Published yearly, our Gender Pay Gap report allows us to track an important measure of gender equality at the British Business Bank, and to devise strategies to improve both equality more broadly as well as the measure specifically.
One of our key strategic objectives as an organisation is to unlock potential by ensuring entrepreneurs can access the finance they need, regardless of where and who they are. If we truly wish to understand our customers and achieve this goal, it is vital that we apply a similar philosophy to diversity and inclusion within the British Business Bank.
Because we believe strongly that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) must all work together for each to succeed in its own right, we are committed to nurturing this work continuously across our business.
That means putting people and culture at the heart of our organisation, empowering diverse talent through challenging work that makes a difference, and by ensuring diverse perspectives are being well represented within our own business.
The year in review shows our 2022 median gender pay gap is 20.6%, 3.8 percentage points higher than in 2021. Our median bonus gap has also increased compared to last year. These are clearly disappointing outcomes.
Our analysis shows that whilst we have progressed in a more balanced proportion of men and women across our organisation and continue to achieve our headline target of ensuring 50% female representation at our Executive Committee level, we have more work to do in addressing our gender imbalance in more middle management and senior roles.
The work needed is not only in addressing our gender representation at these levels but at various touch points throughout our people and culture strategy. This has led us to initiate a review of our overall reward and resourcing and talent strategy, as well as a review of our Employee Value Proposition (EVP). We are committed to actionable changes that allow us to demonstrate across the organisation as well as in our gender pay gap and to be accountable for this change to all our stakeholders.
The analysis is not considered in isolation. We have specifically obtained feedback and insight from our employee inclusion resource group, ‘Stronger Together’, our Colleague Forum, and focus groups across all of the Bank’s teams. Working with external experts, we have also been learning from our customers’ journeys to integrate their experiences with our own, bringing them closer to the heart of what we do and how we do it.
To improve our gender diversity and inclusion, we will continue to:
- Analyse our recruitment processes to ensure they are fair and free from bias from beginning to end;
- Test and calibrate our talent, succession and performance management process for fair and unbiased review, as well as representation against the wider organisation population; and
- Test our annual remuneration review, progression and development for differences based on gender.
Our Board and Executive team are fully committed to our diversity goals and inclusion initiatives. They recognise that this is an ongoing and continuous effort with the upside benefiting not only our own colleagues but also our customers. I look forward to engaging further on this very important agenda, and to delivering improvements in our performance.
Louis Taylor,
CEO, British Business Bank