We have policies, guidelines and procedures to protect and promote the human rights of our employees and customers throughout our operations.

Our Respect in the Workplace Policy, for instance, articulates our commitment to providing a work environment free from any form of harassment and discrimination, where every employee, customer, independent contractor and third party is treated with dignity and respect. Our unwavering pledge to human rights is also embedded in our Code of Conduct and Ethics, which states the fundamental principles, norms and behaviours expected of all employees and directors worldwide in the course of their jobs.

A central corporate group within TD advises Human Resources practitioners on human rights issues and training to provide for consistent and objective application across the organization. TD educates employees on relevant human rights issues through various communications and learning, including diversity training; we do not track training hours on this specifically. In every country where TD operates, we support and respect the protection of human rights and carefully adhere to and in many cases exceed all applicable labour laws and standards addressing issues such as equal pay, hours of work and child labour. These include the Employment Equity Act, the Canadian Human Rights Act, the Canada Labour Code and privacy legislation.

Employee/Management Relations
When it comes to employee/management relations, we adhere to the highest standards, and our philosophy is to create positive working environments where employees don’t feel the need for third party representation. While we prefer to work directly with employees, they have the right to decide whether they wish to be represented by a third party or not, and we respect each employee’s right to choose as embodied in our Guiding Principle “respect each other.”

TD has two bargaining units represented by trade unions, both in Canada, accounting for 0.76% of our employee population: TD Meloche Monnex Group has a long established bargaining unit of 347 employees represented by the Teamsters at one of their Montreal locations; and 102 employees in a group of branches in the Sudbury, Ontario area are represented by The United Steelworkers.

Helping Employees Through Organizational Changes
Helping employees understand and accept changes that directly affect them is a priority for TD. We have a strong communication culture with a goal to tell people what’s changing, the rationale behind the change and what it means for them as early in the process as we can. We’re committed to keeping people informed and up-to-date by sharing what we know and what we don’t know and by encouraging them to share their views and opinions with their manager. To support our managers, who in turn support their teams through key change initiatives across the Bank, we provide the one-day workshop “Making Sense of Change” for People Managers. It provides best practices for communicating change, anticipating employee reactions to change and addressing employee questions and rumours.

With branch or business area consolidations, we make every effort to minimize the overall impact through natural attrition and managing our hiring levels in advance. When people are displaced as a result of job loss, staffing reductions or consolidation, they are first given the opportunity to apply for other jobs internally. TD also staffs from within the organization in order to deploy resources that are displaced, and retraining is offered as appropriate.