STRATEGIC REPORT
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• As part of our focus on ensuring that we keep people connected across the organisation when working remotely, we established “Just Connected for people managers”. These were regular, peer-to-peer 60 minute coaching sessions for small groups of up to six people managers at a time. The sessions provided a supportive space for people managers to share experiences, hear from others, offer ideas and receive support. • Partnered with MIND, a mental health charity, to deliver training for our line managers across the business to help them to have healthy and open conversations about mental health and wellbeing at work. We offer a range of targeted learning and development opportunities. During 2020 this has included sponsoring 52 actuarial students to achieve qualifications through the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and supporting 21 colleagues to study towards CII qualifications. We also supported 26 colleagues through apprenticeship programmes, which were funded through our apprenticeship levy. 60 colleagues took part in external mentoring programmes over the last two years, either as a mentor or as a mentee – 20 through the Actuarial Mentoring Programme (“AMP”) and 40 through the Moving Ahead cross-company mentoring programme. We have identified our pool of key talent reporting to our senior leadership teamwith tailored development. Finally, as part of our commitment to supporting the development and growth of every colleague at Just, everyone has access to unlimited on-demand learning material and resources via our corporate LinkedIn Learning licence. We integrate this content into our leadership and management development programmes and initiatives and encourage our people managers to champion and promote the use of this online content within their own teams. Since the launch of LinkedIn Learning in February 2020 we have had a 72% activation rate (817 people activated). 1,835 hours of content has been viewed and 649 people have consistently viewed content. 1,298 courses and 34,276 videos have been completed. All colleagues have also completed mandatory e-learning modules to ensure that we comply with regulatory and best practice standards in areas such as GDPR, financial crime and anti-money laundering. You can also read further details around how we support and embed a culture of good risk management across the Group on page 77. WIDENING OUR LENS ON DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION During 2020 we focused on broadening our diversity and inclusion (“D&I”) strategy, with five clear areas of focus: • Increasing diverse representation, particularly at senior levels within the organisation. We made strong progress towards our Women in Finance target that 33% of our senior leaders will be female by 2023. An example of an initiative to support this area is our participation in a number of mentoring programmes. These include the 30% Club cross-company mentoring programme and the Actuarial Mentoring Programme for qualified actuaries. These programmes enable our female employees to gain broad business experience, senior cross-company networks and support with their career progression. Over 60 people across Just have taken part in one of these programmes. We have increased gender diversity at senior levels (grade 14+, approximately top 10% of employees) by five percentage points (from 19% to 24%). We are on track to achieve the “33 by 23” target in line with our pledge as a signatory to the Women in Finance Charter that 33% of our senior leaders will be female by 2023. The percentage of women on the Board has also increased from 12% to 30% at 1 March 2021. Our gender pay gap reduced between 2019 and 2020 – mean hourly pay gap was down from 39.2% to 35.8% and median hourly pay gap reduced from 39.0% to 33.5%. This reflects an increasing proportion of women at senior levels in Just.
• Strengthening leadership focus and accountability for D&I. Just is a signatory to the Race at Work charter which is designed to foster a public commitment to improving outcomes of BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) employees in the workplace. Giles Offen, our Chief Digital Information Officer, was appointed as executive sponsor for race, focused on delivering our commitments as a signatory to the charter. Furthermore, every member of the executive team has a personal objective to support our D&I agenda so there is clear accountability and ownership at senior levels. We were also pleased to have established a network of D&I champions to drive forward our strategy in each business area. • Ensuring all groups have equal opportunity for progression and development – as an example, we gathered voluntary diversity data from colleagues which is being used anonymously to help us track and monitor progression from a diversity perspective and ultimately ensure that everyone has access to opportunities for career development and progression. • Educating on unconscious bias and helping to strengthen our inclusive culture with a series of events and communications to raise awareness of D&I more broadly and to help us to strengthen our inclusive culture. • Fostering belonging through supporting our people to be themselves – in addition to our D&I champions, we now have a number of support networks for diverse groups – these are the Just Black Network, the GenderEquality@Just network, the BAME@Just network and the Pride@ Just network. These areas of focus have been supported with a range of communication activities – from a D&I video update from our Group CEO, who is the Board sponsor for D&I, through to individuals sharing their personal stories, as part of our commitment to listen, learn and do the right thing together. LOOKING TO THE FUTURE AND BUILDING A MODERN WORKPLACE We recognise that COVID-19 has presented us with a unique opportunity to accelerate positive change in our business and build on our key behaviours of being dynamic, always adapting and collaborative to strengthen our culture. We have taken important steps in the critical areas of building a modern workplace and we have engaged with colleagues to share their views on what they “loved” and “lacked” during this period of remote working. We now have a clear picture of what colleagues would like our ways of working to be in the future, so we can create an environment in which our people can thrive. Ultimately, we want all colleagues to feel proud to work at Just and deliver our purpose of helping our customers achieve a better later life. There has been a significant decrease in voluntary turnover, with an annual rate of turnover of 8% (2019: 14%). Turnover of males was 8.4% and turnover of females was 7.1%. Age 50+ turnover was 5.6%, age 30-50 was 6.4% and under 30s 12.1%. In addition, 33% of all vacancies were filled internally, compared to 29% in 2019. In 2021 our aim is to continue to improve employee engagement and productivity, transitioning to more blended, flexible and agile ways of working. This will be underpinned by optimal organisational structures and increased operating efficiency to enhance our business sustainability and operational resilience. This will allow us to continue to achieve our key people priorities, as part of enabling the delivery of the wider strategy of the Group.
FROM A SET-UP AND CONNECTIVITY VIEWPOINT THE COMPANY
HAS BEEN EXCELLENT COLLEAGUE COMMENT FROM PULSE SURVEY
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