A lot has changed in the 32 years since NAB’s assurance manager Sharon Beavis started her working life as an office junior in a regional branch of the bank in Victoria.
Indeed for Beavis’ career, her job itself has evolved into different departments and specialties multiple times, despite her employer remaining the same.
And in terms of technology, Beavis has been at the turning point of organisation-wide transformational change.
“Everything was manual when I started and I clearly remember unpacking the very first PC the office received,” Beavis says.
Now, very little occurs in any large organisation without the aid of technology.
The cultural transformation that has taken place since Beavis joined the bank straight out of high school has been almost as stark.
“Women weren’t allowed to join superannuation until they were 24. I still don’t know what the logic was but it gives you an idea of how far we’ve come!” Beavis says.
It also prompted her to pay greater attention to managing her own superannuation once she reached that age and it’s a focus she maintains today.
In her experience the period between 1995 and 2000 proved to be something of a tipping point for women in what was still a male-dominated industry.
“Before then I thought about [the lack of women] a lot because banking, and in particular business lending roles, was extremely male dominated,” Beavis says. “Subconsciously I remember wondering why there were so few females in that environment. It’s funny, the little things that stick in your mind.”
In 1995, however, Beavis was a branch manager who was working for a female area manager who was working for a female state manager.
“At the time that was really unheard of,” she says.
Beavis distinctly recalls an interaction with a male customer who was in disbelief at the arrangement.
“I got a customer complaint from an 80-year old scientist because I was a female and he didn’t want to deal with a woman. He wanted to speak to my manager and said ‘Put me on to him’. I explained she was a female too. He said ‘I don’t want her, I want her boss’. She was a female too! He stormed out but came back a lot to complain.”
That type of interaction became far less common and by 2001 in the area of Victoria in which Beavis worked, five of the six area managers were females. Another decade on Beavis says the appreciation for life outside of work makes the workplace more accommodating than ever before.
“I don’t have children and I am single but I still have to find the balance for things outside of work,” she says. “At times people have said things like, ‘You don’t have kids so you can stay longer’. That occurred, but I don’t believe we see that nearly as much now. Flexibility really helps and, not just in banks, I don’t think we have that old style culture as much. There is greater understanding about our responsibilities outside of work.”
Flexibility is one of the main reasons Beavis says she’s stuck with NAB throughout her career. She has taken extended breaks using long service leave twice to clear her head, and she recently job shared and worked a five-day fortnight for a year.
After more than a decade with the bank, Beavis took her first big break and travelled overseas for three months.
“I can still remember writing to my boss at the time in a coffee shop in Istanbul. I said, ‘when I return to work I wanted to focus on getting an area manager role. It’s the only time I’d ever written to a manager on leave’,” she laughs. “I think it was so she was clear on what I wanted.”
Upon return she spent almost a year working closely with the education and training of financial planners, then an area manager position came up in Dandenong.
“I was successful in getting that management role where I looked after 15 branches with between 150-200 staff,” she says.
Her next opportunity quite literally happened overnight.
“I was missing the sales focus in the area management role and one morning after a week off thinking about what to do, I got a call from a manager about a job. I applied for and was interviewed that morning and was appointed that afternoon,” Beavis says. “I moved from Dandenong to Ballarat to meet the new team all on the same day.”
Working with a rural team with 400 kilometres between branches has been one of her career highlights so far. “I loved the customer base. I grew up on a farm so I loved dealing with rural people and I really enjoyed my staff,” Beavis says.
After working in Ballarat, Beavis took another service manager role before moving into HR and then taking on a role in the customer contact centre. “Those seven years just flew by,” she says. “The fast-pace of the business and the diversity in what I’ve done mean you don’t get bored.”
In 2005, however, Beavis did begin thinking about a different career altogether.
“I took three-months long service leave and had a really good think. I looked at going to uni and doing something like medicine or physiotherapy but then I decided no. I enjoyed where I was. The role in the contact centre then really kept me occupied. In 2012 I came into this role and it’s almost like a new career.”
After more than three decades with the bank, Beavis has a single piece of advice for other women in the banking sector.
“Don’t get too far away from the customer. Always make sure you go back and have a reality check and remember why we’re here,” she says. “The customers are my passion and I find each time I am exposed to them I feel more settled.”
That’s another thing that hasn’t changed.