Women in Finance Charter

The Women in Finance Charter is a pledge for gender equality across financial services from HM Treasury. It is a commitment to work together, across our industry and with Government, to build a more balanced and fairer financial services industry.

Organisations who have signed the Charter have made a clear commitment to improve diversity, ensure that women are able to progress into senior roles, set targets to support this work and regularly report on their progress. 
 

Our ambition (target)

At Yorkshire Building Society, as a signatory we’re committed to achieving gender balance in our senior management team. We signed up to the Charter in 2018 and set ourselves the target of achieving gender balance across all senior management colleagues, with a minimum of 40% of either gender, by June 2023.

We’re proud to say that as of September 2023 we’ve met our target with 49% female representation in senior management, but we know there’s still more to do to ensure long-lasting change and we’ll be reviewing our ongoing targets. 

Our Progress on Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) at YBS

Our refreshed DE&I strategy sets out our vision to be a leading organisation that embraces diversity, champions equity and creates an inclusive environment where all individuals feel valued, empowered and supported, regardless of their background or identity.

Over the next four years, we’ll build on the great foundations we’ve put in place, improving representation at all levels, especially in our senior roles. Through inclusive processes we hope to build a sense of belonging for all, recruiting and retaining diverse talent, and creating opportunities for all colleagues to progress without barriers.

The delivery and execution of our strategy is overseen by the DE&I Forum, our Executive sponsor and the ESG Committee. 

We have focused on the following areas over the course of 2023:

• In 2022, we signed the Menopause Workplace Pledge to underline our commitment to supporting our colleagues during the menopause. As part of this commitment the Women’s Network undertook research with our colleagues to better understand their experiences, and in 2023 we launched the Menopause Mini Guide and Menopause Cafes. As part of our ongoing commitment we’re introducing Menopause Champions in 2024.
• With the support of our Colleague Networks, we reviewed all of our people policies to make sure they’re in line with best practice and representative of the colleague experience we want to have at YBS. As a result of this review, we made some changes to our policies in 2023, including the introduction of neo-natal leave, improvements to IVF leave, and parental bereavement leave.
• The Women’s Network supported with the roll out of our refreshed Domestic Abuse Policy and the creation of Domestic Abuse First Aiders, who provide support to our colleagues at a time of need or crisis. Our People Leaders now have access to a range of tools and webinars, helping them to support our colleagues who may be facing Domestic Abuse.
• Over the past 12 months we have continued our focus on hiring women into our senior roles, working with our recruitment partners to source diverse talent and achieve balanced shortlists. We filled 52% of Senior Manager roles and 50% of Director roles with women. With 49% of senior roles now filled by women, we’ll continue our work to maintain this in 2024 but will expand our focus to consider other areas of underrepresentation in these roles, for example ethnic minorities and those from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
• We maintain our focus on Board Diversity and in March 2023 Susan Allen joined YBS as our first woman Chief Executive Officer and in December 2023 Annemarie Durbin joined as Chair Designate, she’ll be taking over from John Heaps as Chair of the Board when he retires in 2024. We now have 58% of Board roles filled by women.

By continuing to back this Charter, we're making a public commitment to help improve diversity in financial services.

Our continued focus

In the next year we will continue to increase our efforts to embed an inclusive culture and ensure that our senior leadership becomes more diverse as a result. In 2024 we plan to embed ‘inclusive leadership’ into all of our leadership training programmes, offering people leaders tools and support to help our colleagues overcome barriers to inclusion. We’ll roll out mutual mentoring across the organisation, increasing allyship and supporting with the removal of barriers to progression and development.  

However, our focus is on much more than targets and we’re not limiting our attention to just gender diversity. We’re doing a lot of work to build a more diverse business at all levels, ensuring that people supporting our customers or making decisions about the future of our Society bring a wide range of experience and understanding to their roles.

We think that this work will help us develop fantastic future leaders within our organisation, and make Yorkshire Building Society an even more welcoming, diverse and exciting place to work. With a diverse leadership guiding our people and society, we are confident we’ll deliver the best possible outcomes for our members and customers.

For more information about the Women in Finance Charter visit:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/women-in-finance-charter