s Empowerment Principles. We also participate in workshops to implement internal strategies for addressing areas of opportunities that can strengthen women’s representation and leadership within the company.

Bloomberg Gender Equality Index

We were one of only five Mexican companies selected for inclusion in the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index.

For the fourth year in a row, Bloomberg recognized Grupo Financiero Banorte’s commitment to advancing equality, including it in a group of 325 firms around the world committed to transparent reporting with a gender perspective.

Human Rights Policy

At Grupo Financiero Banorte, we recognize the value and importance of human rights and we understand our responsibility to respect, protect, prevent and mitigate any impact that our activities may have. With this in mind, in 2020 we launched our Human Rights Policy, a guiding document for ensuring and respecting human rights with our stakeholders, detailing the actions we take as employers, employees, financial service providers and contractors that are aligned with our values and commitments.

Professional development

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Training and career development

The advancement of our employees is a key factor, so we provide them technical and leadership training to support their preparation and development. Through the “Success Factors” technological platform we diagnose training needs for each employee and address them more rapidly and in detail.

• Nearly all our employees were trained in money-laundering prevention and 29 regulatory issues that ensure compliance with standards, protection and security.
• With the startup of Banorte Sales School, more than 11,700 employees from our branch network gained specialization in products, sales and customer service.
• We introduced the “Aprende” self-learning model, a virtual platform with more than 5,500 courses and 20,000 book summaries, available 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, for more than 7,600 employees.
• As regards succession in senior management, we have identified successors for participating CEOs. We worked with an independent consulting firm to evaluate 42 top executives, who received feedback on their results. In the first quarter of the year, these results were presented to the Management committee.
• The operating model for the training area was restructured, updating and expanding the regulatory framework.

Percentage of employees receiving an evaluation

Category	2020
	Women	Men
Senior management	100%	97%
Middle management	97%	94%
Operating staff	62%	61%

* Not including Aspe or senior bank management
** For Afore XXI Banorte, includes only information from the first half of 2020 (there were no evaluations in the second half)

Average hours of training by title category

Category	GFNorte
	2019	2020
Senior management	28	63
Junior management	29	49
Middle management	35	76
Administrative	26	92
Average*	30	70

2020 reflects figures for the Afore which were not included in 2019.

Average hours of training by gender

Category	GFNorte
	2019	2020
Category	33	90
Men	28	87
Average*	31	89

2020 reflects figures for the Afore which were not included in 2019.

Scholarship contest

In order to encourage the continuous professional development of our employees, we publish a call for entries to an annual contest for graduate-level scholarships.

Investment in training and development (bank)

Item	2019	2020	% Chge. 20/19
Scholarships	15	16	3.27%
Travel expenses for training	35	3	-90.54%
Courses and conferences	186	110	-40.77%
Total*	236	129	-45.28%

* Figures in millions of pesos

Leadership training

We redesigned the entire program of Leadership training to be given virtually, so that 1,132 leaders could continue their development by remote methods, including executive coaching.

We gave a course on the new Official Mexican Standard NOM-035 to train our leaders in identifying, analyzing and preventing psychosocial risks on the job.

Total hours of training	Average hours per person
61,288	2.5

Target audience	Passed courses	% of personnel trained
24,681	25,517	100%

The number of employees who passed the NOM-035 course is higher than the target audience because it includes employees who left the company in 2020.

Program	2020
Leadership skills	27,566
Habilidades ejecutivas	2,016
Executive skills	29,582

Workplace climate and culture: a winning culture

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The performance and creation of a winning culture is achieved by living according to our values, strengthening the conduct that we want to preserve and eradicating conduct that does not edify or contribute to the formation and development of the talent this organization requires.

Values like integrity, trust, respect and loyalty are fundamental pillars in our continuing success, in line with our vision of being a great ally to grow strong together with Mexico.

The average turnover of bank employees in 2020 was 12% in women and 14% in men; in our Insurance and Pension businesses, it was around 4% in women and 6% in men, in Afore XXI Banorte, total turnover was 30.3%.

Organizational climate model

For the eighth year in a row, we were recognized by the Great Place to Work institute as one of the Best Places to Work in the category of companies with more than 5,000 employees, and ranked third among the Best Places to Work in Banking, Insurance and Bonding.

We improved our workplace environment intervention model by introducing practices that strengthen a positive climate for work. We strengthened the design of a survey and short pulse-taking questionnaires on commitment, to evaluate this factor in our employees, in order to boost productivity and reach our goals despite the challenges of the pandemic.

Organizational culture

We launched the “Banorte Contigo” platform as a way to communicate with and accompany our employees since the pandemic began. This platform allows for dialogue between executives and employees, monitoring their physical and mental welfare and their concerns, and sharing with them valuable content regarding stress management, resilience, motivation, health and wellness, among other topics.

As part of this program, we conducted 70 live sessions and developed 32 support microcapsules. It was attended by more than 7,000 employees, who currently see this platform as part of the value proposition that Banorte offers its employees.

Measurement

Banorte’s organizational survey “¡Tu Experiencia Vale!” (your experience is valuable) is a program that supports our strategy of measuring commitment through short “pulse” questionnaires and surveys of our personnel. It encourages employee productivity by monthly tracking the mood, physical and mental health of GFNorte’s workforce.

Evaluation of psychosocial risk on the job, aligned with the requirements of NOM-035 established by the Ministry of Labor and Social Planning

As a result of this evaluation, we launched a program of food practices focused on the areas identified as having medium risk.

Youth Building the Future

We participate in this federal government program, whose purpose is to provide job training to youth between 18 and 25 years of age. In 2020, 285 youth entered internships at Banorte. Training programs were provided on financial education as well as the development of skills and abilities that will make easier for them to join the workforce. To date, 38 of these youth have been hired to fill job vacancies in the bank.

“Talento Fuerte” Program

A program that seeks out high-potential youth with recent undergraduate or Master’s degrees, to meet Banorte’s needs for talent by providing an accelerated development of experience, know-how and skills in various business areas.

The program began in 2020 with the addition of five people to the Credit, Wealth Management and Human Resource areas.

¡Hola! Onboarding program

We continued this program to welcome new employees to Banorte by providing them information useful for their jobs as well as general information about the financial Group.

Through live sessions conducted virtually with various internal experts on topics like institutional philosophy, financial information, value chain, organizational structure, retirement funds, our mobile banking app and value proposition, among others, we welcomed more than 700 employees, with a coverage of 95% of incoming corporate staff and 56% in incoming branch employees.

Percentage of unionized employees at the bank

Employee compensation includes a set of benefits, most of which exceed those required by law.

Employee Services Contact Center

We strengthened this new model for providing better service and experiences to Banorte employees in the use of their benefits.

The primary features of this contact center are the following:

• We enacted a contingency and business continuity plan when the pandemic began, following the guidelines issued by federal, state and local authorities in order to conform to the established standards.
• We created three standing work committees, from senior management down to the operating level, to plan, execute and control strategies. These committees met according to the established calendar.
• We hired a group of expert epidemiologists, headed by the former Under Secretary of Health, to ensure we had the most experience and academically rigorous advice in the country.
• We set up various means of communication to address the various aspects of COVID-19, including infographics, written articles, videos, conferences, news capsules and posters. Among all this material a key piece was our COVID-19 Tracking, which was published three times a week during the first six months and now comes out permanently twice a week.
• We established a video-based medical checkup, as an alternative way for employees and their families to receive medical attention, relating either to COVID-19 or other health issues.
• We expanded our network of hospitals, because various of the existing facilities became COVID hospitals. In this way we were able to protect the health of patients with issues not relating to the pandemic.
• We created an emotional health program to support patients and their close family members.
• We established mechanisms for quick detection of COVID-19 through rapid tests applied by our medical staff to employees suspected of having the virus.
• We acquired oxygen concentrators to support employees who required them, as they became scarce in the market.
• We created rapid transport mechanisms with air-lift ambulances through agreements, because hospitals were saturated.
• We defined a mechanism for immediate support of employees who had lost family members to COVID-19.
• We established practices to protect employee health and safety, including prevention and management initiatives like monitoring accident, illness and absenteeism rates.

For 2021, we plan to stabilize the ratio of employees working in the office to those working remotely.

We will be launching a tool for identifying employees with possible COVID-19 symptoms, thus avoiding contagion within the institution during the process of returning to work on the premises.

We will also be looking for mechanisms by which we can ensure COVID-19 vaccination for our employees and their family members.