Cranfield Female FTSE Board Report 2016

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The Female FTSE Board Report 2016

Case Studies

L V =

Open, honest and fair. That’s how we treat our people. We’ve worked hard – and continue to do so – to create a positive, inclusive atmosphere, based on respect for people’s differences. We are committed to equality of opportunity and treatment for all those who work for us. As a customer-centric business we recognise that our people need to understand and reflect the diversity of our customers so that we are better positioned to serve them. We know that when an employee brings their best and true self to work, they bring a diversity of thinking to LV=. Over the last 18 months, led by our Executive Committee, we’ve built a governance structure and strategy to focus our work. As every aspect of diversity matters to us, we’ve engaged our people to inform our approach and have made real progress – focusing on the themes of gender, sexual orientation and disability. The D&I Programme aims to be Business led, HR enabled with an Executive Sponsor for each of the work streams, plus a D&I Steering Committee made up of senior leaders from across LV= and HR. To underpin the programme the Executive Committee agreed the introduction of key success measures specifically in relation to gender in order to close the Gender Gap. In 2012, at the outset, there was no female representation on the Executive Team – this has increased to 33%. A suite of focused change has led to this improving trend, including wider adoption of flexible working and setting firmer expectations with search partners re diverse candidates. Integrated with a new leadership behaviour framework emphasising unconscious bias awareness, this has enabled healthy challenge to talent management/ succession planning approaches. Gender balance is vital to our success; we want female customers and members to relate to the LV= brand, and to be known as an employer-of-choice for female talent. Hence our focus on building gender intelligence into our service propositions and through our approach to talent development. In 2016 we introduced a target to increase the share of women in senior positions by 1% or greater over the year. This target was endorsed by our Board. The business is being supported in achieving this target by a toolkit containing information on positive action, the benefits of achieving a balanced slate and further work on behaviours to embed unconscious bias awareness. We also recommend measures that can be actioned locally. For instance, in recruitment, talent and succession planning processes, we recommend the adoption of a ‘plus one’ approach that consists of encouraging decision-makers to add a female candidate to shortlists that are not sufficiently diverse.