Popular banking corporation, Westpac, has taken its first step towards regionalization. The company has set out to the Gold Coast, and has made it their first Software Engineering hub outside the East Coast capitals of Sydney and Melbourne.
Many other companies and government offices have lauded this effort from Westpac to decentralize its operations. In fact, the whole purpose of this experiment is to attract competent workers and exceptional talents from the Gold Coast.
A recent tech talent map had created quite the hype amongst organizations in Australia. It showed the geographical analysis of software engineering talents all over the country. Westpac, too, took notice. Now, their topmost priority is to open their arms towards these talents, and create similar hubs in many other regions across Australia.
Westpac’s Plans in the Immediate future
At first, Westpac will look to hire the first 20 engineers for the Gold Coast Hub. Paul Bari, the Consumer and Business Banking Chief Information Officer at Westpac, spoke to the Westpac Wire earlier, where he said:
“If it works, we’ll expand the number of roles and, over time, look to replicate it in the next biggest centres – places like Adelaide and Perth, and potentially across the Tasman. The idea is to build a new kind of model where we focus on a combination of lifestyle as well as work, a 360-value proposition if you like.”
The interview from Bari cleared up a lot of things. According to him, the brand new Westpac hub at the Gold Coast will incorporate a hybrid working model. These kinds of models mean that the employees will have to work in the office on some days of the week, and work from home on others.
Worker Mobility
Presumably, another focus point for Westpac is the mobility of workers. These hubs they want to build throughout Australia will enable the migration of workers from different places into the regional community.
Bari commented on the issue:
“Covid’s given us a unique opportunity to revisit a lot of paradigms that were, for whatever reason, assumed to be the norm – and one of those things, ever since I was in uni, was if you wanted a big job, you had to go to Sydney or Melbourne. Now, we are bleeding capability into the regions, so there’s this significant talent pool in our regions that are not being fully utilised because the jobs are not there.”
In terms of the functions of the Gold Coast Hub, Bari confirmed that it’ll focus on the cool parts of Westpac’s tech agenda. Its operations will include the development of the bank’s mobile banking app. The hub will also work on the open banking sector of the organization.
