Our progress on gender and ethnicity inclusion
As a purpose led organisation, it should be no surprise that we’re serious about diversity and inclusion (D&I). Not only is it the right thing to do for our colleagues, communities and members but there’s also strong research that suggests more diverse businesses outperform their competitors.
And it’s not something that we are half hearted about. It’s baked into everything we do.
We have a Society shared goal of being an inclusive, inspiring workplace and we’re committed to providing a welcoming environment for everyone.
Women in Finance Charter
In 2018, the Society signed up to the Women in Finance Charter – this aligns with our ongoing commitment to progress gender diversity, particularly in more senior roles.
We’re doing the right things to achieve this:
- 59% of our colleagues are female
- 50% of our Executive Team are female
- 92% of colleagues believe they are treated fairly at the Society regardless of their gender
- We’re 15th in Great Place to Work’s UK Best Workplaces for Women 2023 (Super Large Company category)
- Women account for the majority of attendees on our talent programmes
- Our intern, apprentice and graduate schemes are bringing new, and importantly, diverse talent into the Society
We have set ourselves a target of half of our Board of Directors being women by the end of 2024. As of December 2023, 33% of these positions are held by women.
In 2021 we set an additional target to have 40% of our senior management and above roles held by women by 2025. As of December 2023, we have now increased representation of senior women to 38.4%, putting us firmly on track to achieve our target.
We still have room for improvement. We know there is an uneven balance between men and women at the senior levels of the Society and we’ll continue to work to address this.
Our gender and ethnicity pay gaps
We’ve been publishing our gender pay gap since 2017. In 2021, the Society signed Business in the Community’s Race at Work Charter, a public commitment to improving ethnicity inclusion at work. Since then, we’ve worked on capturing data to support us in publicly reporting progress and with 89% of colleagues now choosing to share their ethnic background with us, in 2023, we’ve been able to report our ethnicity pay gap for the first time too.
