How are we addressing the gender pay gap?

Stronger Together - An inclusive organisation

We are committed to recruiting, developing and retaining individuals with the skills and experience required to enable the Bank to meet its strategic objectives. Our range of people policies and programmes are designed to support a diverse community where talent is recognised and nurtured, and colleagues feel empowered to be proactive in their own development. We continually review these policies and programmes with a view to further strengthening them where we can.

Central to this is our Employee Resource Group called Stronger Together. The group is sponsored by our Executive Committee and is a diverse group of colleagues from across the organisation.

Stronger Together is an open forum run by colleagues, for colleagues, to provide a safe and supportive environment in which to discuss issues specifically relating to inclusion and diversity in the Bank.

Our inclusion mission statement, which was created with Stronger Together, supports our inclusion activities:

• We’re committed to creating a culture where each and every colleague can be truly collaborative and creative. As individuals, and collectively as an organisation, we benefit from ensuring the bank is inclusive, everyone has a voice, and we all have the opportunity to be our true selves at work.
• The UK benefits from the diversity of the businesses we support and empower. We are committed to doing everything we can to help them prosper and grow.
• At the British Business Bank, we share the same ambitions for our people. We are proud to create an organisation where everyone is stronger together.

Diversity data and our people processes

It is our ongoing commitment to continuously monitor and safeguard the integrity and fairness of our policies, processes and structures to ensure equal opportunities for all:

• We test our annual pay progression and promotions for any differences between men and women.
• We test our bonus awards for any gender differences in the percentages of bonus pay-outs relative to their bonus opportunities.
• We have an internal job evaluation system which considers the scope and the breadth of each role irrespective of the jobholder. This means that our internal Bands are not decided based on the person doing the job (in which case the system could be susceptible to biases) but based on the content of the job.
• We test our yearly talent and performance management processes for representation against the wider organisational population.
• We collect data to analyse our attraction and recruitment processes.

Our approach to talent

We aim to ensure that employment practices are fair and there is no bias in recruitment processes across the organisation.

• We work closely with both hiring managers and external agencies to create gender balanced candidate pools.
• We endeavour to achieve diverse shortlists and interview panels for all senior roles to support our diversity agenda.
• We monitor our job adverts and job descriptions to balance the use of gender coded language.
• We monitor each stage of the recruitment process to ensure that individuals are offered jobs on merit and that no unlawful discrimination has influenced the decision.
• We have an Equality and Diversity Policy which colleagues should adhere to during all stages of the recruitment and selection process.
• We post on diverse job boards aimed at women, LGBT+, Disabled, and ex-armed forces to maximise the reach of our job adverts.
• We actively promote opportunities by attending diverse recruitment events.
• All recruiting managers undertake training in our recruitment processes including how to identify and being aware of unconscious bias.
• All our roles, where possible, are open to flexible working.