Managing the Bank

The Bank of Canada is made up of a diverse group of engaged employees who work together to achieve the Bank’s business objectives and fulfill its mandate. Their efforts are supported by operations that are constantly evolving, particularly in the areas of efficiency, flexibility and resilience.

In 2023, the Bank remained focused on continuous improvement in all these areas. This included enhancing its work environment, modernizing its systems, managing cyber security risk, enabling data innovation and implementing changes to support its sustainability goals.

Remaining a top employer

The Bank was again recognized as one of the best places to work in Canada. For the 14th consecutive year, it was named one of Canada’s Top 100 Employers. The Bank was also recognized as a diverse, inclusive and family-friendly place to work.

Supporting an engaged workforce

In April, the Bank conducted its Work Environment Check-Up survey, which employees are invited to complete every three years. This was the first in-depth employee engagement survey since before the COVID‑19 pandemic. Results were positive, particularly the feedback employees provided on their immediate leaders. As always, the results also highlighted areas where employees believed the Bank could make improvements.

Building a more flexible and supportive work environment

The Bank continued to focus on being an attractive employer by:

• confirming its hybrid work model early in the year—this enabled employees to settle into new routines for coming to work on site
• continuing to offer flexible work arrangements that help employees achieve greater work-life balance—this has helped with recruiting in a challenging labour market
• providing leaders and employees with opportunities for training and development that support career advancement and continuous learning

Fostering greater diversity and inclusion

The Bank advanced its equity, diversity and inclusion goals in a variety of ways. In 2023, it:

• completed actions from its three-year accessibility plan, including incorporating accessibility considerations into procurement processes
• engaged with Indigenous employees to develop the Bank’s Indigenous Reconciliation Action Plan
• enhanced the analysis of internal data on human resources—this included conducting a review of the Bank’s compensation framework to assess its alignment with new requirements under federal pay equity legislation

Enhancing the Bank’s systems and tools

The Bank continued to reinforce the systems, tools and processes used in its critical operations. A particular focus was ensuring the Bank could maintain its critical operations during a disruption. To this end, the Bank:

• completed simulation exercises to evaluate its ability to recover from and continue operating after a disaster
• migrated high-priority infrastructure and applications to the cloud and to resilient on-site systems to increase flexibility and reliability
• updated the technology and equipment in its currency distribution centres
• automated processes and implemented additional self-service capabilities for employees

These enhancements further strengthened the foundation of secure, reliable systems that enable the Bank to fulfill its mandate.

Reinforcing cyber security inside and outside the Bank

Given the rapidly changing cyber landscape, the Bank continuously enhances its capacity to manage cyber security risks. In 2023, the Bank improved the processes for verifying and authenticating system activity across its platforms. It also further strengthened its detection controls, credential management and approach to mitigating third-party cyber risk.

The Bank continued to work closely with partners in the Canadian financial sector and around the world to promote the resilience of Canada’s financial system to cyber security risks.

Leveraging data and analytics

The Bank’s information needs are always evolving. Because of this, the Bank frequently brings in new types of data and analytics to strengthen its research, analysis and operations. Its focus in 2023 was on continuing to expand data capabilities and to integrate diverse information sources and analysis techniques.

The Bank also continued to explore potential ways to use artificial intelligence (AI) such as large language models. It remained committed to ensuring responsible employee use of AI tools. To that end, it implemented internal guidelines and best practices and began developing a responsible AI framework that will set standards related to governance and reporting. While these tools are not yet widely used by employees, this work is helping to ensure the Bank can begin to benefit from these technologies while reducing the potential risks.

The Bank worked closely with domestic and international partners on issues related to artificial intelligence and quantum computing. Notably, it collaborated with other members of the Canadian Forum for Digital Infrastructure Resilience to develop guidelines for quantum readiness.1 These guidelines establish best practices that stakeholders in the Canadian critical infrastructure sector and others can use to protect themselves against potential threats posed by this powerful technology.

The Bank also continues to offer training to ensure that employees have the depth and breadth of knowledge required to leverage new analytical tools and novel forms of data.

Meeting our commitments to greener operations

In 2023, the Bank prepared its second annual report disclosing its climate-related risks. This reporting follows the recommendations of the Financial Stability Board’s Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures. It also aligns the Bank with the more than 1,400 public organizations around the world that have published their own disclosures.

The report outlines how the Bank continued to address climate-related risk to its own operations and made progress on its climate commitments. Notably, the Bank surpassed its goal of reducing by 40% the greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted from its buildings, doing so more than a year before the target date of 2025. The Bank has a longer-term goal of achieving net-zero GHG emissions by 2050.

For the first time, the Bank disclosed in its report the GHG emissions from its bank note supply chain and from the private assets portion of its pension fund. It also disclosed its operational water consumption. Including these new metrics shows the progress the Bank has made in tracking and reporting complex information about its environmental footprint.