CYBG PLC – Annual report – 30 September 2018
Industry: banking
Strategic report (extract)
Delivering to our stakeholders (extract)
Our culture
Our colleagues are integral to our ongoing success and our overall business performance is dependent on their engagement and advocacy, underpinned by a strong risk culture. Over the past year, significant progress has been made accelerating the cultural transformation of CYBG.
Our ‘values and behaviours’ continue to be embedded. Our values – Be ambitious, Be courageous, Be all over it, Be curious and Be connected – are brought to life through their associated behaviours. Every team continues to personalise the behaviours to their business area, and every colleague sets personal goals in relation to our values to support their own development. By turning words into actions, we are building a Group where colleagues are focused on meeting the needs of both their own development and our current and future customers.
Great leadership framework has been in place for a year and all leaders play a critical role in creating culture and driving performance. Our leaders are being supported, through targeted leadership development, to help them Lead with Purpose, Drive Inclusion, be Always Agile, Grow Trust, Be Connected and Stretch Possibilities.
Recruitment and performance management have been overhauled this year to reflect our cultural aims. Our approach has been transformed to a team-focused, forward-looking approach helping every colleague to achieve their personal best. Our new framework has captured 100,000 pieces of feedback, created 28,000 well-being conversations and ensured every colleague within the Group has had a development discussion. Internal and external selection is based on our values, ensuring we recruit and promote colleagues aligned with our culture.
Employee benefits have been transformed this year through the launch of our Flex Benefits portal, representing another key milestone in our cultural journey. This new reward framework forms an integral part of our people strategy, recognising the diversity of colleagues and empowering them to make the benefit choices appropriate for individual circumstances.
Employee well-being has also become a vital part of our cultural journey. The introduction of our first ‘Well-being in the Workplace’ survey has shown our commitment to creating an inclusive, safe and healthy environment where people can excel. The relaunch of our mental health awareness training module and People Leader toolkit has helped ensure colleagues feel supported and have the right tools available to them.
Engagement and communication
We have continued to evolve and enhance the way we communicate with colleagues. We have launched new digital channels such as our weekly CEO email and delivered diverse strategic content via our intranet relating to customers, our culture, business performance and community engagement. We continue to have a highly visible CEO and Leadership Team and have expanded our interactive Let’s Talk events. We have increased colleague engagement with social features, such as likes and comments, and generated greater interaction with polls and surveys. This year our internal communications team lifted the ‘Brilliance in Internal Communications Campaign’ accolade at the IC Brilliance Awards.
Inclusion
Inclusion is at the heart of our culture. It’s written into our values. We are committed to fostering and sustaining a truly inclusive culture where every colleague and customer feels they belong. We want all colleagues to recognise this and work together to ensure inclusion achieves its promise. We ensure equality, diversity and inclusion by concentrating on making sure every colleague feels comfortable to be themselves, to ask questions, to be curious and operate at their personal best.
We continue to make great strides in developing a diverse and inclusive culture, with five colleague network groups for gender, age, disability, ethnicity and sexual orientation, all sponsored by members of our Executive Leadership Team.
Some specific highlights of the year include:
- events and activities held to celebrate and improve our awareness of International Women’s Day, National Inclusion Week, LGBT History Month and religious celebrations including Raksha Bandhan and Eid-ul-adha;
- continuing to work closely with LGBT Youth Scotland to broaden our reach and connection in the community, with our LGBT network representing CYBG at Glasgow Pride for the second year;
- introducing our guidance to support colleagues transitioning in the workplace and developing this work to ensure a smoother transitioning journey for both colleagues and customers; and
- working with colleagues to strengthen and modernise our existing practises in relation to flexible working, attendance and family friendly policies.
Gender pay gap
This year marks the second publication of our Gender Pay Gap report in accordance with the UK Government regulations for gender pay gap reporting. While we are confident we do not have an equal pay issue, we are committed to addressing the root causes of the gender pay gap. As a signatory to the Women in Finance Charter, we have committed to a target of 40% females in senior management roles by 2020.
Over the course of the year we have developed a much greater understanding of the drivers of our gender pay gap and of the long-term actions required to address it.
Our overall mean and median gender pay and bonus gap, based on a snapshot date of 5 April 2018 (pay) and bonus paid in the 12 months to 5 April 2018, are:
The key driver behind the pay gap is that we still have more men than women in senior roles and more women than men in our customer facing roles, which are often more junior. In addition, our bonus pay gap is partly driven by the fact that bonus calculations are not adjusted to reflect colleagues who work part-time and, while we encourage all colleagues to work flexibly, the majority of those who currently do are women.
In leadership terms, we are committed to 40% women in senior roles by 2020. As at 30 September 2018, we are at 38%.
As at 30 September 2018, our strong, diverse and engaged network of colleagues included:
- 5,762 permanent full-time equivalent (FTE), 59% of which are female, 41% male;
- three women and eight men on the Board; and
- three women and seven men in our Executive Leadership Team.
There are a number of steps we are taking to improve our gender balance that we expect to positively impact our gender pay, including:
Culture
- Introducing our ‘Return to Work’ programme, to support women returners.
- Working with colleagues to identify opportunities to enhance our flexible working proposition, particularly in more senior roles.
Reward
- In 2018, we focused on making positive changes to our pay scale to target junior colleagues.
- We continue to formally link executive reward to our inclusion targets.
- We conduct our equal pay audit in partnership with our trade union, Unite.
Development
- We continue to drive a gender-balanced intake of graduates.
- This year we introduced our Career Sponsorship programme to develop a diverse pipeline of future leaders.
- We channel development opportunities through our Inclusion networks.
We are encouraged that the changes we are making are having an impact. In our last colleague survey, 86% of colleagues believe the Group supports workplace diversity and 82% feel the Group promotes an inclusive culture where they feel they can come to work and be themselves.
Our strategy is to create a culture of inclusion for everyone that works in the long term interests of customers, colleagues and shareholders, as well as society as whole.
We recognise that there is still a lot more to be done and building on the progress of this year, we will continue to shape a more diverse and inclusive culture at the Bank.
[Note (not part of extract): From 6 April 2017 employers in Great Britain with more than 250 staff will be required by law to publish the following four types of figures annually on their own website and on a government website:
- Gender pay gap (mean and median averages)
- Gender bonus gap (mean and median averages)
- Proportion of men and women receiving bonuses
- Proportion of men and women in each quartile of the organisation’s pay structure]
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