Lloyd’s Banking Group has announced that they have met their diversity target for 2014 with 29 percent of senior roles now held by women. The banking group has said that they are on track for their 2020 target of 40 percent.
One of the key priorities for the banking group is to attract, develop and retain top female talent. The gender goal is one of many commitments the group has made to diversity and inclusion, with the aim of creating a more diverse workforce that truly represents and serves all of its customers and helps Britain prosper.
Fiona Cannon OBE, group director of diversity and inclusion, says:
“We always knew there were roadblocks specific to women’s career paths, but our Helping Britain Prosper Plan has now started to provide us with the data we need to identify where many of these roadblocks are, and importantly, how we can try to break them down.
“Removing these barriers will take time, but we have already made a number of developments that have successfully helped us to hit our 2014 diversity target, as well as putting us on track to fulfilling our target of 40 percent of senior roles being held by women by 2020.”
Key developments in the plan include; the implementation of a ‘comply or explain’ policy for non-diverse shortlists at executive levels, the development of senior talent programmes, the introduction of a leadership programme for middle management-level women, and growth of the successful women’s network, Breakthrough, with 11,500 members.
Fiona added:
“The Group will need to overcome a number of challenges before it becomes a fully inclusive workplace for women, but by treating this as a business issue, we are confident we can appropriately meet our diversity goals. We are committed to developing a strong pipeline of female talent at managerial level who can be developed over an appropriate period of time into senior management and executive roles. Our next step is to focus on improving our approach to attracting and developing female senior leaders, developing our agile working proposition, and improving the capability of all of our line managers.”
Further Helping Britain Prosper Plan 2014 Highlights:
- 1.41m customers – beaten the 2014 target of helping even more customers plan for later life with a company pension
- £1bn– increased new funding support for UK manufacturing businesses, which account for more than half of Britain’s exports and around 75 percent of business research development
- 29 percent – achieved its target for women to undertake senior leadership roles
- 949,600 hours volunteered– significantly exceeded the paid volunteering hours target for colleagues to support community projects in 2014
- £6.5m – beaten its target of £2m for its Charity of the Year through colleague fundraising and matched funding
- £1m – met the 2014 target for additional funding to support Credit Unions with great results. The £235,000 invested in the Church of England’s Credit Champions initiative has helped to train around 300 Credit Champions who in turn will bring at least 3,000 more people into Credit Union schemes
Amie Filcher is an editorial assistant at HRreview.
