Women In Finance Charter – THE BLUEPRINT REPORT 

As a company, Campbell & Fletcher Recruitment have always been proud to be signatories of HM Treasury Women In Finance Charter (WIFC) and in doing so have committed to take actions to support the Women in Finance Charter and promote the issues of gender diversity and equity.  In fact, our own Managing Director, Tracy Fletcher is a now a board member of the WIFC with the responsibility for working with SME and FinTech in the Finance and Banking sector to help them achieve their targets

Whilst speaking with many businesses we talk about the challenges of meeting Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity targets with passion and often mention the WIFC Blueprint Report which was published last year. We know that building a fully diverse workforce can be difficult, and requires a change in how you recruit, retain and promote, alongside often a change in your company culture, this is why the WIFC published their blueprint document. The Blueprint is based on interviews with leading CEO’s from the Financial Services and Banking Sector from over 100 signatories of the Women In Finance Charter.

Over the coming months we will go into a deep delve on some of the areas covered in the blueprint, but first up we wanted to give you some insight to what the blueprint is about, and how it can help make a positive change to your business.

“When the Blueprint was first published I was blown away by the practicality of it. I guarantee using this document will help a company improve their DE&I performance”

Tracy Fletcher – Managing Director of Campbell & Fletcher Recruitment

The Women in Finance Charter Accountable Executive Taskforce worked with Bain & Company to develop a blueprint that considers the key DE&I dimensions, using ‘best in class’ examples, to produce an actionable toolkit to guide you company change. The blueprint was designed to be adaptable to your own company’s needs, alongside a clear idea as to where your company is currently and ultimately gives a roadmap that will guide a company on its route to a transformational approach to executing a DE&I strategy.

Women in Finance Charter signatories all agree a diverse workforce is good for business – it is good for customers, for creating a positive workplace culture, but ultimately for a company’s profitability. However, building a fully diverse workforce is hard. Progress of women in senior management across financial services has remained slow – from 31% in 2018 to 32% in 2020. At the present rate it will take nearly 30 years to reach parity so it has been recognised that a fundamental shift is required.

THE FOUR PILLARS

Although the blueprint was focused on gender equity, we believe it can be leveraged by companies of any size in meeting the whole diversity, equity and inclusion targets. The blueprint was structured into four reinforcing pillars; Recruitment , Retention & Promotion, Culture & Behaviour and Embedding DE& I, and for each pillar the blueprint include reasons for change, required actions, a best in class case study and critical CEO questions.

Over coming weeks we will break down in more detail the 4 pillars which will hopefully help companies accelerate their journey towards equity, but in brief these are;

  • Review and restructure your recruitment process identifying areas of concern with unconscious biases, including the wording used.
  • Create a skills based rather than an experience based approach to recruitment.
  • Ensure you interview diverse candidates for every role.
  • Source and engage with new pools of diverse talent.
  • High-touch support programmes & long lead times to integrate new hires.
2. RETENTION AND PROMOTION
  • Develop a transparent, gender neutral performance management process.
  • Promote a comprehensive, wrap-around parental support infrastructure.
  • Look at Part-time/job share/flexible options for all jobs and vacancies.
  • Create a proactive, formal sponsorship for women and acceleration pipelines for top talent.
  • Provide full transparency on base and bonus payments of all senior management regardless of gender.

3. CULTURE AND BEHAVIOUR
  • Lead from the top by developing a culture of senior management making bold interventions to remove unacceptable behaviours.
  • Assess and align leadership team to DE&I priorities of the company.
  • Define and take symbolic acts (e.g., sharing stories of vulnerability).
  • Advocate zero tolerance towards exclusionary behaviour.
  • Undertake frequent reviews of inclusion sentiment within your teams and departments.
4. EMBEDDING DE&I
  • Hold CEO and the Executive Board financially accountable for gender targets.
  • Set a gender parity strategy including intersectionality and cascade targets throughout organisation.Ensuring this is monitored at executive level.
  • Link predictive and time series analysis to initiatives.
  • Adopt a transformation approach to manage and track initiatives.
  • Create and provide a real-time dashboard to review representation data and risk mitigation.

WHERE DOES YOUR COMPANY SIT?

The blueprint also provided guidance and data on where on how to identify where your company currently sits on its journey towards gender and DE&I parity. The results showed that those companies leading the way with regards to DE&I tended to be those with under 50 full time employees.

TAKING THAT FIRST STEP

As mentioned earlier, not every company can follow the blueprint to address the DE&I issue in the same way. The blueprint has been designed to be adaptive to your company’s needs. By identifying where you are, it helps define the journey you need to take; a roadmap to take us to the ultimate goal of DE&I parity

If you would like to discuss any aspects of the WIFC Blueprint Report and/or explore joining the WIFC please reach out to our Managing Director Tracy Fletcher on 07852 150953 or contact her here.
CAMPBELL & FLETCHER MD TRACY FLETCHER NOMINATED FOR “SPECIAL HERO... WIFC – THE BLUEPRINT REPORT – Pillar 1 RECRUITMENT