Human resources policy

The Central Bank of Iceland’s human resources policy is guided by the Bank’s key role of safeguarding the public interest by promoting price stability, financial stability, and sound and secure financial activities. The policy aims to build up a strong team, with emphasis on respect, well-being, equal rights, expertise, professionalism, and progressiveness. In this way, it helps the Bank to achieve its objectives in an efficient and effective manner.

The human resources policy summarises the Bank’s priorities in personnel matters, and it is the joint responsibility of the Bank’s employees and management to adhere to the policy  to create a good and reliable workplace. In order to ensure a strong team where communications are characterised by integrity, mutual respect, and trust, the Bank places particular emphasis on:

• Always having competent and  ambitious employees who create a strong team within the Bank.
• Maintaining a work environment that supports employees’ physical and emotional well-being.
• Ensuring that equal rights are always protected in the Bank’s activities.
• Ensuring that employees maintain their expertise, use it effectively in their work, and share it, thereby supporting the priorities of a forward-thinking central bank.
• Maintaining a performance-driven workplace culture characterised by professionalism and efficient work habits  to ensure sound and effective decision-making.

The Central Bank emphasises attracting and retaining reliable and ambitious staff members with wide-ranging expertise and experience who work together to achieve outstanding results. Decisions on hiring, training, and promoting employees are based on substantive, professional considerations and thorough procedures.

In selecting managers, emphasis is placed on choosing strong leaders who will set a good example and have the ambition and skills to work towards the Bank’s tasks and vision. Managers play an important role in bolstering fostering trust, including effective guidance and management, information sharing, and carefully crafted and constructive feedback on employees’ performance. They must address matters confidently and decisively, ensure equal treatment, show employees respect, and emphasise sound and fruitful collaboration. Employees’ areas of responsibility shall be clear, and therefore trusted to carry out their tasks with integrity and professionalism.

The work environment shall support employees’ physical and mental well-being. Employees must encourage one another and are encouraged to consider their own health by practising a healthy lifestyle, as well as considering the well-being of their colleagues. The work environment shall be flexible and foster a healthy work-life balance. Bullying and sexual harassment shall not be tolerated under any circumstances, and the Bank’s employees are jointly responsible for reporting any type of bullying or harassment that they witness, whether it is physical, verbal, or symbolic; cf. the Bank’s anti-harassment and anti-bullying policy.

Equal rights shall always be observed, with the aim of ensuring that all individuals have equal opportunities; cf. the Bank’s equality policy. All employees shall be valued appropriately, irrespective of gender, age, nationality, religious beliefs, or other subjective criteria.
The Bank has adopted an equal pay system to ensure that decisions on employees wages are based on objective considerations and do not entail direct or indirect discrimination based on gender or other factors. In order to enforce its equal pay policy, the Central Bank has implemented an equal pay system based on the Icelandic equal pay standard (ÍST 85). The equal pay system entails structured procedures for decisions on remuneration within the Bank  to ensure equal rights, continuous improvements, and responses aimed at correcting a gender-based pay gap should one be revealed.

The Central Bank is a knowledge institution that relies on the intelligence and expertise of its employees. The Bank’s policy is to maintain a staff with broad and diverse expertise and experience and to maintain a work environment that supports employees’ initiative and ambition to evolve and grow in their work and shoulder responsibility. Emphasis is placed on ensuring that employees maintain their expertise and use it effectively in their work, thereby supporting the priorities of a forward-thinking central bank. The Bank shall offer a strong and diverse educational initiatives with a targeted needs analysis, an effective education plan, and regular evaluation of the effectiveness of the initiatives. The work environment shall encourage sharing of knowledge among employees and foster their efforts to learn from one another.

The Central Bank emphasises a performance-driven workplace culture characterised by professionalism and efficient work habits to ensure sound and targeted decision-making. Emphasis shall be placed on ensuring that employees use harmonised work practices that complies with regulatory provisions and professional benchmarks. The Bank’s employees shall ensure that they observe confidentiality in accordance with the law and that they carry out their work with care and conscientiousness.
The Bank attempts to foster a workplace culture that supports employees’ initiative and progressiveness, critical thinking, and desire to improve continuously.