2022 Shortlist: Best D&I Innovation Award

We are delighted to share more details of each of the shortlisted nominees, with a reminder of the category overview.

BARCLAYS

The Barclays Menopause Strategy positions the company among top organisations in terms of providing support for women, while enabling colleagues to provide the necessary support through the development of a supportive culture. In addition, the approach allowed employees to have tools and resources in place for all, making Barclays an employer of choice and helping the company attract diverse talent.

To ensure best practice, Barclays has also partnered with external providers to go above and beyond, with some resources also accessible to partners and spouses of Barclays staff.

This strategy fits with the company’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) strategy and objectives .and also aligns with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals of 3 – Good Health and Wellbeing and 5 – Gender Equality. It also supports Barclays’ commitments to achieve increased numbers of female director and managing directors and higher representation at senior levels as per the Hampton Alexander targets.

CAPCO

Capco’s commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, respect, and integrity is the foundation on which our business and our professional lives are built. The company believes that embracing and sharing diverse perspectives is the glue that binds its teams together and powers the innovation and creativity that characterise the world-class solutions delivered to its clients. The ‘Be Yourself at Work (#BYAW)’ culture serves to emphasise individual perspectives and contributions, which the company sees as key to its past and future successes.

One key example of that BYAW commitment is its internal women’s network, Women@Capco, which supports the professional advancement of women within the organisation and across the wider financial services sector. The network provides women with opportunities to grow their own networks, learn from one another and give back to the community. The team behind the community also collaborates closely with other Capco affinity groups to help ensure that a voice is given to underrepresented groups and helps the management of mentoring programmes and the identification of opportunities to shine a spotlight on female talent both internally and externally.

COUTTS & CO

Established by the Coutts Gender Network, the Female Financial Capability Initiative was designed to empower colleagues and clients to improve their financial wellbeing and give them the confidence to make better, more conscious financial decisions. This has involved the transfer of knowledge and practical tips through a series of webinars, virtual events and financial health checks, which have reached over 2,000 people.

The initiative continues to have a tangible positive impact on colleagues and clients of the organisation and, inevitably, is leading to improved financial capability, security and independence, particularly for females.

Ultimately, this targeted approach for female and female-identifying colleagues and clients will also contribute to the bridging of the various personal finance gaps that are known to exist in wider society, including the investment, savings and pensions gaps; this is certainly worthy of celebration.

KPMG IN PARTNERSHIP WITH UNIDA (RAISEYOU)

KPMG UK’s RaiseYou programme was launched in 2018 with the aim of fundamentally advancing the firm in its journey to achieving gender parity, with a focus on the firm’s financial services consulting practice of over 1,600 colleagues and partners.

The programme focuses on a series of practical interventions, delivered in conjunction with Unida, a specialist D&I consulting firm. This includes bespoke mentoring and career support, a calendar of developmental-focused events and an extensive programme of work to address specific career blockers identified by female colleagues.

Through these measures, RaiseYou has supported over 180 colleagues to achieve their career ambitions, with 100% of shortlisted candidates in the 2021 cohort being promoted. The approach has been recognised by the firm’s leadership as a key driver in creating an inclusive culture at KPMG where diverse talent can thrive. The team sees the RaiseYou programme as instrumental in shifting the dial on gender equality at KPMG.

Now in its fourth year, RaiseYou continues to shape the career journeys of the firm’s talented female and ethnic minority colleagues, with future ambitions to expand the programme across the whole of KMPG and encompass over 16,000 colleagues, as well as the global financial services community.

KPMG – SHECAN

SheCan is an initiative set up in 2020 to promote gender diversity across KMPG’s Strategy Group and customer teams at KPMG, encompassing circa 400 colleagues. It was developed given financial services deals have historically lacked in diversity among dealmakers, both at a market level and within the advisory teams, highlighting the need to support and enable women through their careers in this industry.

The company’s vision is to:

1. Support and empower women to achieve success on their own terms

2. Increase awareness of the challenges faced by women and the role which we all play in addressing those issues

3. Identify and drive initiatives, including those run with the wider KPMG group, to drive change and increase diversity

4. Foster new relationships across the teams, and again with the wider KPMG, to build support networks

SheCan was created as a network to support women within the team, increase leadership diversity and limit attrition of valued colleagues. As the programme evolve, KPMG is increasingly focused on shining a light on diverse leaders across the firm, highlighting potential role models and helping colleagues to understand their stories and backgrounds. Key outcomes of SheCan over the last 18 months include regular, well-attended events, a monthly newsletter and surveys to understand team empowerment.

MACQUARIE

Macquarie’s gender equity-focused employee network group, Balance, has a mission to “ensure that women at Macquarie are engaged, empowered and encouraged to succeed”. By innovating a highly strategic, research-led approach to delivering this mission, Macquarie decided to make a significant difference to the mindset and profiles of women at Macquarie. The company believes its approach is truly best-in-class.

Two key examples of this in practice, we identified that:

1. Women thrive more when networking in small groups. As such, the team developed a ‘networking hubs’ initiative – organising employees into small diverse groups that meet monthly with the objective of developing careers. The programme has been immensely successful, with over 100% increase in take up year on year.

2. To enable a mindset for success, women need to connect with or breakdown mental barriers between themselves and those they aspire to be. Here, the team established that leaders communicating their vulnerabilities would provide that connection and, as a result, launched two phenomenally impactful internal social media campaigns on (being) ‘Brave & Afraid’ and on ‘Imposter Syndrome’. Macquarie’s EMEA CEO and senior leaders spoke openly on their personal experiences, sparking significant conversations amongst employees. These topics were chosen based on employee feedback on personal mindset challenges and have continued to provide the themes for the network’s activities.

PA CONSULTING

PA Consulting has a range of initiatives in place to support the development and engagement of women at all levels of the organisation. Among these, the strengths-based philosophy, which has been recently developed, supports each person in the organisation to be at their individual best, embracing and maximising their individual strengths in support of creating ingenious solutions for the firm’s clients. This enables our women to work closely with financial services clients to reach their potential and thrive within PA.

The innovative 360 Voice Circles programme is part of this suite of offering to support women in PA so they can achieve their career aspirations. This inclusive programme has been designed by women, for women, and directly contributes to the talent strategy in supporting the progression of women, including the the most senior levels of the organisation. The grass-roots initiative also gives women throughout the organisation greater visibility among senior female role models. Covering all geographies and specialisms, the programme encourages collaboration across teams and industry sectors, and empowers women to support one another in their career progression.