.

Sustainability Report 2020

.

..

2 | REA Group

Introduction

Contents

Introduction

About REA Group 3

2020 highlights 4

CEO message 5

Materiality assessment 6

Bushfires in Australia 8

COVID-19 9

Governance

Ethics and integrity 11

Risk management 15

Cyber security 19

Innovation 22

Responsible marketing 25

Sustainable procurement 26

Human rights and labour standards 27

Social

Diversity and inclusion 30

Workplace health, safety and wellbeing 33

Talent development and management 34

Employee Engagement 38

Customer satisfaction 42

Community investment 45

Environment

Climate change 52

Sustainability working group 53

Sustainable buildings 53

Global Reporting Initiative

FY20 content index 54

Limited Assurance

Independent Limited Assurance Report 62

3 | REA Group

Introduction

About REA Group

Headquartered in Richmond VIC, Australia, REA Group Ltd ACN 068 349 066 (ASX:REA) is a multinational digital advertising business specialising in property

REA Group operates Australia’s leading

residential and commercial property

websites realestate.com.au and

realcommercial.com.au. It also operates

the leading website dedicated to share

property, Flatmates.com.au, and Spacely,

a short-term commercial and coworking

property website. In Asia, REA Group

owns a market-leading property portal

in Malaysia (iproperty.com.my) and

prominent property portals in Hong Kong

(squarefoot.com.hk) and Thailand

(thinkingofliving.com), as well as the

Chinese site, myfun.com. REA Group owns

Smartline, an Australian mortgage broking

franchise group, and Hometrack, a leading

provider of property data services.

REA Group also holds a significant

shareholding in Move Inc., which primarily

operates Realtor.com® in the United

States, 99.co, which operates property

portals 99.co, iProperty.com.sg and

Rumah123.com located in Singapore and

Indonesia. In addition, the Group holds a

significant interest in Elara Technologies

Pte Ltd, which operates Housing.com,

Proptiger.com and makaan.com in India.

www.rea-group.com

4 | REA Group

Introduction

2020 highlights

Customer satisfaction

COVID-19 resulted in our teams quickly

mobilising to deliver new product

innovations to help our customers and

the property industry adapt to the new

rules. This included digital inspections,

online auctions, inspection bookings and

COVID-19 property market insights to keep

the industry informed.

Data protection, privacy and cyber security

We increased investment in our Cyber

Security team with new operational,

engineering and advisory capability.

Environment

REA Group’s total quantified FY20

carbon footprint totalled 5,607 tonnes of

carbon dioxide equivalent. We have set

science-based aligned targets to reduce

our footprint by 2030. In FY21, we will

introduce a carbon emissions reduction

action plan and offset our emissions to

become certified carbon neutral.

Innovation

In May 2020, we held our first entirely

virtual REAio (hackathon) due to COVID-19

and saw great national engagement, with a

product shipped that following weekend!

Diversity and inclusion

Of our people across Australia and Asia,

50.1% identify as female and 49.9% identify

as male. Our Executive Leadership Team

also has 50:50 gender parity.

Employee engagement

In FY20, our engagement scores in H1

were 78% for Australia (participation 89%)

and 79% for Asia (participation 94%). In

H2, we conducted a weekly ‘belief’ pulse

survey over 14 weeks with an average

positive sentiment score of 92%.

Community investment

In FY20, the National Rapid Rehousing

Fund, established by Launch Housing and

REA Group in 2015, provided financial

support to 686 women and children

at risk of homelessness, to establish or

maintain safe, secure housing free of

violence, across Australia.

Ethics and integrity

We published our first Voluntary Tax

Transparency report in FY20, providing

a summary of taxes paid, collected and

remitted.

Workplace health, safety and wellbeing

We provided our people with the option

to take part in a number of health and

wellbeing activities, including Month of

Mindfulness, Mental Health Awareness

Month, RU OK Day and a Resilience series.

5 | REA Group

Introduction

Welcome to our second Sustainability Report.

When I reflect on the last 12 months, the overwhelming feeling I have is pride for the way REA Group’s people have successfully navigated a year unlike any other, while delivering ongoing value to our customers, consumers and shareholders

Our people provide us with a competitive

edge, and even when faced with the

challenges of FY20, we have made terrific

progress across the areas of Environment,

Social and Governance (ESG). New

ways of operating, combined with new

products, features and support measures

were all successfully introduced to support

our people, customers, consumers and

the communities in which we operate.

Looking through the ESG lens, the key

to our success in FY20 was the ability

to effectively implement our continuity

plans developed as part of our Business

Continuity and Resilience Framework,

to quickly move our people to work

remotely. We did so with the knowledge

that we could continue to run our critical

processes and serve our customers with

minimal interruption.

A number of key highlights were delivered

throughout the year, including the

expansion of our Cyber Security team,

progress towards our gender diversity

targets and the steps we’ve taken to

minimise our environmental footprint.

Our focus on gender diversity is

unwavering, with 50.1% of our people

across Australia and Asia identifying

as female, and 49.9% of our people

identifying as male. Our target to have

50:50 gender representation across

REA Group’s Leadership Group (RLG)

in Australia has been achieved.

We remain humbled by the work of our

charity partners, who play a material role

in driving and advocating for scalable

solutions to end homelessness. We were

proud to extend our financial and in-kind

support of our charity partners Launch

Housing, Orange Sky Australia and

The Big Issue during FY20.

On the environmental front, in FY20 we

calculated REA Group’s carbon footprint.

With this information, we have set

science-based aligned targets to reduce

our footprint and play our part in limiting

global warming. We will also be offsetting

our FY20 footprint to become certified

carbon neutral. You can read more about

our carbon reduction commitments within

the Environment section of this report.

We’ve made improvements to our

Sustainability Report this year, which has

been prepared in accordance with the

Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards:

Core option. In addition, we engaged

independent professional services firm

KPMG to undertake Limited Assurance

over selected information within this

Report. KPMG’s assurance opinion is

provided on page 62.

As we enter a new decade, we look

forward to our increased focus on

ESG being a driving force behind

REA Group’s ongoing success. We

appreciate you taking the time to read

our FY20 Sustainability Report and

welcome any feedback via our mailbox:

sustainability@rea-group.com

Owen Wilson

Chief Executive Officer

CEO message

6 | REA Group

Introduction

In FY19, REA Group undertook a materiality assessment to establish the most relevant areas of focus related to sustainability We reviewed the findings of the materiality

assessment internally at the beginning of

FY20 against the activity of our business

over the last 12 months. From this, we

concluded that the top eight issues

remain the most relevant and in the right

order for our business to focus on.

The issues were determined as part

of a review process undertaken by an

independent sustainability consultancy.

It included researching issues relevant

to REA Group and benchmarking our

sustainability performance against peers,

competitors and leaders.

The issues were prioritised following

internal and external issue surveys,

interviews and workshops. The data

gathered was then analysed and

consolidated to produce a prioritised

list of material issues. The top eight

issues identified for REA Group from the

materiality assessment, and where you

can find content on each, are featured

in the following issues navigator.

Materiality matrix

GHG Emissions

Climate Change Adaptation

Water

Energy

Sustainable Procurement

Public Policy Responsible Use of Media

Innovation

Service Quality & Safety

Data Protection & Security

Ethics & Integrity

Waste

ResponsibleMarketing

Human Rights

TalentDevelopment

HS&W

Diversity & Inclusion

Employee Engagement

Customer Satisfaction

Community Partnerships

ENVIRONMENT

SOCIAL

GOVERNANCE

Imp

ort

ance t

o s

take

ho

lders

Current or potential impact on business

LOW

MODERATE

HIGH

VERY HIGH

Materiality assessment

We plan to conduct our next materiality assessment in FY22 to ensure we are

continuing to prioritise the most relevant areas of focus for REA Group in relation

to sustainability.

7 | REA Group

Introduction

Materiality assessment continued

Materiality assessment – top eight sustainability issues navigator

Ethics and integrity

Conducting all business activities in line with the highest ethical and

legal standards is central to the company’s purpose and values. Ethics and integrity, page 11

Human rights and labour standards, page 27

Diversity and inclusion

Providing a fair and equitable workplace, free from discrimination. Diversity and inclusion, page 30

Data protection, privacy and cyber security

Safeguarding data and networks from corruption, loss and cyber

attacks, and ensuring privacy of personal information. Cyber security, page 19

Privacy at REA Group, page 12

Health, safety and wellbeing

Preventing work-related injuries, illnesses and accidents in the

workplace, and promoting the wellbeing of our employees. Workplace health, safety and wellbeing, page 33

Product quality and safety

Setting and maintaining high standards of products and services,

such as preventing cases of scams, fraudulent listings, mislabelling

of properties and false advertising.

Cyber security, page 19

Responsible marketing, page 25

Innovation, page 22

Employee engagement

Creating a culture and workplace where employees have a positive

attitude towards the organisation and its values. Employee engagement, page 38

Innovation

Investing in new ideas, solutions and innovations to create better

products and services. Innovation, page 22

Customer satisfaction

Meeting customers’ expectations through superior product and

service quality, as well as enhancing their user experience. Customer satisfaction, page 42

8 | REA Group

Introduction

Bushfires in Australia

In 2019 and 2020, bushfires spread across Australia with devastating impacts – including to our customers In January 2020, we created a Bushfire

Relief Support Package for impacted

customers to access when the time was

right for them to do so. The package

included the following:

Re-upgrades, at no additional cost,

for properties that were within an

affected bushfire area, and where

the existing marketing campaign

needed to be extended.

Refunds on paid advertising for

properties that were within an

affected bushfire area, and which

needed to be taken off the market

due to fire damage.

For businesses that operated within

affected bushfire areas, and which

were experiencing significant impact

to their operations, realestate.com.au

or realcommercial.com.au

subscription fees (or other recurring

product fees) were waived from

1 January to 31 March 2020.

For businesses that operated within

affected bushfire areas, and which

were experiencing negative impact

to their operations, we provided

extended payment plans for

outstanding accounts.

Our Flatmates.com.au platform,

which connects people who need

accommodation with those who have

a spare room or vacant property, also

extended an offer to waive all fees for

those who opened their homes rent-

free for people seeking emergency

accommodation. More information is

available at:

REA Group’s Bushfire Crisis Support site

Through our Advantage Community Grant

program, we prioritised grant applications

benefiting bushfire-impacted regions,

to help them get back on their feet. In

FY20, of the 96 agencies awarded a

grant throughout Australia, 54 agencies

nominated bushfire-affected causes. Read

more about the Advantage program on

page 44.

REA Group’s people were also eager to

help out and in February 2020, REA Group

doubled the Matched Payroll Giving

caps for employee and company for the

remainder of financial year (concluding

on 30 June 2020). This saw employee

donations through our Matched Payroll

Giving program matched dollar for

dollar up to AUD $1,000 per employee,

and up to a company cap of AUD $150k.

Our employees embraced this opportunity,

with up to 27% of our people in Australia

opting to donate this way, with donations

peaking in February 2020.

Donations for charities responding to the

bushfires were also generated through

the Community Café between November

2019 and February 2020, as well as an

employee-driven painting and bake-sale.

The bake-sale saw team members bring

baked goods from home and another

team member created water paintings of

Australian wildlife to sell, generating further

donations for the Australian Wildlife charity.

Together, REA Group and its people

donated more than $200k to charities

supporting communities and wildlife

impacted by the bushfires.

$200k+ Donated by REA Group and employees to charities supporting bushfire-impacted communities

9 | REA Group

Introduction

COVID-19

The impacts of COVID-19 have been felt around the world During this time, REA Group focused on

the health and safety of our employees,

their families and our local communities.

Our customers and partners remain

front and centre in all our thinking as we

continue to monitor and respond to the

situation as it evolves.

In response to COVID-19, REA Group

delivered new product innovations to help

our customers and the property industry

adapt to the new rules including digital

inspections, online auctions, inspection

bookings and COVID-19 property market

insights to keep the industry informed.

Our focus was clear:

1To provide our customers with

ongoing flexible support measures

2 To launch new features and services

to provide Australians with the ability

to buy, sell and rent

3 To ensure property seekers were kept

well informed with regular insights

into the property market

We pivoted our entire sales teams to

provide virtual customer support, deliver

flexible solutions ensure listings and

campaigns were treated sensitively, and

provide relief measures for those going

through financial hardship.

In addition, we shifted our education and

learning event series in both Australia

and Asia to online, ensuring all of our

customers had access to the insights and

learning required to run their businesses

successfully.

Overall customer sentiment and feedback

towards our efforts was extremely positive,

and we continue to deliver support in

affected areas.

We’ve also shared information around

financial assistance available to individuals

and businesses, as well as tips on working

from home with kids.

In addition, we provided a range of health

and wellbeing initiatives, including access

to uncapped personal leave to support

our people with their transition to working

from home during the restricted periods.

We have been able to manage the

business through the COVID-19 pandemic

via implementation of continuity

plans developed under our Business

Continuity and Resilience Framework.

Prior to the global pandemic, we had an

understanding of our most important

processes, and the plans required to

continue the operation of those processes

under multiple risk scenarios that included

a pandemic.

Testing these plans was an expectation

under the Business Continuity and

Resilience Framework, which enabled

us to quickly move our people to work

remotely, knowing that we could continue

to run our critical processes and serve

our customers with minimal interruption.

The framework has also provided the

guidelines by which we have run our Major

Incident Response Team to manage our

COVID-19 response since January 2020.

The focus of the Major Incident Response

Team in January was on the continuity

and safety of our lines of business based

in Asia. As the pandemic spread and

forced Australia into Stage 3 lockdown in

March, we enacted the Crisis Management

Team to forecast market impact and,

therefore, revenue impact to REA Group,

take action to sure up liquidity and roll out

a series of customer support packages

for our customers. During the period

that remote working was extended, we

have focused on Workplace Health and

Safety, specifically ergonomic and mental

health impacts, and we have continued

to adapt our customer support packages

accordingly.

A more detailed overview of REA Group’s

COVID-19 response can be read on

page 16 of our FY20 Annual Report.

10 | REA Group

Governance

GovernanceGood governance is essential to protect and enhance the long-term performance and sustainability of our company. It also supports the interests of our shareholders, employees, customers, consumers and the broader community

11 | REA Group

Governance

Conducting all business activities in line with the highest ethical and legal standardsREA Group’s most recent materiality

assessment created a prioritised list of

sustainability issues for REA Group and

‘ethics and integrity’ was the number

one ‘issue’ identified. This section of our

Sustainability Report outlines the programs,

practices and policies REA Group has in

place to ensure ethics and integrity is at

the forefront of everything we do.

Compliance risk

Doing business transparently and in a

way that promotes the highest levels of

business ethics and integrity is central to

how we operate at REA Group. As part

of the company’s approach to risk and

assurance, we have a Compliance Risk

framework in place that spells out the

steps to be taken for ongoing assessment

of our compliance risk for all of our

regulatory and legislative obligations.

Our framework includes Anti-Bribery

and Corruption, Privacy, Competition and

Consumer, Employment Act, Occupational

Health and Safety, Corporations Act, ASX

listing requirements and Financial Services.

When new people join REA Group, we

share our digital Employee Handbook

with them, which provides insight into

the following:

Values

Conducting ourselves professionally

Ensuring everyone’s safety,

wellbeing and inclusion

Using technology safely

Engaging with social media

Building a high-performance culture

Avoiding conflicts of interest

How to raise concerns

Our policies are reinforced with mandatory

online training for all new people who

join REA Group to create awareness and

understanding, and foster a culture of

respect, diversity and inclusion. Our Legal

team also runs face-to-face refresher

compliance training annually across

the company. Additional compliance

training has been rolled out in Asia to

cover ‘Preventing Bribery and Corruption’,

with ‘Workplace Safety and Violence’,

‘Competition, Antitrust and Fair Dealing’

and ‘Cybersecurity’ planned for roll out

in FY21.

Ethics and integrity

12 | REA Group

Governance

Privacy at REA Group

At REA Group, we do our best to

personalise the service that every person

receives, so we are providing them with

the most relevant property suggestions,

articles and guides. We are only able

to provide such a personalised service

as a result of our ability to track certain

personal information of our users. This

may include information that the user has

disclosed to us about their demographic

profile, but may also include information

we have deduced about the user based

on their behavior on our website.

We understand that the information we

collect from our users is personal. We

aspire to be as transparent as possible in

our privacy policy as to what information

we collect, how we use it and how we

disclose it.

Privacy by design is at the forefront of

the minds of our developers and product

managers. The importance of handling

personal information appropriately is

reiterated by our Privacy Officers and

is part of our mandatory on-boarding

training for all new employees, our one-

hour mandatory annual legal training

for all employees in Australia, and our

mandatory online compliance training

for all employees in REA Group Asia. We

conduct privacy impact assessments on

all new products and systems that handle

personal information, and we take care

to ensure all personal information is not

only stored securely, but also purged in

accordance with our retention policies.

A key focus of REA Group in FY21 will be

to improve our privacy practices to provide

users with further transparency and control

over their personal information. We have

a dedicated consumer privacy working

group aimed at ensuring our privacy

practices are considered best practice

and to ensure that REA Group will be

well placed to comply with:

a) the proposed changes to the

Australian privacy laws that were

first recommended by the Australian

Competition and Consumer

Commission (ACCC) in its Digital

Platforms Inquiry Report in 2019

b) Thailand’s new Personal Data

Protection Act, which is scheduled

to be fully implemented in 2021.

REA Group introduced its first Privacy

Policy in 2001, when the Privacy Act 1988

(Cth) was extended to cover the private

sector. REA Group’s Privacy Policy

has evolved over almost 20 years, in

line with our data collection and usage

practices, to continually provide up-to-

date and transparent information to our

customers and consumers. In FY20, REA

Group introduced a Cookie Policy to

provide greater transparency about how it

uses cookies and similar technologies for

website analytics and targeted advertising. A

similar Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy also

apply to our businesses in REA Group Asia.

Ethics and integrity continued

Whistleblower policy

Our Whistleblower Policy and

process provides a way to confidentially

and anonymously report any suspected

instances of wrongdoing. This may include

illegal, unethical or inappropriate conduct.

It is accessible to current and former

employees, contractors, suppliers and

external parties. 

The policy provides details of what a

wrongdoing is, how to make a report

and the steps REA Group will take to

keep things confidential and protect the

whistleblower. There are internal and

external channels for making a report,

including through an independent third-

party whistleblower service, which can

be accessed online or by telephone.

Whistleblowers are protected from

victimisation, adverse action or

intimidation. Our Board, via the ARC

Committee, receives regular updates

on ‘whistleblower’ matters.

Conflicts of interest

REA Group maintains a ‘Managing

Conflicts of Interest’ Policy, which

applies to all REA Group directors,

employees, contractors, consultants

and visitors working for REA

Group. Directors are required on

an ongoing basis to disclose to the

Board relevant personal interests

and conflicts of interest that may

have an impact on their actual or

perceived independence. These

are recorded and reported to each

board meeting.

The Audit, Risk and Compliance

(ARC) Committee supports the

Board with oversight on related

party transactions. Where

transactions with related parties

take place, REA Group complies

with the relevant provisions of the

Corporations Act. Transactions

with related parties are disclosed

in REA Group’s Annual Report on

page 112.

13 | REA Group

Governance

Ethics and integrity continued

Financial services

Home loans play an important part in

bringing property dreams to life and

REA Group’s Financial Services team is

committed to making this part of the

property journey easier. Whether it’s

the transition from renting to buying,

upgrading, investing or refinancing to

a better deal, consumers need advice

they can trust. Smartline and our banking

partner NAB, work together to provide the

right information and service.

By bringing the financial lens to property

listings we believe consumers can build

their understanding and confidence. With

this they can make the decisions that

support their goals – whether that’s the

suburban dream, a weekend getaway, a

property empire or just something to call

their own. Our content and tools help

everyday Australians to understand their

options in the comfort and privacy of

their home or office. We understand that

our consumers have unique needs and

we’re all about options and choices. When

they’re ready to take the next step, we

can connect them directly to our banking

partner, or to a mortgage broker. Helping

consumers get financially ready is great for

our vendors and agents too. Getting our

audience ready to make their next move

increases the quality of conversations at

each step of the process.

Group of 100 (G100)

REA Group’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Janelle Hopkins, was named the first

female chairman of the G100 in February 2020. The G100 is the peak body for

CFOs and works to ensure Australia’s commercial and regulatory environment

is one that advances the interests of Australian businesses, as well as one that

encourages private and public enterprises to grow and compete in today’s highly

competitive environment.

Tax transparency

As part of REA Group’s commitment

to pay the right amount of tax and

comply with all tax laws, we support

the Board of Taxation’s Voluntary Tax

Transparency Code (TTC).

In 2020, REA Group published its

first voluntary Tax Transparency

Report, providing a summary of the

$276.4 million in taxes paid, collected

and remitted by REA Group for FY19.

The report provides disclosures under

the Voluntary TTC, and is in addition

to tax information that is reported to

the Australian Taxation Office (ATO),

Australian State Revenue Offices

and foreign revenue authorities on

a regular basis.

Our Voluntary Tax Transparency

report includes information in relation

to REA Group’s approach to tax

governance, tax risk management and

international-related party dealings.

REA Group and its subsidiaries comply

with all applicable tax laws and

regulations.

Our Tax Governance policy reinforces

our objectives:

• We pay the legally correct amount

of tax and do not knowingly partake

in tax avoidance/fraud.

• We assess tax effective positions

that are supportable, founded in

prevailing commercial rationale and

that do not damage our corporate

reputation.

• We engage with regulators, tax

authorities, external advisers, and

industry groups

in an ethical,

transparent and

professional

manner.

14 | REA Group

Governance

Ethics and integrity continued

Responsible lending

Smartline has always placed customers

at the heart of all interactions. Smartline’s

policies and procedures set out the

standards by which the team (Smartline

and its network of brokers) aims to conduct

themselves when dealing with customers.

Smartline is committed to upholding

industry standards of practice and services

outlined by regulators, the MFAA and the

Banking Code of Practice. This requires

Smartline, and its network of brokers,

to meet a standard of ethical behaviour,

ensure responsible lending obligations are

met and place the customer’s best interest

at the centre of every decision.

Part of Smartline’s responsible lending

approach is to ensure brokers offer

customers exceptional advice by providing

quality mortgage broking services. This is

about providing personal and proactive

communication to customers, as well as

giving consideration to the individual needs

of each customer. When a Smartline broker

recommends a product to a customer,

they are required to ensure the product

meets the customer’s individual needs, is

suitable and in the customers best interest.

Hometrack

After being acquired by REA in June 2018,

Hometrack is now fully integrated into REA

across all areas and functions, including

data services, systems engineering,

security, people and culture. The full

integration of Hometrack ensures the team

has access to the up-to-date technologies

and ways of working.

Given the sensitive customer data that

Hometrack is trusted with, data protection

is critical for the sustainability of the

business. Hometrack is currently certified

ISO 27001 and aligned with the National

Institute of Standards and Technology

(NIST) Cybersecurity Framework. The

Hometrack team has strict policies

around storage and purging of personally

identifiable information (PII) data,

encryption of data (both in transit and at-

rest) and policies outlining access control

to the Hometrack systems. Hometrack

has in place data loss prevention

(DLP) solutions for the protection

of customer data.

Hometrack has long-term recurring

revenues with its major bank customers.

Hometrack renewed all of its relationships

with its major customers that were due

for renewal in FY20, and added many

new services to its valuations platforms

throughout the year.

Hometrack is being rebranded to

a permanent new brand under the

REA Group umbrella of brands in FY21.

Smartline

In February 2020, Smartline and

realestate.com.au brokers all came

together under the one brand – Smartline

personal mortgage advisers. Processes,

platforms and websites were all integrated

and accreditation for all our brokers was

gained under the new brand.

Smartline is a financial member of the

Mortgage and Finance Association of

Australia (MFAA) and the Combined

Industry Forum. Smartline holds a Credit

Licence that is issued by the Australian

Securities and Investments Commission

(ASIC) and, as such, also falls under the

Australian Financial Complaints Authority

(AFCA) external dispute resolution scheme.

Our Smartline team won Franchise of

the Year for the 10th time in 11 years

in FY20. A number of our franchisees

were recognised as finalists at various

industry awards events – the Better

Business Summit, MFAA State Awards,

Australian Broker Awards and Women

in Finance Awards.

Smartline updated its responsible lending

policy and procedures to align with the

ASIC Regulatory Guide RG209 Credit

licensing: Responsible lending conduct.

The new policy went live on 1 July 2020.

15 | REA Group

Governance

Taking the right risks, at the right time, for the right return, while doing the right thingThe team at REA Group is driven by our

purpose to ‘change the way the world

experiences property’, which encompasses

everything from product innovation to

international investments. Having a clearly

defined purpose provides REA Group

with opportunities to drive further value.

We believe effective risk management is

about taking the right risks, at the right

time, for the right return, while doing the

right thing.

To achieve this, REA Group follows

accepted standards and guidelines for

managing risk. We are committed to

ensuring that a consistent and integrated

approach to risk management is

established and embedded across all

levels of the business. This is driven by

REA Group’s Risk Management Framework

that is regularly reviewed and updated

to reflect best practice, industry and

community standards.

Board

Our Board reviews and approves the

REA Group Risk Management strategy that

outlines how we manage and govern risk,

and the Risk Appetite Statement

on an annual basis. At REA Group, risk

appetite is defined as ‘the amount and

type of risk that an organisation is willing

to take in order to meet its strategic and

business objectives’. While risk appetite

is about the pursuit of risk, risk tolerance

is about what an organisation can cope

with. REA articulates risk tolerances as ‘risk

limits’. Risk appetite and an associated

set of risk limits provide the business

with a framework to make risk-based

decisions – in the context of the type

of risks to accept, or not to accept and

the areas of the business that require

immediate attention because operational

performance is not in line with Board

expectations.

REA Group Board Charter

Risk management

16 | REA Group

Governance

Risk management continued

Board Audit, Risk & Compliance Committee

Once risk appetite is set by the Board, the

Board Audit, Risk & Compliance Committee

(ARCC) monitor that the performance of

the organisation remains within those limits

by receiving and reviewing management

reporting that is tabled regularly throughout

the year. If limits are breached or look

like being breached, the ARCC require

management to take decisive action to

address the control environment in a timely

fashion and will receive updates on how

actions are progressing.

The ARCC will also approve the annual

audit plan, ensuring it focuses on key

areas of risk to the business, while also

giving consideration to external events and

themes. Audit reports are tabled at ARCC

meetings following completion of each

audit. Regular risk reporting to the ARCC

includes the status of agreed management

actions to close any control gaps that

audits identify.

The ARCC requires a report to be tabled

and considered following management

review of the REA Group Risk Management

Policy (annually) and supporting frameworks

(biennially) to ensure industry and regulatory

standards and best practice are achieved as

well as operational effectiveness.

In addition to the regular reporting that

is tabled at ARCC meetings throughout

the year, the annual audit planning, risk

management strategy and appetite setting

process and policy and framework reviews,

the Chair of the ARCC hosts a Board Risk

Day once every year where members of

the Board spend a full day considering

strategic risk and emerging risk themes to

formulate the REA Group Strategic Risk

Profile for the year ahead.

Further, the ARCC is kept informed of

changes in the cyber threat landscape,

security strategy and mitigations directly

by the Chief Information Security Officer

and through our Executive Risk Committee

(ERC).

REA Group Board ARCC Charter

Executive Risk Committee

We have a formal Executive Risk

Committee in place to discuss, monitor

and decide on risk matters regularly.

This includes the monitoring of our

risk appetite settings that have been

approved by the Board. This Committee

consists of member of our Executive

Leadership Team (ELT), our Chief

Information Security Officer and our

Chief Risk Officer.

The agenda covers our Operational risk

taxonomy (as defined in our Operational

Risk Framework), Strategic Risk, Regulatory

Risk, Compliance Risk, Credit Risk, Internal

Audits and any significant incidents or

events related to these areas that may have

occurred. High-risk matters, are escalated

to the ARCC.

We also maintain a network of ‘Risk

Champions’ within the business to help

with identification and management of

our risk profiles, implementation of our

frameworks and embedding a risk culture.

In FY20, we executed a comprehensive

review of our Risk Management

Strategy and Appetite, Operational Risk

Framework and Business Resilience

Framework, which was endorsed by our

Board of Directors for implementation.

At the commencement of the financial

year we review and update the risk appetite

and internal audit plan, using historical

trends, industry insights and input from

management teams via the ERC and ARCC.

We monitor and review continuously

throughout the year and also adjust at any

point with Board approval, which allows

us the flexibility to adapt based on the

emerging risk landscape.

Per our Risk Framework, we also perform

ongoing assurance of our key controls

across all operational and compliance risk

types. This includes in-depth testing of key

financial controls in line with Sarbanes-

Oxley requirements, due to NewsCorp

being a US-based majority shareholder.

Overall risk culture

Ince

ntiv

es a

nd motiv

ation

Leadership

Organisation and e

nviro

nmen

t

Risk framework

Risk appetite Roles and responsibilit

y

Risk tran

sparency

Go

vern

ance

Rew

ards

Employee lifecycle Tone from the top

Behavioural m

od

el

17 | REA Group

Governance

Key risk exposures

Following are the key risk exposures that relate to the most important sustainability ‘issues’ identified in REA Group’s most recent materiality

assessment. REA Group has identified these risks to have the potential to significantly impact our business and the table details how we

manage these potential exposures. These are monitored and discussed regularly as part of the ERC and ARCC.

Key risk  Response Materiality assessment – issue 

Regulatory landscape

Increased regulation that increases the cost

of doing business, or makes some parts of

our business unprofitable or unacceptable

in terms of risk

• Compliance Risk Framework updated and

implemented

• Regulatory and Government Committee

established to review and action regulatory

changes

1 Ethics and integrity

Data

Issues with managing integrity and consistency

of our data, or failure to build services that

enable the production of those data assets

• Implemented a data governance program to

support both: 

- Data defence – minimising risk and ensuring

integrity of data

- Data offence – enabling data-driven

decision-making and product development

• Our data governance program will evolve

existing data defence programs, such as our

Privacy and Data Retention policies, but the

focus will be on building our data offence to

unlock new value 

3 Data protection, privacy and

cyber security

5 Product quality and safety

Customer

Disruption to our customers’ business models

would have implications for REA Group

• Provide strong support for Agency Principals

and Business Owners 

• Continuing to increase engagement with

individual agents through tools

8 Customer satisfaction

Misappropriation, misuse and malicious activity

Losses due to acts of a type intended to

defraud, misappropriate property or circumvent

regulations, the law or company policy 

• See the Cyber Security section on page 19 3 Data protection, privacy and

cyber security

5 Product quality and safety

Key risk exposures continued over page

Risk management continued

18 | REA Group

Governance

Risk management continued

Key risk  Response Materiality assessment – issue 

Products, advice and business practices

Losses arising from an unintentional or negligent

failure to meet a professional obligation

including duty of care owed to customers,

consumers and/or the market and suitability

requirements, or from the nature or design of

a product

• User experience testing of new product

concepts and market research 

• Customer feedback channels and consumer

satisfaction via Customer Satisfaction council,

surveys and Industry Leadership groups

• Legal review in place for any marketing claims 

• Lender education and qualifications for our

Financial Services business 

• Smartline Compliance Assurance Program

1 Ethics and integrity

5 Product quality and safety

8 Customer satisfaction

Execution and delivery

Losses arising from failed transactions

processing, process management, non-delivery

of new/enhanced functionality 

• Defined product strategies and roadmaps

• Cross functional squads and tribes aligned to

product delivery

• Credit/debtor management processes that

include credit checks on new customers,

delinquency management controls, hardship

programs to responsibly help our customers

through difficult times

1 Ethics and integrity

5 Product quality and safety

7 Innovation

8 Customer satisfaction

People, employment practices and workplace safety

Inability to deliver against strategy due to

ineffective talent management

Losses arising from acts that are inconsistent

with employment, health or safety laws or

agreements, from payment of personal injury

claims or from diversity/discrimination events

• Dedicated talent acquisition team

• REA Uuniversity learning program for

employees

• Workplace Health and Safety system and

committee in place

• Robust performance and remuneration

framework reviewed by the Board of Directors

annually

• Annual engagement survey, supplemented

by regular pulse surveys

1 Ethics and integrity

2 Diversity and inclusion

4 Health, safety and wellbeing

6 Employee engagement

Business disruption and system failure

Inability to execute core business processes due

to systems disruption/outage 

• Architect our technology for resilience

• Define operating levels and monitor for events

that may impact those levels

• Incident Management processes, training and

post-incident reviews performed for lessons

learned

• IT Disaster recovery plans and testing in place 

3 Data protection, privacy and

cyber security

19 | REA Group

Governance

Building cyber resilience at REA GroupREA Group’s most recent materiality

assessment identified ‘data protection,

privacy and cyber security’ as one

of the top prioritised sustainability

issues for REA Group. This section of

our Sustainability Report provides an

overview of how REA Group is continually

enhancing and evolving its cyber security

strategy and activity to benefit all our

stakeholders.

Risks arising from cyber threats is front

of mind for REA Group. Cyber security

continues to gain attention in both

customer-facing and non-customer-facing

teams across our business.

Public awareness has been driven by new

legislation and the increasing frequency

of publicity surrounding scams and fraud,

particularly resulting from email phishing

and prominent social media activity.

In 2020 the Australian Government

highlighted concerns over advanced

hacking targeting organisations across

the country.

REA Group has responded through its

investment in the Cyber Security team over

the last 12 months by adding operational,

engineering and advisory capability.

Additionally, we have brought security

into our broader technology platform

and cloud engineering group, providing

REA Group with a powerful lever to embed

security into the fabric of our technology

building blocks.

Having a Cyber Security team that works

with product managers and technology

teams to proactively monitor REA Group

systems for vulnerabilities helps us to

better mitigate malicious activity and

threats to our business. This year, we’ve

worked to increase employee and

customer risk-awareness through a series

of initiatives, including the following:

A revised Security Guide for

Property Managers

Targeted awareness for high-risk

users, highlighting risks associated

with business email compromise

and fake invoice scams

Product security health checks to

bake security requirements into

new products

Hands-on developer training in

secure development practices

using Open Web Application

Security Project (OWASP) top 10

mitigations

The introduction of multi-factor

authentication to enhance security

for employees, customers and

consumers, as well as additional

security enhancements for our

customer and consumer facing apps

Digital risk management

Board level awareness of

cyber security issues

Cyber security

Strategy

Our cyber security strategy continues to be

focused around five simple priorities:

1 Visibility of assets and threats

2 Prioritising good technology hygiene

3 Broad adoption of key security controls

4 Promotion of a risk-aware culture

5 Data protection

Our security program extends to assessing

our business partners and supplier

security posture.

20 | REA Group

Governance

Cyber security continued

Industry Standards

REA Group uses the NIST Cybersecurity

Framework, an internationally recognised

approach to the implementation of

controls to manage risks to our business,

and we measure our maturity against

this framework annually. The framework

enables us to continually assess where to

focus investment.

REA Group leverages external expertise

where appropriate to augment its security

services, including conducting security

testing, compromise assessments and

independent reviews.

Product security health checks

We believe in building security into our

products and tech upfront, not bolting

it on afterwards. Our Product Security

Health Check (PSHC) is aligned to the NIST

Cybersecurity Framework and enables

product managers to self-assess their

initiatives for security risks. The PSHC

builds story cards that teams embed into

their delivery roadmaps. This helps deliver

their products while meeting our policy

requirements without the security team

becoming a bottleneck. Our continuous

delivery approach allows for frequent

changes and assessments to occur

throughout the software lifecycle.

Industry collaboration

REA Group’s cyber ecosystem

extends broadly across industries, and

collaboration with peers is a vital source

of threat intelligence, helping to inform

our security strategy. This year, we

collaborated with a number of Australian

organisations to publish a guide to inform

businesses about real-world experiences

influencing security outcomes.

REA Group submitted a response to the

government’s cyber security strategy

update and the Chief Information Security

Officer contributed to a focus group,

providing feedback about concerns and

recommendations for future national

initiatives.

REA Group’s Chief Information Security

Officer sits on several executive advisory

boards for cyber security including Deakin

University, the Australian Information

Security Association, and is a CyRise

mentor – an accelerator for Australian

cyber security start-ups. He is a co-founder

of the Security, Influence and Trust Group,

a collaboration of leading organisations

committed to influencing and building

a cyber-aware culture across Australia.

Multi-factor authentication

Project Locke:

protecting our customers

We’re passionate about protecting

our customers’ online experience

with us. That’s why we’ve

implemented risk-based, multi-

factor authentication to prevent

unauthorised access to personal

information.

Over the last 12 months we’ve been

working across our businesses

in Australia and Asia to bring the

latest authentication technology

to life – a capability we call Locke.

Locke isn’t just about sending an

SMS code, it is using a range of risk

factors to detect unusual behaviour

in our online apps. Additionally,

we’re able to use identities to create

more personalised experiences and

issue challenges based on high-risk

activities.

We’ve added social sign-on to our

experience and we are now able to

leverage the security provided by

leading platforms such as Facebook,

AppleID and Google, removing the

need to remember extra passwords.

21 | REA Group

Governance

Cyber security continued

Digital risk management

No-one likes scammers and neither do

we. This year we’ve taken down more

than 100 fake mobile apps impersonating

REA Group on the Android platform. To do

this, we’re using a combination of certificate

transparency monitoring and phishing

takedown services from a leading digital

risk-management partner. This helps protect

our customers and brand from abuse.

We have also implemented the Domain-

based Message Authentication, Reporting,

and Conformance (DMARC) policy for our

outbound marketing campaigns, providing

confidence that messages originate from,

and are digitally signed by REA Group. This

complies with the requirements set out in

the Request for Comments (RFC) standard.

Responsible Disclosure Policy

We value the work and effort of the

security research community as it helps

make everyone safer online. As part of

our vulnerability management strategy,

we have published a policy that outlines

how researchers can disclose security

vulnerabilities to REA Group in a safe and

responsible way. While we do not offer

rewards for disclosures, we’re happy to

recognise the contributions of researchers

in our hall of fame as a special thank you.

Empowering our people to make good security decisions

Equipping our teams to recognise and

respond to cyber risk is an important part

of our strategic priorities at REA Group.

This year we have embedded interactive

training modules into a new learning

platform to deliver training and education

to all REA Group employees.

Training in FY20 has been focused on the

following target audiences:

Developers – secure coding

practices – leveraging OWASP

Top 10

High-risk employees – tailored

training for executive assistants and

finance highlighting risks related to

business email compromise and

fake invoicing scams

All employees – security policy

eLearn – aligned to the NIST

Cybersecurity Framework designed

to be a simple guide to security

accountabilities

Customers – an updated security

guide for property managers,

available for download from our

Agent Marketing Centre

Tech community – the Tech

Community at REA Group runs

monthly security-orientated

showcases and presentations

for employees

Outlook and threat horizon

At REA Group we don’t wait for incidents

to occur before acting. Our security

strategy anticipates and expects us to

face cyber-attacks. We practise for,

and experience these events, and we

incorporate threat assessments looking

forward by adjusting our responses.

Looking forward we are assessing the

longer-term security implications of

remote ways of working, and, the changes

we may need to make as a result of more

people adopting this practice.

We note the recent government advice

on nation state operations, as well as the

changes in cyber threat (e.g. ransomware)

and use this to inform security investment.

We will continue to focus on anti-

automation, phishing, reducing the

complexity of technology environments and

the rigour of good hygiene as key priorities.

Our strategy is designed on continual

improvement, mitigating material risks and

responding when incidents occur, while

recognising there are no silver bullets

to security.

Safer Internet Day 2020

This year on Safer Internet Day 2020

REA Group took the opportunity

to have a conversation with its

customers in Australia about

protecting their businesses online.

Customers were encouraged to

visit REA Group’s agent marketing

centre for security tips and tricks to

check back regularly for updates.

We added security messages to our

customer Self Service Portal and

a statement message provided a

prompt for action.

Anti-bot mitigation

Time’s up for bad robots

REA Group has teamed up with one

of the world’s fastest growing anti-

bot mitigation companies, Kasada,

to protect its digital assets from

malicious automation, unauthorised

scraping and brute force attacks.

Our partnership is designed to

support our data strategy and

prevent unwanted and unsolicited

activities on our websites, so they

are healthy and available for our

customers and audience.

We believe that exposing our data

should be on our terms and that

bad robots impose arbitrary costs

on our business and expose us to

unacceptable risks.

22 | REA Group

Governance

Investing in new ideas, solutions and innovations to create better products and services‘Innovation’ was identified as one of the

top sustainability issues from REA Group’s

most recent materiality assessment. In

this section, we provide an overview of

the role innovation has played in several

of the key sustainability issues identified in

the materiality assessment, including ‘data

protection, privacy and cyber security’ and

‘customer satisfaction’. We also provide an

overview of the learning opportunities we

benefited from through innovation in FY20.

Our purpose is to change the way the world

experiences property, and we can’t achieve

our purpose with a limited or constrained

set of ideas. That’s why innovation

continues to sit at the heart of both our

purpose and our future growth plans.

At REA Group, innovation is all about

turning an idea into an offering that meets

a genuine need of our customers and

consumers. Constant innovation is vital to

adapting the realestate.com.au experiences

to keep up with consumer expectations

and to stay ahead of the competitive

curve. Through innovation, we keep our

position as the largest and most engaged

property audience in Australia and,

therefore, we ensure REA Group continues

to thrive.

Innovation begins in our teams. We have

a long history of building diverse and

inclusive teams because we fundamentally

believe that diversity and inclusion are the

engine room of innovation. 

Highlights and opportunities

Agent Match

REA Group continued to help prospective

sellers evaluate agencies and agents within

the market. This year we experimented

with our ‘Agent Match’ service, enabling

sellers to choose their preferred agents

and ensuring agents received immediate

notification of a prospective seller. We

made some changes to the way the

Agent Match product worked and we

received feedback from customers

who indicated there were opportunities

for improvement. We listened and, in

response to the feedback, changed the

Agent Match product so that seller leads

are more accessible to customers, while

ensuring that consumers also have a great

experience. The changes we have made

include removing the charge to customers

receiving the leads and we will continue to

evolve the product.

Rollout of our personalisation stack

Creating a personalised experience

that adapts to the needs of Australian

property seekers requires the best

available technology. By combining what

we know about our consumers, we are

now able to develop an individual profile

of every realestate.com.au user that is

updated in real-time with our event-based

architecture. These profiles allow us to

reach our consumers via omni-channel

communications in the channel that is most

relevant for each consumer, presenting the

next best actions that help navigate their

individual property journey with ease.

Innovation

Pay On Sale

Driven by COVID-19 and our desire to help our customers and consumers find their

way through the tough market conditions, REA released a series of measures aimed

at reducing costs and providing customers with a variety of tools to give vendors

the confidence to bring properties to market. One of these was an innovative way

for customers to delay full payment of the campaign until the point of sale, ensuring

that both real estate agents and vendors could manage the market uncertainty.

23 | REA Group

Governance

CIO50

In November 2019, REA Group’s CIO, Tom Varsavsky, was recognised as one of

Australia’s most innovative tech leaders – coming in at number 13 out of 50 senior

tech executives across Australia as part of the CIO50 list, judged by CIO Australia.

The list recognises top tech executives who are driving innovation and influencing

rapid change across their organisations. Tom was recognised for his strategic

leadership and supporting his team’s delivery of Locke, moving to Cloud-only,

and for championing diversity in technology, as well as other innovative changes.

Innovation continued

App releases

Through automation and collaboration,

we have accelerated our iOS and Android

app release frequency from releasing once

a month to releasing a new version of our

apps every week. Next we focused on

the delay between accepting final code

changes and the fully tested app bundle

arriving on a consumer’s device. We

focused on simplifying our ‘release train’

procedures such as regression testing and

reduced the lag time from 10 business

days to six days. Process innovations like

these are part of the REA Group’s DNA and

we’re always on the lookout for ways to

move more quickly and efficiently. 

Explore (Asia)

In FY20 the Consumer team released

the ‘explore’ search experience to help

consumers search for property in a new

way. Our new explore feature allows users

to perform a type-less search experience

that you can perform by click or tap. This

is extremely beneficial for people who

need to perform searches in non-English

languages. This experience also allows

users to search for property in close

proximity to train stations and schools.

In a short amount of time, the explore

experience has more than 10% uptake with

the majority of use coming from mobiles.

iOS app log out

In November 2019 we released a version

of our iOS app that had an unplanned side

effect. Some users who were previously

logged into their realestate.com.au

account were effectively logged out,

and had to enter their email address and

password again. While this may seem like

a minor inconvenience, for us it was a

really big deal – we have high standards

for the quality of our experiences and

we’d let some of our consumers down.

At REA Group, we have an ‘always on’

approach to ensure we learn from every

incident like this. Our process is called

the Post Incident Review (PIR), which is

where we get together to understand what

happened and why. We then identify as a

team what steps we’ll take to reduce the

likelihood of the issue repeating.

Data initiatives

Over the last two years, REA Group

has invested in building a common

data platform to be used across

the company. This is built on top

of Google’s BigQuery product and

allows publishing of data to a single

location, transforming data for use in

REA Group’s products and business

intelligence, and a framework for

powering data science models

with machine learning. In FY20, we

launched our REA Insights brand,

which leverages our audience data

and behavioural market intelligence

to share the latest property market

insights with consumers, customers

and the media.

#13 Out of 50 senior tech executives

24 | REA Group

Governance

Innovation continued

REAio

A global pandemic couldn’t stop

innovation at REA Group and it didn’t

stop our 36th REAio from going ahead

either. REAio is a three-day event that

runs twice a year, where people from

around the organisation form teams

to hack on an idea. The types of ideas

hacked include new products, efficiency

improvements and community initiatives.

Our REAio events provide our people

with the opportunity to collaborate,

innovate and learn, with our 36th REAio

becoming our first entirely virtual REAio.

Here’s how we did it:

Virtual pitch session with pre-

recorded videos allowed teams

to share their ideas across the

company and recruit additional

team members

Zoom rooms and Slack Groups

were set up to enable teams to

collaborate continuously from

their own homes

Virtual marketplace – teams

pre-recorded demonstrations of

their hacks and were available in

Zoom rooms for people to drop

in an ask questions about what

they had built

Online voting to allow

employees to vote for their

favourite hacks.

The event ran flawlessly with participant

levels on par with previous events. There

were also some benefits of a virtual

REAio, such as increased participation

from interstate and international

employees. Our employees told us they

really enjoyed having videos of pitches

and the marketplace to view in their own

time too.

House number filter

Importantly, our REAio events are accessible for our teams – wherever they’re

based. Our Xi’an based team, which looks after MyFun and our Global Property

Network (GPN), won awards in the last three REAios, mainly in the field of

innovation. In FY20, the Xi’an REAio team won an award for developing the

ability to filter property down by house number, and it was released in MyFun.

MyFun, a China outbound portal, attracts consumers who like to buy property

with auspicious numbers for feng shui, so this was a great feature to go into

production. The team backed up its win in the last REAio again in the field of

innovation with the ability to search the map view by shape using your finger or

mouse. The idea is being refined with the plan of getting it into production.

Dogs of REA Calendar

At REA Group, we are fortunate to be able to work with our furry friends in most

of our offices. One of our new team members saw the happiness and generosity

this was bringing to the office and suggested we make a calendar of our people’s

dogs and sell it to raise money for a charity. The suggestion took off and a team

formed to bring it to life at the next REAio. The idea turned into a competition,

with a website being developed to enable people to submit photos of their dogs,

vote on their favourites and pre-order calendars. More than 80 submissions

were received, and the top 36 dogs voted on by our people got a spot in the

calendar. The team completed the Dogs of REA calendars in time for Christmas

2019, selling 105 in total. Payment for the calendars was facilitated through our

Matched Payroll Giving platform, which raised a total of $3,940 in combined

employee and matched donations for  Pets of the Homeless. 

25 | REA Group

Governance

Setting clear policies and expectations on use of media REA Group’s Risk and Assurance team

works closely with our Audience and

Marketing team to create a risk profile.

This details a summary of risks and causes,

the likelihood and consequence of them

occurring and ensures risk controls are in

place to manage them. The partnership

between the two teams ensures best

practice marketing activity, with all claims

featured in marketing materials also

reviewed by our Legal team.

Related party transactions

Where REA Group proposes to enter into

joint content and marketing agreements

with its related parties (including News Pty

Ltd and its subsidiaries), all arrangements

are subject to prior review and sign off

by REA Group’s independent directors.

This ensures that the arrangements

are on ‘arm’s length terms’. Business

as usual marketing activities such as

advertising, sharing or bundling of content

or sponsorship of events that involve

collaboration between REA Group and

its related parties, may be reviewed and

approved by REA Group’s CEO, CFO or

General Counsel and Company Secretary

under delegated authority, if they meet the

criterion of being on ‘arm’s length terms’.

Independent industry platforms

We use independent industry platforms,

such as Nielsen, to report on our

audience size and characteristics of our

audience, allowing us to benchmark

against competitors. We also invest heavily

in research annually, with more than

10,000 customers and 17,000 consumers

reached each year through our research

programs. REA Group is a proud member

of the Association for Data-Driven

Marketing and Advertising (ADMA), which

ensures our teams stay up to date with

the changing landscape of data, digital

marketing and compliance.

Responsible marketing

Media advertising terms and conditions

All advertising from clients, media agencies

and programmatic advertising must comply

with REA Group’s  Media Advertising

Terms and Conditions, which are publicly

available on realestate.com.au. REA Group

does not accept advertising from all

advertisers, such as those including explicit

content and imagery, hate speech, weapons

and gambling (lotteries are permitted). With

regard to programmatic advertising, we

maintain an Advertising Block List to ensure

advertisers we do not accept advertising

from are not featured.

26 | REA Group

Governance

Ensuring the selection, management and payment of suppliers is fair and transparent, promoting local sourcing and supplier diversity

Procurement mandate

Our Procurement team supports all

contracts that have a value of $100,000

or more, and REA Group employees are

expected to reach out to the Procurement

team prior to committing to any suppliers

or entering into commercial discussions.

Self-serve procurement guidelines are

available for contracts and supplier

engagements of less than $100,000

and procurement support is still available

if required.

Contract approvals

Prior to executing any supplier contracts,

a contract approval form is completed and

approved by the Procurement, Finance,

Risk and Assurance teams, in addition to

the Business Lead and Legal team – prior

to the contract being reviewed and signed

by an Executive Leadership Team member.

Our request for proposal process

When conducting request for proposals

(RFP), we ask suppliers to share their

company values, how they support the

local community and how employees

are celebrated. In addition to helping

us choose value-aligned suppliers, this

information demonstrates that company

values and community investment forms

a key part of our decision-making process,

and has the flow-on effect of encouraging

more businesses to invest in these areas.

Our due diligence program

This program is triggered for all new

suppliers and used as a tool to check in on

existing suppliers. The assessment covers

risk of exposure of highly confidential

information, personal information, material

financial risk, material reputational risk,

risk of infringing third party intellectual

property rights, and access to candidate or

employee records. Read more on page 27

in Human rights and labour standards.

Supplier governance

Our Procurement team has regular

check-ins with our suppliers to encourage

feedback, continuous improvement,

to provide updates on our priorities for

further alignment and to ensure our supply

partners are continuing to improve their

own ESG processes. For some strategic

key suppliers a formal supplier governance

process is set up in collaboration with the

relevant business lead and supplier. They

review agreed service level agreements

(SLA) and key performance indicators

(KPI) deliverables, business continuity

impact, relationship health and more.

The Procurement team manages a

preferred supplier list, which encourages

consolidation of suppliers and enhances

economies of scale by continuing to

support suppliers that have been assessed

against our governance and sustainability

priorities.

Payment terms and purchase orders

REA Group’s payment terms are 30-days,

which encourages sustainable relationships

with our suppliers. We also have flexibility

to offer shorter payment terms to support

small and start-up businesses. Every effort

must be made to create Purchase Orders

(POs) prior to suppliers starting work or

any goods being delivered.

Sustainable procurement

Supplier code of conduct

We also require suppliers meet our

 Supplier Code of Conduct. This Code expects

suppliers comply with all their laws in relation to

workers’ rights and human rights, anti-bribery and

anti-corruptions laws and other laws in relation to

business integrity, privacy, health and safety, and

environmental considerations. Suppliers must also

have adequate policies and procedures in place

to monitor compliance with these laws.

27 | REA Group

Governance

Respecting and promoting human and labour rights within our workforce and supply chain and ensuring no modern slavery is taking place

Modern slavery

REA Group’s Supplier Code of Conduct,

Anti-Corruption Compliance Program,

Supplier Due Diligence measures and

legal training are all part of the company’s

commitment to respecting and promoting

human and labour rights both within our

workforce and supply chain. Importantly,

this is a way we can play a role in helping

end modern slavery within our sphere

of influence.

REA Group’s Modern Slavery Statement will

be published on the company’s corporate

website prior to 31 March 2021.

Legal training

REA Group carried out a one-hour virtual

legal training seminar for employees

in Australia, which covered issues such

as privacy compliance, anti-bribery and

corruption and whistleblower policies. In

total, more than 900 employees attended

one of the four training sessions. In Asia,

we have a 91.5% completion rate for

employees who have completed online

compliance training across Thailand,

China, Malaysia and Hong Kong.

Anti-corruption compliance program

As part of our commitment to continually

improve how we do things at REA Group,

we’ve consolidated our existing policies,

guidelines and processes into an Anti-

Corruption Compliance Program. The

new program further strengthens business

integrity at REA Group with our customers

and suppliers, and clearly sets out the

governance structure. We have zero

tolerance for bribery and corruption and

aim to further embed REA Group’s values

and high standards of integrity and ethical

business practices.

The Anti-Corruption Compliance Program

was launched on 1 June 2020. This

program cuts across all lines of business

including customers, suppliers and

new merger and acquisition activities.

There are five parts to the framework

of this program:

1 Leadership and oversight

2 Risk assessment

3 Control measures

4Review, monitoring and

enforcement

5 Training and communication

The implementation of the program

is timely given the increased risks

of corruption and fraud outside of

REA Group in the wake of COVID 19.

Human rights and labour standards

REA Group completed a

comprehensive internal audit

for underpayment of employees

covered by modern awards in FY20,

which revealed no instances of

underpayment. A separate audit

of superannuation guarantee

contributions with our outsourced

payroll provider revealed a minor

underpayment in FY20 to a small

number of employees. This error was

caused by REA Group’s outsourced

payroll provider and has since been

corrected. Impacted employees were

informed and the underpayment was

promptly remediated at the end of

financial year.

28 | REA Group

Governance

Supplier due diligence measures

REA Group manages a digital supply

chain focused on the delivery of digital

products ranging from applications to

our customers and consumers to digital

advertising. There are a significant number

of components in REA Group’s supply

chain such as management of developers,

cloud services, IT infrastructure, advertising

technologies, customer relationship

management and product delivery.

REA Group has identified several areas

where key suppliers could expose the

business to material financial or non-

financial risks. These include suppliers

receiving access to personal or highly

confidential information; systems holding

this information or the possibility of

suppliers exposing REA Group to material

financial risk (> AUD $2 million); material

reputational risk; infringement of third

party IP rights; where the total value of

an engagement exceeds AUD $250,000.

In these instances, REA Group requires

that the supplier complete a nine-page

due diligence questionnaire. Suppliers will

be asked to complete the questionnaire

either when they are initially onboarded or,

if it was not carried out at that time, during

a subsequent contract renewal cycle.

The questionnaire addresses matters

relevant to our supply chain, including

potential conflicts, affiliations with

government or state-owned enterprise,

subcontracting, environmental obligations,

bribery and corruption, legal compliance

and ethics, privacy law compliance, cyber

security and more.

In FY20, 35 due diligence questionnaires

were completed, with one vendor rejected

based on the information uncovered in

the due diligence process. During the past

three financial years, 111 due diligence

questionnaires have been completed

with four vendors rejected based on

their disclosures.

REA Group intends to strengthen due

diligence measures in FY21 by adding to

the questionnaire an explicit question about

whether the supplier agrees to comply with

 REA’s Supplier Code of Conduct.

In FY20, REA Group sent its Supplier

Code of Conduct to all Australian

suppliers it has commercial dealings of

AUD $1,000 or more, and all REA Group

Asia suppliers it has commercial dealings

of AUD $20,000 or more. New suppliers

are sent the Supplier Code of Conduct as

part of supplier onboarding. There were no

known breaches of REA Group’s Supplier

Code of Conduct in FY20.

As a provider of digital advertising

services and adjacent property and

financial services, many of REA Group’s

suppliers are suppliers of software

or other professional services. These

are predominantly sourced from

within Australia or from other highly

industrialised nations (for example,

software vendors from the US and

Europe). In FY21, REA Group will be

assessing whether there are higher risk

suppliers in REA Group’s supply chain

(based on industry and geography), and

may undertake targeted audits where

appropriate (noting that travel and social

distancing restrictions may mean onsite

audits are not feasible).

Human rights and labour standards continued

29 | REA Group

Social

SocialChampioning the needs of our stakeholders, participating positively in the communities we operate in, investing in our people, creating innovative customer solutions and consumer experiences

30 | REA Group

Social

Diversity and inclusion

Providing a fair and equitable workplace, free from discriminationProviding a fair and equitable workplace

free from discrimination is paramount at

REA Group. Diversity and inclusion were

identified as one of the top sustainability

‘issues’ as part of our most recent

materiality assessment.

REA Group’s people across Australia and Asia

Country Female Male Total

Australia 547 573 1,120

China 10 1 11

Hong Kong 35 28 63

Malaysia 128 125 253

Thailand 21 11 32

Grand total 741 738 1,479

Percentage 50.1% 49.9% 100%

REA Group’s senior leaders across Australia and Asia

REA Group’s Leadership Group (RLG) includes the CEO, Executive Leadership Team (ELT),

and direct reports of the ELT in addition to HR Business Partners and Commercial Managers.

Country Female Male Total

Australia 37 38 75

Asia 15 21 36

Grand total 52 59 111

Percentage 46.9% 53.2% 100%

31 | REA Group

Social

REA Group’s people

At REA Group, we have 1,479 employees

across five countries, spanning Australia

and Asia. This includes 1,120 employees in

Australia and 359 employees across China,

Hong Kong, Malaysia and Thailand.

We have a great story to tell when it

comes to gender diversity, with 50.1%

of our people across Australia and Asia

identifying as female and 49.9% of our

people identifying as male.

In FY20, of our senior leaders across

Australia and Asia, 46.9% identify as female,

53.2% identify as male and 0% identified as

other. Of our senior leaders in Australia, we

have achieved our target of 50:50 gender

representation. This was an improvement

on the FY19 gender representation among

REA Group’s senior leaders in Australia,

which saw 45.2% of senior leaders

identifying as female, 54.84% identifying

as male and 0% identifying as other. We

are working towards setting Global and

Community diversity targets.

Companies with more diverse teams

perform better, and at REA Group we like

to be ahead of the curve when it comes

to technology. For a company to be truly

innovative, we believe there has to be

an exchange of ideas through debate

among diverse groups. With the privilege

of a diverse customer and consumer

base, we need to have an equally diverse

workforce if we want to build software

that is inclusive. Here are some of the

programs we run to enhance diversity

at REA Group:

Grad program

In FY20, we achieved a 50:50 gender

split across our technology focused

grad program. We do this to ensure a

pipeline of women coming through the

organisation from entry level onwards.

Accelerated leadership program

This was the third year of this program,

which was established to help improve

the representation of women in senior

roles in technology at REA Group, by

investing in the professional development

of mid-tier women identified as potential

future leaders. The program is designed

to enhance the leadership skills and

commercial acumen of women and those

who identify as non-binary working in

male-dominated industries. It is a bespoke

program designed for REA Group. Out

of seven women participating in the

program in 2019, four of them received

a promotion.

Women in Technology

Mentoring program

This program was initially piloted with

women in technology and later extended

to everyone in tech, product and design

communities (where traditionally female

representation is low). The program

was designed to connect women in

technology with those across REA Group

as well as sharing learnings, providing

support and fueling a culture of learning

and knowledge-sharing across REA.

The satisfaction rate of the Women in

Technology Mentoring program was 80%,

which led for the program to be extended

to the entire tech, design and product

communities (all genders).

Diversity and inclusion continued

Springboard to tech

This program started in 2018 and was

designed for women who are changing

careers or returning to technology

roles after a career break. Many women

entering the program have previous

professional experience and we have,

therefore, developed a flexible program

with a maximum length of 18 months.

Find out more about it here:

Springboard to Tech program

of all employees identify

as female

employees across

Australia and Asia

gender representation among

senior leaders in Australia

1,479

50:50

50.1%

of our senior leaders across Australia

and Asia identify as female

46.9%

REA Group's tech community in

Australia who identify as women

(%)

20.4

FY18 FY19 FY20

28.5

30.2

32 | REA Group

Social

Diversity and Inclusion Guild

Our Diversity and Inclusion Guild was

formed in 2019. It comprises team

members who volunteer from a wide

range of areas in the business including

varied levels in seniority, business unit,

community and tenure. The Guild

focuses on generating a calendar of

events that support various facets of

diversity and inclusion, builds awareness,

provides education and aims to generate

connection among a wide variety of REA

employees. Events that have been run

include celebrations around faith-based

festivals, Unleashing the power of LGBTQ

Women in the Workplace, a discussion on

LGBTQI+ Intersectionality and Friday night

social events.

Use of AI in recruitment practices

In early 2020, we piloted the use of an

AI company, known as Vervoe, in our

graduate recruitment practices. Vervoe is a

machine learning and artificial intelligence-

based skills assessment tool that enables

businesses to make hiring decisions based

on performance not bias.

Workplace Gender Equality Report

Each year, in accordance with the

Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 (Cth)

(WGEA), REA Group submits our Workplace

Gender Equality Report. We share our

 public report with all employees once

published. The intent of this is to help

Australian workplaces focus on promoting

and improving gender equality.

The insights from this report are useful and

we appreciate the focus that compiling the

WGEA report puts on our own practices.

In addition to this mandatory reporting,

we also do additional analysis to compare

remuneration on a same job basis. Pre

and post our Annual Remuneration

Review cycle, we run our own analysis

to identify whether there is any gender

pay differential between people working

in the same job and at the same career

level. This additional analysis allows us to

complete a more nuanced analysis that

is specific to REA Group’s structure and

remuneration levels.

Parental leave

REA Group proudly supports our people

who are growing their families through

our Parental Leave policy. In our FY20

engagement survey in Australia, 87%

responded favourably to the question ‘REA

is supportive of parents in the workplace’.

Details of our Parental Leave policy can

be seen on our corporate website:

Supporting parents and families.

Our Parental Leave policy in Asia includes

a provision so unmarried people can

access parental leave. Each market in Asia

varies slightly in relation to the conditions

and length of paid maternity leave, with

the minimum across all markets being

three months paid leave. We also offer

permanent male employees in Asia access

to five days of paid Paternity Leave. Our

teams in Asia can also access Marriage

Leave/Wedding Leave, which ranges from

one to three consecutive days across

our markets.

Leave options

We have a number of different leave

options available to our people including

Personal/Carer’s Leave, Compassionate

Leave, Annual Leave, Purchased Annual

Leave and Flexible working arrangements.

Due to COVID-19, we extended usage

of Personal/Carer’s Leave in Victoria to

enable our people with flexibility to assist

with home schooling, childcare or their

general wellness.

In addition, we offer Domestic Violence

Leave for any of our people subjected to

domestic or family violence. This includes

supporting them with up to 20 days paid

leave throughout their employment, plus

an additional five days unpaid leave per

year. This leave helps impacted team

members in making plans for their safety,

relocating, attending court and accessing

police or medical services.

Diversity and inclusion continued

Paid Domestic Violence Leave

throughout employment

Agree ‘REA is supportive

of parents in the workplace’

87%

20 days

Leigh Tolliday, General Manager

Data Services, with his daughters

Samantha (left) and Charlotte (right).

33 | REA Group

Social

Workplace health, safety and wellbeing

Preventing work-related injuries, illnesses and accidents in the workplace promoting the wellbeing of our employees Health, safety and wellbeing was also one

of the top sustainability issues identified

as part of our most recent materiality

assessment. Maintaining a healthy and

safe work environment and the wellbeing

of our people is of utmost importance

at REA Group.

We continue to support our people across

the areas of Physical, Emotional and

Financial Health and you can read more

about some of these programs on our

corporate website:

Flexibility, health and wellbeing

In our FY20 Employee Engagement survey

in Australia, ‘REA cares about my health

and wellbeing’ scored 80% favourably.

In our H2 FY20 pulse surveys undertaken

as a result of COVID-19 virtual working,

targeted questions in relation to health

& wellbeing scored an average of 87%.

To celebrate our passion for family,

health and wellbeing, we also invited our

people to take part in our May Month of

Mindfulness (Australia and Asia). In May,

we ran a month-long series of events to

encourage our employees to practise daily

mindfulness and provided daily mindful

actions to help. A number of these events

were extended beyond May and now

make up a regular schedule of activity

that our employees can access online.

We also hosted a virtual resilience series

focused on sleep, productivity, mental

strength, movement and nutrition. We also

had a series of awareness-raising initiatives

and engagement opportunities during

Mental Health Awareness Month and

R U OK Day.

Health and safety committee

Our Health and Safety Committee in

Australia meets every six weeks to discuss

any health and safety issues from across

the business. The committee includes

representatives from across the business

including a member of our ELT who

champions any issues needing to be

reviewed by the ELT or Board. The ELT

and Board also receive a monthly report

on any incidents reported from a health

and safety perspective.

Employee assistance program

We ensure all our employees are aware of

support available through the Employee

Assistance Program (EAP) through regular

communication designed to increase

awareness of the program. Medical

insurance coverage is also provided

for all permanent employees in each

of our Asia markets.

Lost time injury frequency rate

REA Group’s Lost Time Injury Frequency

Rate (LTIFR), which is the represented rate

of injuries per one million hours worked

in FY20, was 0.00 in Australia and 0.00 for

Asia, making our global LTIFR 0.00. The

FY20 target is an LTIFR of two or less.

Asia

We run initiatives across Asia to

support the health and wellbeing of

our employees. These include weekly

fruit days in all offices in Asia and

Wellness Webinars for all employees.

The following market-specific

initiatives were also offered:

Malaysia

Employee-organised and company-

sponsored sporting club and corporate

partnership with the AIA Vitality

Program, including discounts and

incentives for employees when they

take part in wellness activities.

Hong Kong

A healthy breakfast for all employees

every Friday to promote healthy

eating choices and energy levels –

also offered in Malaysia.

Thailand

Monthly team activities to promote

health and wellbeing, such as

badminton and other exercise

programs.

34 | REA Group

Social

Managing current and future talent needs through attraction, retention, training and development

Organisational structure – Australia

In August 2019, REA Group Australia’s

organisation structure evolved to align

with the company strategy. Each part of

REA Group’s strategy is interconnected

and interdependent, and the new structure

reflects this.

The structure saw changes across all

groups within REA Group’s Australian

operation, with some teams merging,

reporting lines changing, as well as

opportunities for our people to change

roles and step into leadership positions.

In instances where an employee’s role was

no longer part of the new structure, every

effort was made to work with that team

member to identify other suitable roles

in the business.

As a result, 90 roles were removed

from our organisational structure. Of

these 90 roles, 74 were filled by current

employees at the time, with 16 roles

being vacant – which have since been

removed from our structure. Of these

74 impacted roles, 15 individuals were

redeployed into new roles, 47 individuals

exited via redundancy and the remaining

12 individuals are on delayed redundancy

or delayed redeployment.

The structural changes also saw the

creation of 36 new roles, some of which

were suitable for individuals whose roles

had been made redundant to transition to.

Individuals who exited REA Group

via redundancy were provided with

a minimum of four weeks to seek

redeployment or source alternative

roles within the business. They were

also provided with full EAP support

during the redeployment period and

post-employment, financial redundancy

support above statutory guidelines

for redundancy and notice period,

and comprehensive career transition

support from an external provider.

During the second half of FY20, in

response to COVID-19-related business

challenges, REA Group undertook a

further review of its cost base, including

resourcing across Australia and Asia. This

resulted in a further 10% reduction of roles

(including vacancies) and contributed to

the wider cost management program.

Investment in 99 Group

On 28 February 2020, REA Group entered

an arrangement with 99.co to establish a

Singapore-headquartered digital property

marketplace, through the transfer of

the existing Singapore and Indonesia

businesses of 99.co, iProperty.com.sg

and Rumah123.com.

In exchange, the Group received a 27%

shareholding in the company and it also

has two Board seats on the 99 Group

Board, occupied by REA Group Asia CEO

and Chief Strategy and Customer Product

Officer Henry Ruiz, as well as REA Group

CFO Janelle Hopkins.

In addition to the investment in 99.co,

REA Group continues to operate across

Asia, with 359 employees. Read more

about REA Group’s operations in Asia

on page 3 in About REA Group.

Commitments and career plans

All our employees participate in an annual

performance approach that enables

us to give our teams clear direction

on deliverables, as well as feedback

on the impact of their performance.

In establishing our performance approach

we believe in four principles:

1 Partnership

Where good performance management

relies on the shared accountability of

both managers and team members and a

belief that the conversation and feedback

is the most important part of the process.

2 Impact

The importance of differentiating

on impact, not effort alone, and the

importance of manager capability in

having difficult conversations when it

comes to delineating on impact during

the review process.

3 Consistency

Providing our teams with a global

framework that is clear, simple and

straightforward to use, and that drives

consistency in our ratings across teams.

4 Behaviours

That ‘how’ the work gets accomplished is

as important as ‘what’ gets accomplished.

Talent development and management

35 | REA Group

Social

To assist with consistency and to help

our managers have more challenging

conversations, we changed the label of

our ratings to facilitate a more positive

interpretation of the midpoint by labelling

this rating as ‘great job’.

A key part of our performance

framework is the development of career

conversations that assist our people to

achieve in their role and career. We believe

the power of these conversations is in

the way our managers connect with their

people. We have been spending time

building the capability of our managers

to have impactful conversations with

their team members about their current

experience at work and in their role, what

motivates them, what’s hard and also

what’s next.

Incentives and remuneration review process

All non-sales permanent employees at

REA Group participate in a short-term

incentive plan. This annual incentive

is based on a percentage of salary,

with the incentive outcome based on

a combination of equally weighted

individual and company components.

Our sales employees participate in a

sales incentive plan that aligns their

remuneration with results. We want

people to connect their own performance

to REA Group’s performance and be

thanked for the contributions they make

to REA Group.

We also provide Length of Service Rewards

and an Employee Referral bonus, where

we award people who have successfully

referred a friend to work at REA Group

with a payment on their friend’s

commencement.

In our FY20 Employee Engagement survey,

81% of people scored favourably to the

question ‘I understand and value the

benefits that are available to me’.

Our values

At REA Group our values are at the core

of our culture. It’s important we share a

common language about who we are and

what’s important to us. A common set of

values that guide what we do and how

we do it. 

While our values are at the heart of who

we are, we have taken even greater

steps this year to embed them into our

Performance Reviews. This year we have

given them a new weighting where they

now serve as 50% of a team member’s

end-of-year performance rating, with the

other 50% on goals that were achieved.

This emphasis means there is a clear

message that how we do things is just

as important as what we do.

We continue to reward our employees

outside of these reviews through our Real

Deal awards, where individuals can submit

their own recommendations on where

they are seeing our values show up. This

year we have seen both individuals and

teams winning our monthly awards as they

demonstrate our values.

Talent development and management continued

REA-U

REA University, which launched in FY19, is

a competency-aligned learning framework

built on the premise that learning is an

enabler to career growth through career

pathways and learning journeys. In FY20,

we launched a dedicated digital platform

to facilitate learning for all our people

globally, while providing a decentralised

administration solution for all our schools.

Our REA-U schools in Australia include:

• School of Self

• School of Business

• School of Leadership

• School of Tech

• School of Sales

Some of the highlights from FY20 include

our School of Tech launching Colab and

Amazon Web Services (AWS) training,

as well as tech-focused inductions for

employees and managers.

We also saw our School of Sales launch

virtually in 2020, with a series of webinars,

learning and connection opportunities

specifically created for our Sales

community.

Coinciding with the new platform, we

extended the reach of REA University

with our launch of three Schools in Asia

– School of Self, Business and Leadership

and Tech. In March, in the midst of

COVID-19, the School of Sales launched

virtually to our Australian sales teams.

FY20 also saw us continue our strategic

partnership with RMIT Online where we

provide industry-thought leadership to

co-design a number of the Future Skills

industry-led online short courses. Some of

our team members also coach and mentor

course students. 

In FY21, we plan to launch further

schools across our Design and Product

communities in Australia, in addition to

launching the School of Tech in Asia.

..

36 | REA Group

Social

Talent development and management continued

The Real Deal awards

Recognising the contributions and

achievements of our people is essential.

We do this in a variety of ways, including

our monthly peer nomination program

recognising those who go ‘above

and beyond’ – the Real Deal Awards.

Nominations are reviewed by a committee

that collectively decides who deserves

the thanks and recognition for the month,

with the number of these monthly

awards uncapped. Winners receive

a monetary award.

The Real Deal extends to our teams in Asia

to recognise and reward team members

who go over and above to demonstrate

our values, with some slight variations on

the Asia version of the program to align

with the local markets.

CEO Awards

Along with other individuals nominated by the ELT, any individual or team who

wins a monthly award goes into the yearly draw, where the ELT review and select

the top 10 nominations they want to further recognise through the CEO Awards.

These individuals and teams are recognised at the annual Global Kick Off (GKO),

where individuals and teams are awarded a cash payment.

Faye Ong, Commercial Analyst (top)

Andy Chen, Senior Developer – Mobile

Reward and Recognition Winners

37 | REA Group

Social

Leadership conference

At REA we understand that one of the

single most important drivers of culture

is leadership. Therefore, we ensure that

our leadership community is aligned on

both strategy and culture. Twice a year we

run a leadership conference for our most

senior leaders where our objectives are

to connect on strategy, evolve our ways of

working, build a courageous culture, invest

in our leadership capability and build peer

connection. An evolution of our leadership

culture has been to actively strengthen

the leadership community outside of our

senior group and to be inclusive of all our

people leaders.

Grads

FY20 saw REA Group hire its eighth

cohort of grads, welcoming 10 new

team members (50:50 gender split) into

the Developer stream from a pool of

428 applicants. In FY19, our seventh cohort

saw seven grads in the Developer stream

join the team from 372 applications.

Our grads go through a 12-month program

of rotations, experiencing different areas of

the business, learning new ways of

working and broadening their technical

skill set. It provides a valuable opportunity

to learn on the job and to share skills in a

collaborative environment. The program

offers support through buddies and

mentors, while maintaining a structure that

sees our grads meeting their goals before

entering into permanent placements.

Our FY20 grad intake participated in a

100% virtual assessment centre, using a

machine learning and artificial intelligence

based skills assessment tool that allows

businesses to make hiring decisions based

on performance not bias.

Town Halls

We run a virtual People Leader Town Hall

on a monthly basis, where every leader at

REA Group comes together for a forum.

We again focus on the full spectrum

of leadership, whether it be learning

about what makes a great leader at REA,

to managing performance, emotional

resilience and leadership. There are early

indicators that this investment is paying

off. In recent Pulse surveys we are seeing

differences in leadership sentiment at all

levels narrowing as we become more

aligned as one leadership cohort.

Talent development and management continued

Tech Kick Off (TKO)

Each year we run a TKO where

our Tech, User Experience (UX),

Design and Product communities

come together to understand our

common strategies, celebrate our

successes and be inspired by what’s

ahead of us. TKO is also about

sharing knowledge, learning new

skills and having some fun. In FY21,

our TKO will be extended to our

people in Asia.

REA Group's FY18 grad cohort

38 | REA Group

Social

Creating a culture and workplace where our people have a positive attitude towards REA Group and our valuesHaving a continuous listening strategy

to truly understand the experience of

our people, reflect and to take action is

fundamental to REA Group’s success. Our

most recent materiality assessment also

identified ‘employee engagement’ as one of

the key sustainability issues for REA Group.

Once a year we complete our annual

engagement survey and use this as a

mechanism to hear from our people about

what we can do to improve, to benchmark

ourselves against best practice companies

and to track the impact of any actions

taken since the previous survey.

Organisational actions are driven via our

Executive Leadership Team and supporting

areas like People and Culture. In parallel to

these organisational actions, Group-based

actions are driven by individual Executive

members and team-based actions are

driven by individual managers. In FY20,

we also engaged a number of volunteers

across the business to participate

in cross-functional, Engagement

Solutioning Groups, with a number of

their recommendations activated in FY20.

We do this to create a culture of shared

accountability when it comes to creating

engaged employees. Results are also

reviewed at a Board level, as well as with

our HR Committee to ensure we are

tracking progress year on year.

We also introduced Pulse surveys in

2020, as our people transitioned to virtual

working, to provide regular opportunities

for feedback and ensure we are supporting

our people the best we can.

Employee Engagement

Pulse surveys

When COVID-19 hit and our people

transitioned to virtual working in early

March 2020, we started to look at ways the

teams could connect on a more regular

basis with our senior leaders. This included

weekly Town Halls for all employees with

our CEO including question time, group

based Town Halls and monthly people

manager sessions. Upon rolling out many

of these initiatives, we realised that we

weren’t able to truly recognise whether

they were having the desired impact and,

therefore, decided to seek feedback via

our two virtual working pulse surveys.

These surveys were run approximately

six weeks apart and were intended to

give all employees the opportunity to

provide any insights or feedback around

their REA Group experience during this

unprecedented time. The responses were

collated and shared organisationally and

with individual people managers in order

to help our leaders better understand how

their teams were feeling and help us to

quickly address areas that needed extra

prioritisation or support.

The initial survey provided positive

feedback on the way we have approached

flexible working during this virtual working

period, particularly around our support for

people working from home with children.

In this initial phase, the teams also told us

they valued the regular ELT engagement

and appreciated the opportunity to put

forward questions to the CEO and ELT.

As a result, we have continued to provide

these forums of engagement on a weekly

basis and also committed to continuing

this engagement once we return to the

office.

Due to some tough organisational

changes that were made between the first

and second surveys, we saw this sentiment

around leadership

communication

reduce. Employees

shared that we had an

opportunity to improve transparency in

our communications around structural

changes. As a result, we have made a

commitment to share information on

the ‘why’ in decision-making, in addition

to the ‘what’ – which is often shared

at a Town Hall level. We have made

these commitments to provide greater

transparency and improve communication

of business decisions.

As part of our weekly virtual Town Hall

engagement, we also took the opportunity

to track weekly sentiment by asking our

employees to respond to one recurring

question over a 14-week period – ‘I believe

REA Group is effectively managing the

current challenges to secure our future,’

the average positive sentiment was 92%.

39 | REA Group

Social

Employee Engagement survey

REA Group’s annual Employee Engagement

survey invites employees to respond to

questions relating to the following factors:

Engagement

Organisational performance

Executive leadership capability

Leadership group capability

Your manager

Learning and career development

Remuneration and benefits

Diversity and inclusion

Community and social engagement

Health and wellbeing

NB. Employees in Asia are also invited

to respond to questions on the factor:

‘Your role’

REA Group Australia

In FY19, REA Group’s overall engagement

was at 87% for Australia (participation 92%)

and 77% for Asia (participation 97%).

In FY20, engagement scores were 78% for

Australia (participation 89%) and 79% for Asia

(participation 94%). The decrease in overall

engagement in Australia’s FY20 Employee

Engagement survey result can largely

be attributed to changes the business

announced in August and activated in

September 2019, to evolve REA Group’s

organisational structure to align with the

strategy (see ‘Organisational structure –

Australia, page 34). Despite this timing,

it was important to us to continue with

the survey and commit to understanding

employee sentiment while recognising

our scores would most likely be impacted.

We believe that employee engagement is

about understanding employee sentiment,

celebrating where we’re doing well and

focusing on what more we can do to thrive.

‘I am proud to work for REA’

In Australia, we have consistently seen

strong positive sentiment around

employee pride with ‘I am proud to work

for REA,’ with 93% positive sentiment in

FY19 and 87% positive sentiment in our

FY20 Employee Engagement survey. This

reflects a high level of brand and purpose

affiliation by our employees.

‘Communication from executive leaders

In REA is authentic and transparent’

In the FY20 Employee Engagement survey

we saw a year-on-year shift in sentiment

around executive leader communication.

For the question ‘Communication from

executive leaders at REA is authentic and

transparent’ our results went from 75%

positive sentiment to 57%. This inspired

a shift in the way our CEO and Executive

team are communicating with the

business, particularly during the COVID-19

pandemic.

Our CEO now runs weekly Town Halls

for all employees and, in addition to any

announcements, space is left for questions

each week so our people are able to

address any burning issues – confidentially

or directly. These are followed up with

summary messages to employees, and

recordings of these sessions are provided

on our intranet afterwards. We have also

been checking in with our people to

assess the impact of these changes to

communication, via pulse survey, and

we have seen positive results around

employees’ feeling as though they are

being kept informed in a timely manner.

Employee Engagement continued

Agreed ‘I am proud to work

for REA’ in Australia

Agreed or strongly agreed that

‘My manager communicates

regularly and effectively with me’

Engagement score for

Australia (participation 89%)

78%

87%

79%

40 | REA Group

Social

‘My manager communicates regularly

and effectively with me’

Our FY20 Employee Engagement survey

results have also honed our focus on

our people managers as a cohort this

financial year. Our results show that 79%

of employees either agreed or strongly

agreed that ‘My manager communicates

regularly and effectively with me’. While

this is by no means a low result, it told us

that 21% of our employees did not have

regular and effective conversations with

their managers.

Via our Moments that Matter project work,

we set out to unpack what impactful

conversations look like for our employees

and the role managers play in ensuring

a rich experience for the employee and

REA Group overall. In using these insights

gathered from the business we created a

set of five core Manager Competencies

that now serve to guide our managers in

leading effectively at REA Group. We do

this to foster a culture in which employees

will have regular, impactful conversations

with their managers.

REA Group Asia

‘I know how my work contributes to the

goals of REA Group Asia’

In Asia, our FY20 Employee Engagement

survey found 88% positive sentiment to the

question ‘I know how my work contributes

to the goals of REA Group Asia’ and in our

FY19 Employee Engagement survey, the

positive sentiment to this question was

86%, reflecting a positive year-on-year

uplift of 2%.

One of the ways we continue to reinforce

the linkage between the objectives of

REA Group Asia and our teams, including

the individuals who contribute to them,

is through a cascaded strategy approach.

This means we start with REA Group

strategy, which leads into REA Group

Asia Strategy, and that is shared with

all employees via the annual Strategy

Roadshows. Then it’s into market and

function-based annual plans that focus

on the deliverables of the work.

Our Country Leaders in Asia have

developed a practice of regular Town Halls

to celebrate milestone achievements of

the teams against plans. The REA Group

Asia CEO has also developed a cadence

of quarterly results announcements that

are used to reinforce the linkage between

strategy and operational delivery of the

work. In 2019, we also introduced quarterly

road map sessions to ensure alignment

within product and technology against

our product delivery plans.

‘I would recommend REA Group Asia

as a great place to work’

In Asia, our FY20 Employee Engagement

survey found 81% positive sentiment to the

question ‘I would recommend REA Group

Asia as a great place to work’ and in our

FY19 Employee Engagement survey, the

positive sentiment to this question was 75%,

reflecting a positive year-on-year uplift of 6%.

Other initiatives that have had an impact

on this factor include the new offices for

each of our current country HQs reflecting

the personality of REA Group globally, but

still recognising the local culture of each

market; the introduction of our flexible

working policy in August 2019; as well as

investment in learning and development

resources and programs.

In addition, REA Group Asia’s Because We

Care Asia program is now in its second

year. This provides employees with the

opportunity to participate in volunteering

while still being paid and having donations

to chosen charity partners matched

by REA Group Asia. Our engagement

survey showed strong sentiment in this

space, with the result of the question:

‘I believe REA Group Asia Makes a positive

contribution to our community,’ improving

from 68% in FY18 to 83% in FY20.

In January 2020, we introduced a values-

specific rating scale to our performance

framework in order to ensure the

behaviours of our people were rated as

equally important as the performance of

their roles. In order to ensure we continue

to hire for cultural fit, we are in the process

of formalising values-based interview

questions into our interview templates.

‘The bonus structure fairly recognises my

efforts and achievements’

In Asia, our FY20 Employee Engagement

survey found 54% positive sentiment to

the question: ‘The bonus structure fairly

recognises my efforts and achievements,’

and in our FY19 Employee Engagement

survey, the positive sentiment to this

question was 42%, reflecting a positive

year-on-year uplift of 12%.

In July 2019, we evolved REA Group

Asia’s Short Term Incentive (STI) plan, to

demonstrate the truly global nature of our

business, and make the company target an

REA Group target that would apply to all

employees across REA Group.

The annual incentive payment is calculated

on the basis of 50% individual contribution

(with the potential of overachievement for

exceeding performance targets) and 50%

on the achievement of company results.

This was received positively by the Asia

team and we will measure the sentiment

of the team in the FY21 Employee

Engagement survey.

Employee Engagement continued

Agree ‘the bonus structure

fairly recognises my efforts

and achievements’

Agree ‘I know how my work

contributes to the goals of

REA Group Asia’

Agree ‘I would recommend

REA Group Asia as a great

place to work’

81%

54%

88%

41 | REA Group

Social

Flex @ REA

We know that being able to work flexibly is

important to our people. We recognise that

people have busy lives outside REA Group

and we want to support them to live this the

best way they can. Everything we achieve at

REA, we achieve as one team. So, we strive

to create a culture that balances working

together with working flexibly.

This has become even more important

with COVID-19 forcing people to work

differently and predominantly from home.

We are actively exploring what this means

for our approach to flexible working in the

longer term.

Our Flex @ REA policy sets the stage for

communicating our commitment to

flexible working, with guiding principles

for teams and individuals to decide what

flex works best for them. We give our

people different options to work flexibly,

both in how they work, as well as where

they work. Importantly, every conversation

about flexible working is okay.

With 86% of our people in Australia

responding favourably to the FY20

Employee Engagement question: ‘I feel

genuinely supported to make use of my

flexible work arrangements’, we know that

working flexibly forms an integral part of

who we are, what we do and how we do it.

Flex in Asia

In September 2019, we introduced a

Flexible Working policy specific for our

teams in Asia to enable them to access

flexi-time and flexi-place arrangements,

while still performing all key aspects of

their role.

This enables team members to request

longer term or recurring flexible working

arrangements, either with flexi-start time

or flexi-place. To support the new flexible

working arrangements for our people in

Asia, we ran people manager workshops to

help inform managers on how to support

their team members with flexible working

arrangements.

Employee Engagement continued

Global Kick Off (GKO)

REA’s GKO is one of the most anticipated events on the REA calendar. We bring all

our Australia team, and some of our Asia team, together for one day to celebrate our

achievements in the previous year and get on the same page for the year ahead. 

It’s a day to connect with each other, be inspired and reflect on everything that makes

REA great. Our theme for FY20 was ‘Unite’ which was focused on thinking with a one

team mindset so our people, customers, consumers, shareholders and community

see us as the only place in the world for property. 

Cultural and social celebrations

We celebrate many cultural and social

occasions across REA Group, including

faith-based festivals, International Women’s

Day, Taste of REA to support Harmony Day

and many more. We also hold Friday night

social get-togethers every fortnight at our

Melbourne office (COVID-19 restrictions

permitting) for people to kickstart their

weekend with their colleagues and friends

at REA Group. Each office location also

holds an end-of-year celebration to

welcome the upcoming festive season,

giving people the chance to have some

fun with their colleagues.

Global communication platform

Our new global intranet,

The Garage, was launched in

November 2019 and provides a

one-stop shop for communication,

stories and learnings for all our

people across Australia and Asia.

The Garage delivers a personalised

user experience that helps target

the right content with the right

audience. To support the transition

to our new intranet, we delivered

face-to-face training across

Australia, Malaysia, Thailand and

Indonesia, and virtual training for

Canberra, Adelaide, Hong Kong

and Singapore. We also provided

on-demand courses through the

REA University platform.

42 | REA Group

Social

Customer satisfaction

Meeting our customers’ expectations through superior product and service quality and enhancing their user experienceOur most recent materiality assessment

identified ‘customer satisfaction’ as one

of the top eight sustainability issues for

REA Group to focus on. Our customers are

our partners and we believe in the value

they provide consumers. Our role is to help

our customers succeed by creating world-

class experiences and products that deliver

results. Understanding our customers’

needs is key to driving innovative and

effective products and services.

FY20 was the year of unprecedented

challenges for our customers and

communities, with COVID-19 challenging

everyone across our Australian and Asian

markets, as well as bushfires devastating

customers around Australia.

Customer sentiment monitor

Running since 2014, the Customer

Sentiment Monitor (CSM) is a survey

of real estate agents and principals.

It tells us how the market feels about

REA Group and many aspects of the

service we provide. The CSM helps us

consistently track several key metrics

including overall customer satisfaction,

ROI, value for money, brand trust, positivity

and advocacy. We continually adapt the

CSM to ensure we are measuring the

right things.

In FY20, we recognised how important it

was to understand more about the impact

of COVID-19 on our customers. This

insight has been extremely useful in

helping understand the things that matter

to our customers and how we are able to

continue to support them during these

times.

In Asia, we ran customer sentiment

research in FY20 across Malaysia,

Indonesia, Hong Kong and Singapore,

focusing on Agent customers. Pleasingly,

we saw increases in satisfaction across

most markets, largely driven by our

focus on customer support tools, data

and insights. 

Support of not-for-profit real estate agencies

REA Group proudly provides support

to real estate agencies around

Australia that have been endorsed

as a Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR)

by the ATO, through the provision of

a $0 subscription to realestate.com.au.

Removing this cost for these DGR-

endorsed agencies enables them to

reinvest the subscription cost back into

supporting their local communities.

43 | REA Group

Social

Customer Service Feedback Program

The CSFP is an always-on customer

survey, focusing on the performance of

customers’ allocated Account Managers.

We use the results to provide training and

coaching to Sales teams highlighting the

areas individual Account Managers do

well and areas where additional coaching

is required.

As we moved to an almost entirely virtual

working environment during COVID-19,

we used this to measure our performance

to customers. Feedback to date has shown

customers are no less satisfied with our

Account Management through these

times, despite the change in working

styles and there is, for some, appetite to

move to a more virtual way of working

more permanently.

Complaints Management

Our Complaints Management process

is an integral part of how we improve

products and services, and the complaints

process itself. As part of our commitment

to evolving this process, we have

established a Customer Experience

Council that will champion the voice

of the customer, and drive awareness

within the organisation. In FY21, we will

see this evolve and provide key insights

to drive customer experiences across

the group including the launch of our

customer promise.

Customer care

Our Customer Operations team supports

customers and consumers across

Australia, and all contacts to our Customer

Care team are followed up with a

Customer satisfaction survey. Performance

targets are set, and our feedback survey is

monitored daily and reviewed weekly, to

drive improvements in satisfaction. In FY20,

our Customer Experience Teams in Hong

Kong and Malaysia focused on improving

onboarding, education and our speed

to service.

Product development 

Product feature input from our customers

is key to our design and development

process. There are different ways in which

we do this, including state-based focus

groups, one-on-one feedback sessions,

and via National Forums. In FY21, we

will be introducing our Customer

Advisory Board, a panel of customers

who represent a cross section of our

base. We’ll use insights generated from

this panel to inform our customer value

propositions and go-to-market strategies.

Customer satisfaction continued

Ignite and Pro 

Ignite (for Australia) and Pro (for Asia) is a

single self-service mobile-first platform.

Ignite enables our customers to view the

performance of their live listings in real time

in Australia. In FY20, we launched more

features to help our customers manage their

listings and campaigns including delivering

real-time and qualified private inspection

request notifications to support customers

through COVID-19 restrictions. In addition,

we launched a popular feature ‘Also Viewed’,

which provides agents visibility of what

other properties were viewed by the same

audience viewing their listing. Looking

ahead to FY21, we will look at delivering

more features to help customers understand

where to focus their time and effort for the

most effective results. 

Pro, our platform in Asia, provides customers

with one place to upload and manage their

listings in real time, view their campaign

performance, manage their profile and see

how the usage of what they’ve purchased

is progressing. In response to customer

requests, we also now provide the ability

for agencies to distribute their listing and

upgrade allocations to their branches and

agents with full visibility of usage. In FY20,

iProperty PRO in Malaysia saw a significant

improvement in customer experience with

mobile prime, value-added packages, and

new data reporting to guide customers in

their businesses.

Customer touchpoints

We have several different

touchpoints with our customers

to gather feedback, including

our face-to-face sales channels,

Customer Operations team,

national events and forums, and

digital communication channels.

Other ways we measure customer

satisfaction and sentiment are

through our Customer Sentiment

Monitor and Customer Service

Feedback Program (CSFP), which

provide insights across a number

of areas including our products,

services and account management.

44 | REA Group

Social

realestate.com.au Advantage program

Our Advantage program supports our

network of real estate professionals with

exclusive events, professional development

opportunities, office technology support,

industry sponsorships and community

grants. Our events portfolio consists of

thought leadership programs, education-

based series and an array of broad

hospitality and networking opportunities

for customers nationally.

The Community Grants program supports

real estate agents who engage in their

local community groups, sporting

organisations and other charitable

causes. Together, we can bring about

positive change and ensure our

communities are primed for the future.

Through the Advantage Community Grant

program, we prioritised grant applications

benefiting bushfire impacted regions,

to help them get back on their feet.

REA Group’s customers all over Australia

have access to the Advantage Community

Grant program. In FY20, we saw

96 agencies awarded a grant, benefiting

more than 80 different community

and charitable organisations around

the country, valued at AUD $120,000.

Read more about how the Advantage

Community Grant program assisted

communities impacted by the Australian

bushfires on page 8.

Advantage Program

Customer satisfaction continued

The Annual REA Excellence Awards (AREAs) 

In 2019 REA Group held the 5th

Annual REA Excellence Awards

(AREAs), which were established

to celebrate the success and

achievements of our customers in

the property and media industries.

An exclusive event within the

Australian market, the AREAs focus

on recognising and celebrating

the success of our customers

who support every aspect of the

property journey.

Finalists are invited to attend

the Gala Dinner awards with

several colleagues enjoying the

evening’s proceedings. There

are 21 accolades highlighting

industry excellence across

three categories, including:

Innovation, Service and Marketing,

and Community. REA Group’s

charity partners help to judge

the Contribution to Community

award, recognising companies and

individuals supporting not-for-

profit organisations and initiatives

in their local community. 

PROP20

REA Group introduced Prop20 in FY20,

an industry event series delivering

realestate.com.au and realcommercial.com.au

customers the latest industry insights. They

also provided an opportunity to learn about

consumer trends, tips to master the craft

and how to position your business for

future success.

Initially created as a free conference

landing in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth,

Brisbane and Sydney, with the onset of

COVID-19, Prop20 quickly transitioned

to a completely digital experience. The

event provided property professionals with

access to a jam-packed agenda focused

on data and insights, tips to master their

craft and material to set them and their

businesses up to be future ready. 

Overall the Prop20 events in Melbourne

and Adelaide were a huge success with

more than 1,500 attendees from multiple

segments of the market attending to hear

from a large variety of speakers talking

all things property and how to position

themselves for future success.

AREAs 2019 Community award category winners

– G.J.Gardner Homes, Shoalhaven NSW

45 | REA Group

Social

Community investment

Giving back to local communities through charity partnerships and programsREA Group’s community partnerships are

all centred around our belief that everyone

deserves a safe place to sleep every

night. We have chosen to partner with

organisations that have deep expertise and

experience on the issue of homelessness,

so we can ensure our financial and in-kind

support is being channelled towards the

areas with the most need.

Our charity partners include Launch

Housing, Orange Sky Australia, The Big

Issue and the International Committee

of the Red Cross.

Launch Housing

Launch Housing and REA Group created a

National Rapid Rehousing Fund in February

2015 to support women and children at risk

of homelessness, to establish or maintain

safe, secure housing free of violence, across

Australia. In FY20 the fund provided financial

support to 686 women and children,

bringing the total number of people

supported through this fund to 4,311.

The financial assistance from the National

Rapid Rehousing Fund supports a number

of different needs. The top five include

the purchase of essential furniture and

whitegoods, removal costs, rent in

advance, rent in arrears and bond money.

The partner agencies around Australia

that help to broker the National Rapid

Rehousing Fund locally include:

Micah Projects in QLD, Ruah Community

Services in WA, Justice Connect in Victoria,

Women’s Safety Services in SA, Northern

Rivers Social Development Council in

NSW, Anglicare in Tasmania and Dawn

House in NT.

REA Group’s new employees also build

new furniture for Launch Housing clients

at the monthly corporate induction for

new team members. This initiative was

temporarily paused in February 2020 due

to COVID-19.

REA Group also provides support to

Launch Housing’s social enterprise real

estate agency, HomeGround Realestate

with free listings on realestate.com.

au. All profits made from HomeGround

Real Estate are reinvested back into the

community through Launch Housing.

Smartline’s community fund

Our Smartline team has been donating

$10 from every loan they facilitate

towards a community fund for the

last 20 years. A team of Smartline

community champions get together

and divvy up the fund between the

many charities the team proudly

supports. Since starting this initiative,

the team has donated more than

$2.5m to charities around Australia.

In FY20, Smartline’s Community Fund

donated just shy of $150,000 to local

charities nominated by the state charity

committees. Find out more about

Smartline’s commitment to charities

and communities:

smartline.com.au

46 | REA Group

Social

Orange Sky Australia

REA Group has provided financial and in-

kind support to Orange Sky Australia since

2017. The mobile laundry and shower

services run by Orange Sky volunteers

around Australia provide people who are

homeless with the opportunity to wash

their clothes and have a hot shower.

Our support of Orange Sky in FY20

resulted in:

19,200 kg of laundry

960 safe warm showers

1,920 hours of conversation

between Orange Sky volunteers

and people experiencing

homelessness

800 Orange Sky volunteers

supported

240 Orange Sky shifts supported

More than 4,000 people

experiencing homelessness

supported

REA Group supported Orange Sky’s first

national fundraiser, The Sudsy Challenge in

FY20, raising more than $5,000 in support

of people who are homeless. REA Group

has signed up to participate in The Sudsy

Challenge again in FY21.

Community investment continued

Orange Sky Australia and realestate.com.au customer golf event

The realestate.com.au team hosted

a golf day with local customers on

the Gold Coast to raise money for

Orange Sky Australia. The day raised

more than $11k for Orange Sky,

which enabled 38 volunteer shifts,

and provided Orange Sky friends

with access to free laundry, warm

showers and genuine conversation.

Homelessness – the numbers and stories panel

In the lead up to Homelessness Week

2019, we hosted a panel discussion at

REA Group’s GKO with representatives

from our charity partners including

Andrew D’Arcy from Launch Housing,

Maryam Clarkson from Orange Sky

Australia and Louise Gray from The

Big Issue.

In addition to our charity partner

representatives, our panel included

people with a lived experience of

homelessness, who had received

support from our charity partners,

including Annie (Launch Housing,

Danni (The Big Issue) and John

(Orange Sky).

Panelists shared their experiences

working with people who were at risk

of, or experiencing, homelessness, as

well as what it was like to experience

homelessness for the first time over

the age of 60. The role mental health

plays in homelessness was discussed

and the audience learned what it

was like to live in a car. Importantly,

panelists shared some practical ways

people can help someone who is

homeless and also corrected some

common misconceptions.

By providing opportunities for

our people to learn more about

homelessness, we hope to play a

role in changing perceptions about

homelessness, so our people can

play a role in creating positive change

around this issue.

47 | REA Group

Social

International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)

REA Group Asia has provided financial

support to the ICRC since 2017. In FY20,

the ICRC helped more than 34 million

people access clean water, proper

sanitary facilities and offered other

assistance for improving their living

conditions. In the same period, the ICRC

facilitated 1.4 million phone calls and

141,590 Red Cross messages between

loved ones separated by conflict. ICRC

team members visited 1,274 places of

detention in order to secure decent

treatment and conditions for more than

a million detainees.

The Women’s Subscription Enterprise (WSE) and International Women’s Day

REA Group partnered with The Big

Issue for International Women’s Day

2020, by hosting a ‘Big Shift’ in our

Richmond headquarters. We had 10

WSE employees teach more than 100

REA Group employees how to pack

copies of The Big Issue and send them

off to friends, family and stakeholders.

The REA Group team was also

fortunate enough to hear from The Big

Issue Editor and a number of the WSE

team who shared their stories.

The Big Issue

REA Group has supported The Big Issue

since 2014. Our subscription to 100

copies of The Big Issue each fortnight

provides employment for vulnerable

and disadvantaged women through the

Women’s Subscription Enterprise.

Our CEO, Owen Wilson, also teamed up

with Big Issue Vendor Phil for the second

year running to support the CEO Selling

campaign, an initiative that shines a light

on homelessness and disadvantaged

Big Issue Vendors who are working hard

to change their lives. Phil now sells The

Big Issue out the front of REA Group’s

Richmond headquarters each fortnight.

copies of The Big Issue

subscribed to each fortnight

100

48 | REA Group

Social

Community investment continued

FY20: $252,546 (AUD) in combined employee and company matched donations

FY20: 43% of eligible employees are now signed up to the program

$747,005 (AUD) in combined employee and company-matched donations

since the program began in 2014

FY20: 38 grants distributed

FY20 grant total: $37,575 (AUD)

311 grants distributed since 2014

$371,834 (AUD) grants distributed since 2014

Because We Care – Australia

Our Because We Care program has been running since 2014, and provides our

people with an opportunity to give back to local grassroots organisations and

charities important to them. We do this through our Matched Payroll Giving,

Employee Community Grants, Volunteer Bank and Community Café. You can

find out more about each of these programs on our corporate website:

community engagement.

days volunteered (FY20)

(828 days since 2014)

Community Café donations

(AUD) (FY20)

hours volunteered (FY20)

(6,292 hours since 2014)

Total Community Café donations

since July 2017 (AUD)

147

$74,875

1,119

$266,974

The Community Café was temporarily closed in February 2020 due to COVID-19

49 | REA Group

Social

Community investment continued

Fundraising

Movember

Melbourne-based Account Manager,

Nick Leggatt, has participated in

Movember as part of the REA Super

Mo Bros team for the last few years by

growing a moustache to help raise funds

and awareness for Movember Australia,

a charity that champions men’s health.

Suicide is the single biggest killer of males

under 45 in Australia, with six men taking

their own life every day. Sadly, a few years

ago Nick’s younger brother Matt was one

of them. Nick remembers Matt as a quiet

and kind young man – a father, a husband

and only 26 years old. Nick’s family didn’t

know that Matt was struggling with his

mental health, so charities like Movember

are vital in helping to raise awareness

and start conversations that can help

save lives. With donations from friends,

family and colleagues, and with a large

dose of help from REA’s Matched Giving

and Community Café, Nick ended up

raising $18,884 on his personal Movember

fundraising page, which made him the

sixth highest individual fundraiser in the

country in 2019. The REA team Nick was

a member of raised a total of $28,998,

making the REA Super Mo Bros the top

team in the Australian ‘tech’ category.

Employee Community Grants

Edmund Rice Community Services

Little tiny gumboots for tiny little feet.

That’s what the Edmund Rice Community

Services team in Mt Atkinson needed

to support newly arrived migrant and

refugee families in the local community.

REA Group’s Melbourne-based

procurement specialist Phil Villani’s partner

works with the Mt Atkinson community

centre, so he decided to apply for

an Employee Community Grant to support

the programs they run. He was successful

in applying for a $999 grant, which saw

19 rain suits and 21 pairs of gumboots

purchased for the centre. The gumboots

and rain suits enabled the community

centre to extend its outdoor programs,

playgroups and holiday programs,

promoting better mental and physical

health as well as the social benefits for the

toddlers and families participating.

Raised by Nick and the REA Super

Mo Bros for Movember in 2019

$28,998

50 | REA Group

Social

Community investment continued

FY20 Because We Care Asia engagement and impacts

Our Because We Care Asia program launched in 2018, providing our people with

the opportunity to give back to charities through Matched Giving and volunteering.

Employees nominated and voted in one Matched Giving charity partner and three

Volunteer charity partners in each country.

REA Group Asia donated to three charities leading the local response to supporting

vulnerable people throughout COVID-19, including:

Hong Kong Red Cross – HK $13,625

Mercy Malaysia – RM7,613

UNICEF Thailand – THB$56,933

The Because We Care Asia program is driven by a network of Community

Champions across Asia. The Community Champions meet monthly to share ideas

to engage team members in Matched Giving and Volunteering.

HK Paws Foundation – HK$5,229

Hospis Malaysia – RM5,150

Thai Red Cross Society – THB6,000

Indonesia – ACT – IDR 2.180.700 

of the team in Asia

used their Volunteer leave

14%

51 | REA Group

Environment

EnvironmentReducing our impact on the environment

52 | REA Group

Environment

At REA Group, we recognise that climate change is a serious global issue that will touch on almost all aspects of our society and economy We’re a digital advertising business,

speicialising in property. We recognise that

carbon emissions from the property sector,

including the construction and operation

of residential and commercial buildings,

contribute to global carbon emissions.

For REA Group to deliver on our purpose

to change the way the world experiences

property, we need to account for climate

change in our own operations, as well as

consider the broader property sector’s

share of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate change

FY20 carbon footprint by source FY20 carbon footprint by scope

REA Group’s FY20 carbon footprint

In FY20, we engaged an independent sustainability consultancy to map REA Group’s carbon

footprint. REA Group’s total quantified Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions for FY20 were 5,607

tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e), broken down as follows:

Flights

Sta�

com

mute

Fuel

car

ds

Data

centre

s

Hotels

Was

teTa

xis

Paper

Wat

erFu

el

Base

buildin

g

(ele

ctric

ity a

nd gas

)

Elect

ricity

use

in

o�ce

tenan

cies

Upstre

am e

lect

ricity

and fu

el

Data

centre

elec

trici

ty

GH

G e

mis

sio

ns

(to

nn

es

CO

2-e 1,4

53

1,0

18

90

3

64

0

50

4

34

6

175

Fran

chise

s

20

5

148

88

61

57

5.1

2.8

0.5

Scope 1 0.5 0%

Scope 2 960.1 17%

Scope 3 4,441.2 83%

Scope 1 Scope 2 Scope 3

83%Indirect emissions

produced by REA

Group but not owned

or controlled by REA

Group. For example:

Flights, base building

electricity, natural

gas usage and tenant

electricity.

<0.1%Direct emissions

produced by fuel

burned by REA Group’s

back-up generator.

17%Indirect emissions

generated by the

electricity consumed

and purchased by REA

Group at our offices.

53 | REA Group

Environment

Climate change continued

COVID-19

With the impacts of COVID-19 on

REA Group’s GHG, we recognise

REA Group’s FY20 carbon footprint is

less than it would be in a non-COVID year.

Under business as usual circumstances,

it is estimated that REA Group’s FY20

carbon footprint could be approximately

21% greater than REA Group’s actual FY20

carbon footprint, which is equivalent to

approximately 6,759 tonnes of carbon

dioxide equivalent (tCO2e).

Climate Change Policy

REA Group’s carbon footprint, emission

reduction programs and science-based

aligned targets have been published in

our Climate Change Policy. It details our

understanding of the risks and impacts,

how we are taking responsibility for our

own footprint, as well as how we plan to

use our platforms to engage customers

and consumers to support them in making

sustainable changes, reduce their carbon

emissions and save money.

REA Group’s Climate Change Policy

was endorsed by REA Group’s CEO,

Owen Wilson and REA Group’s Board.

Climate Change Policy

E-waste

At REA Group, we define e-waste as

any item with a plug, battery or power

cord that is no longer working or

wanted, as well as cartridges. In FY20,

a cross-functional team formed to

benchmark the current practice relating

to REA Group’s e-waste. Its purpose is to

identify opportunities to reduce e-waste

and ensure it is recycled appropriately to

reduce environmental contamination in

landfill.

E-waste policy

Sustainable buildings

REA Group provides data to CitySwitch,

a program for commercial office tenants

around Australia to improve waste and

energy usage.

We are given an indicative rating from

the National Australian Build Environment

Rating System (NABERS), which is used to

measure building efficiencies and identify

where improvements can be made.

REA Group also provides data to the

National Greenhouse and Energy

Reporting Scheme (NGERS) through

News Corp, to help inform government

policy and meet Australia’s international

reporting obligations.

Carbon neutral

In FY21, REA Group will offset the

company’s FY20 carbon footprint

of 5,607 tCO2e, to become certified

carbon neutral.

Science-based aligned targets

Science Based Targets (SBTs) provide

guidance on how to limit dangerous

climate change, in line with the

goals of the Paris Agreement,

which is to limit global warming to

well-below 2°C above pre-industrial

levels and pursue efforts to limit

warming to 1.5°C.

REA Group is committing to the

following science-based aligned

targets:

42%

reduction in Scope 1 and 2

emissions by 2030

25%

reduction in Scope 3

emissions by 2030

In FY21, we will be developing

a roadmap for achieving these

science-based aligned targets and

providing an update in our FY21

Sustainability Report.

Sustainability working group

Following on from the success of

the environmentally focused ‘Bin

There Done That: Check it Before

you Wreck It’ REAio (hack day) team

in FY19, a number of employees

formed the Sustainability Working

Group. The Group’s objective is to

reduce waste in our offices and raise

awareness among employees about

how we can be more sustainable in

our everyday lives.

The team meets fortnightly and

has introduced ‘Trash Talk Tuesday’

where they share different ideas for

employees to reduce their waste or

dispose of waste more sustainably,

either in the office or at home.

The Sustainability Working Group

ran a survey in FY20 for employee

feedback about waste disposal,

which has led to improvements in the

Melbourne office’s recycling program,

such as introducing a soft plastics

recycling bin into the mailroom. The

Group arranged for a guest speaker

to talk with our team about how to

be more sustainable in our homes.

They’ve also arranged for locks on

the coffee grounds bin to reduce

contamination risks, before they’re

recycled through an external

organisation called Reground.

In FY21, the team is planning

to introduce recycling stations

in each office around Australia,

before expanding to our teams

in Asia. The station will include

bins for plastics, glass, paper, soft

plastic, batteries, light globes and

toothbrushes.

54 | REA Group

REA Group’s FY20 Sustainability Report covers the period from 1 July 2019 to 30 June 2020, and has been prepared in accordance with the GRI Standards: Core option. The GRI content index specifies each of the GRI Standards used and lists the location of all disclosures

GRI Standard

Number Disclosure REA Group FY20 response and remarks Page number

102-01 Name of the organisation FY20 Sustainability Report: About REA Group Page 3

102-02 Activities, brands, products,

and services

FY20 Sustainability Report: About REA Group Page 3

102-03 Location of headquarters FY20 Sustainability Report: About REA Group Page 3

102-04 Location of operations FY20 Sustainability Report: About REA Group Page 3

102-05 Ownership and legal form REA Group Ltd is a multinational digital advertising business specialising in

property and listed on Australian Securities Exchange (ASX:REA)

REA Group Investor fact sheet – Business Description

102-06 Markets served FY20 Sustainability Report, About REA Group Page 3

102-07 Scale of the organisation Total number of employees: 1,479: Diversity and Inclusion

Total number of operations: About REA Group

FY20 Revenue: $820.3m

REA Group corporate website – ASX announcement, 7 August 2020

Page 30

Page 3

Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) FY20 content index

55 | REA Group

GRI FY20 content index continued

GRI Standard

Number Disclosure REA Group FY20 response and remarks Page number

102-08 Information on employees

and other workers

a) Total number of employees by employment contract, by gender

Male Female Grand total

Fixed term 13 34 47

Permanent 725 707 1,432

Grand total 738 741 1,479

b) Totally number of employees by employment contract, by region

Fixed term Permanent Grand total

Australia 36 1,084 1,120

China 5 6 11

Hong Kong 0 63 63

Malaysia 6 247 253

Thailand 0 32 32

Grand total 47 1,432 1,479

c) Total number of employees by employment type, by gender

Full-time Part-time Grand total

Female 651 90 741

Male 724 14 738

Grand total 1,375 104 1,479

d) Approximately 13% of the total individuals recorded in REA Group’s Human

Resources Information System (HRIS) Workday are contingent workers

who are not considered employees. Some of the contingent workers are

specialist contractors who only perform small, but highly specialist tasks

from time to time. Other are ThoughtWorks software developers.

e) No seasonal change.

f) The data is sourced from REA Group’s HRIS system using actual numbers

at the end of the reporting period noted (31/06/2020).

102-09 Supply chain FY20 Sustainability Report: Supplier Due Diligence measures Page 28

102-10 Significant changes to the

organisation and its supply

chain

FY20 Sustainability Report: Organisational structure – Australia

FY20 Sustainability Report: Investment in 99 Group

Page 34

Page 34

102-11 Precautionary Principle or

approach

FY20 Sustainability Report: Risk Management

Corporate Governance Statement 2019

Page 15

102-12 External initiatives REA Group has also voluntarily participated in the 2020 Corporate

Sustainability Assessment (CSA), CDP 2020 and CitySwitch. We also provide

data to News Corp for the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting

(NGER) Scheme and receive indicative ratings from the National Australian

Built Environment Rating System (NABERS) to measure building efficiencies.

REA Group receives a public annual ESG Rating from

Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) – REA Group LTD.

56 | REA Group

GRI FY20 content index continued

GRI Standard

Number Disclosure REA Group FY20 response and remarks Page number

102-13 Membership of associations REA Group contributes to supporting the prosperity of the real estate industry

through our relationship with the Real Estate Institutes of New South Wales,

Victoria, Queensland and Northern Territory, and Real Women in Real Estate.

Our commitment to responsible and sustainable business practices extends

to our commitment to focus on increased tax transparency and the adoption

of the Board of Taxation’s Voluntary Tax Transparency Code. We are a

member of Federal Treasury’s Digital Tax Working Group and the Corporate

Tax Association.

Our Smartline business is a member of the MFAA National Aggregators

Forum, which helps to shape and influence the industry to improve

customer outcomes. Its also a member of the MFAA’s Combined Industry

Forum, which aims to drive better customer outcomes through improved

governance and remuneration practices in mortgage broking.

REA Group is a proud member of the ADMA, which ensures our teams

stay up to date with the changing landscape of data, digital marketing and

compliance.

FY20 Sustainability Report – Community investment

REA Group corporate website – Community Engagement

Page 45

102-14 Statement from senior

decision-maker

FY20 Sustainability Report: CEO message Page 5

102-15 Key impacts, risks and

opportunities

FY20 Sustainability Report: Risk management Page 15

102-16 Values, principles, standards

and norms of behavior Values: Corporate Governance Statement 2019

Principles, standards and norms of behaviour: Code of Conduct

Page 3

Page 1–6

102-17 Mechanisms for advice and

concerns about ethics REA Group Whistleblower Policy

102-18 Governance structure Corporate Governance Statement 2019 Page 2

102-19 Delegating authority Corporate Governance Statement 2019 Page 2

102-20 Executive-level responsibility

for economic, environmental

and social topics

Corporate Governance Statement 2019 Page 2

102-21 Consulting stakeholders on

economic, environmental

and social topics

Corporate Governance Statement 2019 Page 2

102-22 Composition of the highest

governance body and its

committees

Corporate Governance Statement 2019:

Composition of highest governance body

Committees

Page 2

Page 6-7

102-23 Chair of the highest

governance body Corporate Governance Statement 2019: The Board Page 4

57 | REA Group

GRI FY20 content index continued

GRI Standard

Number Disclosure REA Group FY20 response and remarks Page number

102-24 Nominating and selecting the

highest governance body Corporate Governance Statement 2019:

5.1, Board skills matrix

5.2 Succession planning

5.3 Director induction and appointment

5.4 Independence of Directors

Page 5

Page 6

Page 6

Page 6

102-25 Conflicts of interest REA Group Code of Conduct Page 4

102-26 Role of highest governance

body in setting purpose,

values and strategy

Corporate Governance Statement 2019:

Values

Roles and responsibilities of the Board

Page 3

Page 4

102-27 Collective knowledge of

highest governance body

FY20 Annual Report, Director’s Report: Meetings of Directors

Human Resources Committee Charter

2d, Social, environmental and ethical sustainability

Page 28

Page 3

102-28 Evaluating the highest

governance body’s

performance

Human Resources Committee Charter

Board composition, remuneration and performance

Remuneration-related matters and succession planning

for senior executives

Page 1–2

Page 2

102-29 Identifying and managing

economic, environmental

and social impacts

Human Resources Committee Charter:

Social, environmental and ethical sustainabilit

Risk Management Policy:

The Risk Management Framework

FY20 Sustainability Report: Materiality assessment

Page 3

Page 1–2

Page 6

102-30 Effectiveness of risk

management processes Risk Management Policy:

Accountabilities

Audit, Risk and Compliance Committee Charter:

Functions and Responsibilities

Page 5

Page 2–4

102-31 Review of economic,

environmental and

social topics

FY20 Annual Report: Director’s Report – Meetings of Directors

Audit, Risk and Compliance Committee meets quarterly to receive

an update on REA Group’s Strategic Risk Profile and meets annually to

participate in a Risk Day

Human Resources Committee Charter:

Social, environmental and ethical sustainability

Page 28

Page 3

102-32 Highest governance body’s

role in sustainability reporting Human Resources Committee Charter:

The Human Resources Committee and other Board members approve

REA Group’s annual Sustainability Report, as outlined in d) Social,

environmental and ethical sustainability

Page 3

102-33 Communicating critical

concerns Risk Management Policy

Accountabilities Page 5

58 | REA Group

GRI FY20 content index continued

GRI Standard

Number Disclosure REA Group FY20 response and remarks Page number

102-35 Remuneration policies Human Resources Committee Charter

Board composition, remuneration and performance

Remuneration-related matters and succession planning

for senior executives

Corporate Governance Statement 2019:

7. Remuneration and evaluation of senior executives

FY20 REA Group Annual Report, Remuneration Report:

3. Executive remuneration philosophy and framework

5. Executive remuneration components

6. Non-Executive Director remuneration

7. Shareholdings of key management personnel and Board of Directors

Page 1

Page 2

Page 8

Page 42–55

Page 44–45

Page 49

Page 55

102-36 Process for determining

remuneration

FY20 Annual Report: Remuneration Report

FY20 Sustainability Report:

Workplace Gender Equality Report

Incentives and Remuneration Review Process

Board Charter:

Functions and responsibilities

Page 42–55

Page 32

Page 35

Page 2

102-37 Stakeholders’ involvement in

remuneration

FY20 Sustainability Report: Employee Engagement survey Page 39

102-40 List of stakeholder groups • Shareholders

• Employees

• Customers

• Consumers

FY20 Sustainability Report:

• Associations, see GRI Standard Number 102-13,

Membership of associations

• Suppliers, see Sustainable Procurement

• Charity partners, see Community investment

Page 56

Page 26

Page 45

102-41 Collective bargaining

agreements

REA Group does not have any employees on collective

bargaining agreements.

59 | REA Group

GRI FY20 content index continued

GRI Standard

Number Disclosure REA Group FY20 response and remarks Page number

102-42 Identifying and selecting

stakeholders

REA Group’s stakeholders are defined as the key groups that:

• enable REA Group to run its business

• purchase our products and services

• use our products and services

• benefit financially from our operations

• contribute to the growth and development of the industries we deliver

products and services to

REA Group’s Supplier Code of Conduct outlines what is required to be a

supplier of REA Group and compliance with the Code.

FY20 Sustainability Report:

Supplier Due Diligence measures outline how REA Group ensures its supply

chain complies with the Supplier Code of Conduct

REA Group’s Media advertising terms and conditions outline advertisers and

content we do not publish

Page 28

Page 25

102-43 Approach to stakeholder

engagement

FY20 Sustainability Report:

Employee Engagement survey

Pulse surveys

Customer Satisfaction

Supplier Due Diligence Measures

Global Kick Off

Tech Kick Off

Leadership conference

Town Halls

Global Communications Platform

Investor and Analyst presentations

REA Group Investor Centre, ASX announcements

REA Group blog

realestate.com.au/news

Page 39

Page 38

Page 42

Page 28

Page 41

Page 37

Page 37

Page 37

Page 41

102-44 Key topics and concerns

raised

FY20 Sustainability Report:

Agent Match

iOS app log out

Employee Engagement Australia – ‘Communication from

executive leaders In REA is authentic and transparent’

Employee Engagement Asia – ‘The bonus structure

fairly recognises my efforts and achievements’

Page 22

Page 23

Page 39

Page 40

102-45 Entities included in the

consolidated financial

statements

FY20 Annual Report, Financial Statements:

Consolidated Income Statement

Consolidated Statement of Comprehensive Income

Consolidated Statement of Financial Position

Consolidated Statements of Changes in Equity

Consolidated Statement of Cash Flows

Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements

Page 57

Page 58

Page 59

Page 60

Page 61

Page 62–119

102-46 Defining report content and

topic Boundaries

FY20 Sustainability Report:

Materiality assessment

Page 6

60 | REA Group

GRI FY20 content index continued

GRI Standard

Number Disclosure REA Group FY20 response and remarks Page number

102-47 List of material topics FY20 Sustainability Report:

Materiality assessment

Page 7

102-48 Restatements of information FY20 Sustainability Report:

Materiality assessment

Page 6

102-49 Changes in reporting FY20 Sustainability Report:

Materiality assessment

Page 6

102-50 Reporting period REA Group’s FY20 Sustainability Report covers the period from

1 July 2019–30 June 2020.

102-51 Date of most recent report REA Group’s FY19 Sustainability Report was published on 15 November

2019, covering the 1 July 2018 – 30 June 2019 period (FY19).

102-52 Reporting cycle REA Group’s Sustainability Report is published annually

102-53 Contact point for questions

regarding the report

FY20 Sustainability Report:

CEO message

Feedback invitation

Page 5

Page 64

102-54 Claims of reporting in

accordance with the GRI

Standards

FY20 Sustainability Report:

Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) FY20 content index

Page 54

102-55 GRI content index FY20 Sustainability Report:

Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) FY20 content index

Page 54

102-56 External assurance FY20 Sustainability Report:

KPMG limited assurance opinion

Page 62

103-1 Explanation of the material

topic and its boundary

FY20 Sustainability Report:

Materiality assessment

Page 7

103-2 The management approach

and its components

FY20 Sustainability Report:

Materiality assessment

Key risk exposures

Page 6

Page 17

103-3 Evaluation of the

management approach

FY20 Sustainability Report:

KPMG limited assurance opinion

Employee Engagement

Customer satisfaction

REA Group closely reviews its annual MSCI ESG rating, addressing

opportunities to evolve ESG activity and reporting in the following year’s

Sustainability Report. REA Group’s 2020 MSCI ESG rating increased to a BBB.

REA Group achieved a ‘Detailed’ level of ESG reporting from the Australian

Council of Superannuation Investors (ACSI) in 2020, putting REA on par with

the ACSI Media and Entertainment sector leader.

REA Group responded to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and SAM

Corporate Sustainability Assessment (CSA) in 2020. The CDP and CSA ratings

will be closely reviewed to identify opportunities to evolve current ESG

activity and reporting.

Page 62

Page 38

Page 42

403-01 Occupational health and

safety management system

REA Group has not implemented an occupational health and safety

management system.

FY20 Sustainability Report:

Workplace health, safety and wellbeing

Page 33

61 | REA Group

GRI FY20 content index continued

GRI Standard

Number Disclosure REA Group FY20 response and remarks Page number

403-02 Hazard identification, risk

assessment, and injury

investigation

FY20 Sustainability Report:

Workplace health, safety and wellbeing

Page 33

403-03 Occupational health service FY20 Sustainability Report:

Workplace health, safety and wellbeing

Page 33

403-04 Worker participation,

consultation and

communication on

occupational health and

safety

FY20 Sustainability Report:

Workplace health, safety and wellbeing

Page 33

405-01 Diversity of governance

bodies and employees

FY20 Sustainability Report:

Diversity and inclusion

Page 30

405-02 Ratio of basic salary and

remuneration of women to

men

Average base pay

Catagory F M Ratio

Executives $586,377 $616.838 0.95:1

Management Level $ 186,797 $191,124 0.97:1

Management Level (base

salary & cash incentives) $199,599 $214.572 0.93:1

Non-Management Level $101,302 $113,834 0.89:1

418-01 Substantiated complaints

concerning breaches of

customer privacy and losses

of customer data

a) i) Two complaints received from outside parties and substantiated by the

organisations.

ii) No complaints from regulatory bodies.

b) Two identified leaks, thefts or losses of customer data.

2.1. The incidents referenced above relate to matters that occurred in prior

years, but were detected, investigated and resolved in FY20.

62 | REA Group

Independent Limited Assurance Report to the Directors of REA Group Limited

Conclusion

Based on the evidence we obtained from the procedures performed, we are not aware of any material misstatements in the Information

Subject to Assurance, which has been prepared by REA Group Ltd (REA Group) in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)

Standards and basis of preparation disclosed in the REA Group’s Sustainability Report 2020 for the year ended 30 June 2020 (Sustainability

Report 2020).

Information Subject to Assurance

Information Subject to Assurance as presented in the Sustainability Report 2020 and available on REA Group’s website at

www.rea-group.com, includes:

Information Subject to Assurance Page/s

Supplier due diligence measures 28

The following People data across Australia and Asia, including gender diversity of senior leadership:

• REA Group’s People across Australia and Asia

• REA Group’s senior leaders across Australia and Asia

30

Approach to stakeholder engagement and response results from the Employee Engagement Survey FY20 39 to 40

Cyber security disclosures 19 to 21

Criteria Used as the Basis of Reporting

The Information Subject to Assurance has been prepared in accordance with the GRI Standards and basis of preparation disclosed in the

Sustainability Report 2020 (the criteria).

Basis for Conclusion

We conducted our work in accordance with the Australian Standard on Assurance Engagements ASAE 3000 Assurance Engagements Other

Than Audits or Reviews of Historical Financial Information (Standard). In accordance with the Standard we have:

• used our professional judgement to plan and perform the engagement to obtain limited assurance that we are not aware of any material

misstatements in the Information Subject to Assurance, whether due to fraud or error;

• considered relevant internal controls when designing our assurance procedures, however we do not express a conclusion on their

effectiveness; and

• ensured that the engagement team possess the appropriate knowledge, skills and professional competencies.

Summary of Procedures Performed

Our limited assurance conclusion is based on the evidence obtained from performing the following procedures:

• enquiries with relevant REA Group personnel to understand the internal controls, governance structure and reporting process of the

Information Subject to Assurance;

• reviews of relevant documentation including REA Group’s policies and management reporting to the REA Group Board;

• analytical procedures over the Information Subject to Assurance;

• walkthroughs and testing of the Information Subject to Assurance to source documentation on a sample basis;

• evaluating the appropriateness of the criteria with respect to the Information Subject to Assurance; and

• review of the Sustainability Report 2020 in its entirety to ensure it is consistent with our overall knowledge of assurance engagement.

©2020 KPMG, an Australian partnership and a member firm of the KPMG global organisation of independent member firms affiliated with KPMG International Limited, a private English company limited by guarantee. All rights reserved. The KPMG name and logo are trademarks used under license by the independent member firms of the KPMG global organisation. Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation.

63 | REA Group

Independent Limited Assurance Report to the Directors of REA Group Limited continued

©2020 KPMG, an Australian partnership and a member firm of the KPMG global organisation of independent member firms affiliated with KPMG International Limited, a private English company limited by guarantee. All rights reserved. The KPMG name and logo are trademarks used under license by the independent member firms of the KPMG global organisation. Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation.

How the Standard Defines Limited Assurance and Material Misstatement

The procedures performed in a limited assurance engagement vary in nature and timing from, and are less in extent than for a reasonable

assurance engagement. Consequently the level of assurance obtained in a limited assurance engagement is substantially lower than the

assurance that would have been obtained had a reasonable assurance engagement been performed.

Misstatements, including omissions, are considered material if, individually or in the aggregate, they could reasonably be expected to

influence relevant decisions of the Directors of REA Group.

Use of this Assurance Report

This report has been prepared for the Directors of REA Group for the purpose of providing an assurance conclusion on the Information

Subject to Assurance and may not be suitable for another purpose. We disclaim any assumption of responsibility for any reliance on this

report, to any person other than the Directors of REA Group, or for any other purpose than that for which it was prepared.

Management’s responsibility

Management are responsible for:

• determining that the criteria is appropriate to meet their needs

and the needs of other intended users;

• preparing and presenting the Information Subject to Assurance in

accordance with the criteria; and

• establishing internal controls that enable the preparation and

presentation of the Information Subject to Assurance that is free

from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error.

Our Responsibility

Our responsibility is to perform a limited assurance engagement

in relation to the Information Subject to Assurance and to issue an

assurance report that includes our conclusion.

Our Independence and Quality Control

We have complied with our independence and other relevant

ethical requirements of the Code of Ethics for Professional

Accountants (including Independence Standards) issued by the

Australian Professional and Ethical Standards Board, and complied

with the applicable requirements of Australian Standard on Quality

Control 1 to maintain a comprehensive system of quality control.

KPMG

Melbourne

12 October 2020

Julia Bilyanska

Director

For further information about REA Group, please visit:

www.rea-group.com

If you have any questions or feedback about

our FY20 Sustainability Report, please contact

REA Group’s Executive Manager, Sustainability at:

sustainability@rea-group.com