Woman in a bank manager’s chair

Press, 26 July 1978, Page 17

Woman in a bank manager’s chair

By

TUI THOMAS

Customers of the Wairakei Road branch of the Canterbury Savings Bank have been somewhat taken aback recently when shown into the manager’s office. Behind the desk sits a pretty young woman with fair, shoul-der-length hair. Miss Paulene Dixon is, at 23, the C.S.B’s first woman manager with total responsibility for a branch. She looks efficient cy-plus in her smart grey flannel suit, has been well prepared for the job and behind her spontaneous smile there is a quality of quiet confidence. She is not the kind of person to lose her cool in an emergency. How would she handle a hold-up ? Certainly not by playing the heroic “Wonder Woman.” She would

stick firmly to instructions for coping with such a situation and try to keep the staff calm until help arrived, she said. After a month in the job she finds it a challenge but not difficult. “It is basically the work

I was doing in my previous post as assistant manager of the Papanui branch, with extra responsibility, of course,” she said. “But I don’t go home scratching my head with worry.” Her staff has accepted her, she feels, and work with her as a team. She has her cups of tea and lunch in the cafetaria, but as manager has to remember to remain “a little aloof.” Paulene Dixon believes that there is no reaon why women should not be bank managers if they have the right training and the confidence to do the job. She has always encouraged the girls working under her at various branches to be alert to op* portunities for advancement now available to women in the C.S.B. She joined the savings bank’s Merivale branch 7| years ago as a junior and has been a loyal staff member ever since. The new girl noted the senior girl’s efficient control of the office and thought to herself: “If she can do it, so could I eventually.”

From then on she never looked back. After a period as an intermediate at the Papanui branch she was posted as a senior girl to Bishopdale, where she realised it was possible for a woman to be designated as part of a

management team; and she let the bank’s personnel department know that she was interested in moving on as far as she could.

' After a few months as senior girl back at the Papanui branch, she was made assistant manager. The manager (Mr A. J. Cook) gave her a certain amount of responsibility, exchanged ideas with her and helped her prepare for the kind of job she has at I present. i Nevertheless it was an ! exciting surprise to be ap--1 pointed manager of the | Wairakei Road branch. * l “Because of Mr Cook’s help I don’t feel bogged 1 down,” she said. “But if I had not been given a fairly free rein as an assistant manager I might be feeling rather nervous now and that would not do.” She is a careful saver for her own future. Dealing with money and other people’s investments has made her aware of the best investments to make for herself, she said. Paulene Dixon is to be married in January to Mr Raymond McGuigan, a panel beater, and plans to continue working for the C.S.B. She calls herself an indoor girl, not particularly interested in outdoor activities apart from gardening. She likes to sew, cook and do handcrafts — in other words, Paulene Dixon is a homemaker.