Diversity & inclusion

Our community groups are safe spaces for our colleagues to share experiences, insights and perspectives. The groups also drive initiatives that make our workplace inclusive and welcoming for everyone.

• Christian Fellowship Group
• Diverse Ability Action and Awareness Group
• Empowering Women
• Islamic Circle
• Kaleidoscope
• Menopause Cafe
• Men's Network Group
• Race Action Group
• Working Families Alliance

We're a signatory of the Business in the Community Race at Work Charter, a commitment to improve equality of opportunity in the workplace.

We're working to tackle the barriers that ethnic minorities face in the workplace and have set representation targets for the organisation and senior management positions specifically. Our ethnicity pay gap reports are published annually so we can continue to set new and ambitious targets.

As well as providing opportunities for an individual’s personal development, we believe that apprenticeships benefit our organisation by improving the diversity of our workforce and developing skills that meet our future needs.

By growing our own diverse talent through our apprenticeship programmes, we're tackling our gender and ethnicity pay gaps.  

Our AXA Health Employee Assistance Programme is available for colleagues to get support at any time. All of our line managers undergo mental health training to learn how to recognise the associated signs, symptoms, and behaviours of common mental health issues.

We also have six mental health first aiders across the organisation who act as a point of contact for an employee who is experiencing a mental health issue or emotional distress.

Our accreditation as a Disability Confident Leader is the highest level of accreditation of the Disability Confident Scheme. It recognises our success in employing and retaining people with disabilities and long-term health conditions.

Our commitment under the scheme is to continually build on the support we provide for these candidates and employees.

We choose to report on being a Disability Confident Leader.

The Employee Liaison Committee is an elected body of employees for every directorate. The members give and receive feedback on key areas of interest or concern and take responsibility to ensure that issues are raised with the right people and resolved.

They also manage the social fund and arrange events throughout the year to further promote employee engagement.

We’re a signatory of the Women in Finance Charter. The Charter is a commitment by HM Treasury and all signatory firms to work together to build a more balanced and fairer financial services sector. We set ourselves internal targets for gender diversity in our senior management and publish our progress annually.

Our first target was that by 2021, we'd have 40% female representation in senior management. We achieved this target in 2020.

We then increased our target to having 45% female representation in our senior management by the end of 2023. At this point we hadn’t met our target and extended this to March 2025, to coincide with our current strategic objectives.

However, as of August 2024, we’re pleased to have exceeded our target, with our female representation at senior management being 48%. 

As an organisation with a smaller senior leadership team, even one change can have a big impact, which we'll take into consideration when setting our new target in April 2025. Our ultimate long-term goal is to achieve gender parity, and we remain positive that we’ll continue to pass the 45% target.