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The Female FTSE Board Report 2016
R O Y A L B A N K O F
S C O T L A N D
During 2013 RBS set an aspiration to have 30% senior women in our top c.5000 roles
by 2020. We chose 30% because, from research, we know it marks the tipping point
where female contributions influence teams enough to change behaviour and culture in an
organization. Over the last 18 months, our work on pulling through more women to senior
roles has seen the proportion of women in this pipeline population increase from 32% to
41%.
At the end of 2014 we decided to be more ambitious, setting a formal target for our CEO and
Ex-Co of at least 30% women in our top three leadership layers of the organization (c.800
roles) by 2020. This target is by business area and not an aggregate. This ensures each of
our Executive Committee members is accountable for the gender balance within their own
business. It is one of only three key people measures, alongside employee engagement
and leadership, on our Ex-Co scorecard.
We worked with each business to define interim targets and set a plan in place. This plan
contains key core elements that are applied in all areas of our business and are augmented
locally by specific interventions. For example, in areas with less pipeline there is a heavier
reliance on more development interventions. For the first time – as part of our positive
action approach – we have introduced development options for women at every career
stage, enabling us to offer development support to four times as many women as ever
before (targeted development, networking, sponsorship and mentoring).
We realised, however, that development in itself would not be enough to reach our targets
and that a more ‘compound’ approach across all talent processes was required. Recruitment
is an area where we really needed to shift the dial. We introduced steps bank-wide to
require women to be on shortlists for all Senior Manager vacancies, and also for there
to be a female interviewer involved in every recruitment process. We made clear to our
suppliers that all-male shortlists will not be accepted and held up-skilling sessions for all our
recruitment teams to make sure they knew the requirements, the reasons behind them and
the business case for making the change.
There have been challenges; there are some areas that are so traditionally male, that it is
extremely difficult to find a suitable female candidate. In these areas, we experienced some
behaviour that almost accepted that a female wouldn’t be available before we started. We
had to challenge that, and took the approach that we would require an Ex-Co member to
review the steps taken to try to find a female, and, if possible to see the best candidate
available, even if at a lower level. This process enabled us to increase our knowledge
and understanding of female candidates in the market. Finding female interviewers also
presented challenges in some areas but we have been resolute in our approach.
We hold our business leaders to account with quarterly dashboards to review their progress.
Some have asked to go further, such as in our Technology and Change areas, which now see
monthly lists of all SeniorManager vacancieswith an indicationof femalepipeline for eachone.
By the end of 2015, we had significantly increased our pipeline of women and all areas
are on track to achieve their target of at least 30% women in their top three leadership
layers. We are now sitting at 32% on aggregate in this population (having shifted from 29%
over the last year). We have also publicly committed to achieving a fully gender-balanced
workforce (50/50) by 2030.
5.4 CASE STUDIES
Case Studies