ECCB 2022-2023 Annual Report and Financial Statements

Eastern Caribbean Central Bank Annual Report 2022 - 2023

Health and Wellness The COVID-19 pandemic set the stage for a bigger and better focus on health and wellness in the workplace. This post pandemic era demands greater innovation, flexibility and increased agility to create and maintain a healthy, high-performing work culture. The Bank demonstrated its commitment to supporting this higher call for greater focus on health and wellness by using a hybrid approach in the workplace with two days remote and three days in office. This model allowed employees to work in a less crowded work environment while also allowing the flexibility to work from home in support of work/life balance. Mental health continued to be high on the Bank’s agenda, by ensuring that employees have the opportunity to access mental health services in a comfortable and confidential manner. In support of this thrust, the Bank introduced a second counsellor to its pool of service providers. The Bank also participated in a Healthy Business Challenge, an annual initiative of the St Kitts Ministry of Health aimed at supporting workplaces with their implementation of a health and wellness programme. The ECCB emerged the winner for the second time consecutively. The Healthy Business Challenge is designed as an annual programme divided into three four month sections. Businesses are given a challenge and judged in the categories of healthy eating, physical activity, and overall health and wellness. As part of the Challenge, two major health screening initiatives were organised over the last year led by the Healthy Business Challenge Committee in July and November 2022. The health screening in November 2022 also included breast cancer screening made possible through another initiative jointly organised by the St Kitts and Nevis Ministry of Health, Wellpoint Medical & Oncology, and the St Kitts and Nevis Cancer Society.

Training and Capacity Building Over the past year, the Bank provided learning and growth development opportunities to staff through in-house and external training sessions that focused on upskilling staff’s the technical and soft skills. The Bank’s leadership development programme, Emerging Leaders Programme 2.0, took the form of a refresher in targeted areas for the participants of the past three cohorts. Additionally, the Bank was pleased to offer continued support to applicable and approved staff, in their personal development, by providing financial reimbursement of the cost of tuition on successful completion of degree programmes. In addition, the Bank participated in an internship facilitated by The World Bank as part of the Reserves Advisory Management Partnership (RAMP) for the members of the Risk and Analytics Unit (RAU). The RAU is responsible for compliance monitoring and performance reporting on the Bank’s foreign reserve fixed income portfolios. The internship was pivotal to the ongoing development of the Middle Office function within the Bank’s foreign currency reserve management infrastructure. Implementation of Business Continuity Management System The Bank advanced the implementation of its Business Continuity Management System (BCMS)and is in the process of implementing the IT Recovery Strategy, which is required for testing and exercising of the Scenario Plans for departments. During the upcoming year, the BCMS policy will be reviewed and updated to incorporate the requirements from the latest standard for BCMS ISO 22301:2019. Effective risk management continued to be a priority area; hence, during the upcoming year, the Bank will prioritise the implementation of the Key Risk Indicator (KRI) Framework to provide greater clarity to the risk management process. The aim of the KRI framework is

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