GOVERNANCE
FINANCIAL STATEMENTS
strategic report
COLLEAGUES • Strengthening our talent and capabilities, building well led, high performing and healthy teams, and ensuring colleagues feel proud to work at Just is a key strategic priority for us. • The Group’s diversity and inclusion strategy continues to focus on five areas: gender, ethnicity, disability and neurodiversity, social mobility and sexual orientation. Our progress against our diversity and inclusion strategy and targets is underpinned by a range of initiatives, which are outlined in our Colleagues and culture report. The Board sponsor for diversity and inclusion is the Group Chief Executive Officer. • There is an active programme to improve Board diversity in accordance with the Board diversity policy. Further information on this policy and the steps taken to improve Board diversity can be found in the Nomination and Governance Committee report. • Gender diversity across senior roles has increased by three percentage points to 30% and we remain on track to achieve our pledge as a signatory to the Women in Finance Charter that 33% of senior leaders will be female by the end of 2023. Our gender pay gap reduced from 34.4% in 2021 to 31.0% in 2022. Further details can be found in our gender pay gap report on our website, www.justgroupplc.co.uk . • As a signatory to the Race at Work Charter, we have publicly committed to increasing the percentage of senior leaders from a Black, Asian or minority ethnic background to 15% by 2024, in line with the percentage in the broader UK population. We are already at almost 18%. We have also voluntarily published our ethnicity pay gap report alongside our gender pay gap report. • We continued to focus on providing a wide range of wellbeing support and guidance for our colleagues built around mental, physical, social and financial wellbeing, and we have an Executive sponsor for wellbeing. In light of the challenging external environment, we have increased our focus on financial wellbeing over the last year and provided specific financial support for over 65% of UK based colleagues with a one-off cost of living payment. Further information on our wellbeing initiatives can be found in our Colleagues and culture report. • We have policies and provide training to help ensure that our colleagues act ethically and do the right thing in the performance of their work. Our activities to help our colleagues feel proud to work at Just and our compliance policies work together to help mitigate against colleagues acting unethically. • Our whistleblowing policy, and our whistleblowing hotline, encourage colleagues to report any wrongdoing. All such reports are fully investigated and appropriate remedial actions are taken. • In 2022, we embedded our hybrid working approach, which supports our belief that spending some time regularly in the office will help colleagues to collaborate, innovate, learn from one another and network, as well as sustaining the great culture we have built at Just. SOCIAL MATTERS • As part of our key priority of creating a fair world, we continue to support our local communities and are committed to good corporate citizenship, supporting charity and community initiatives which are relevant to our business, colleagues, customers and other stakeholders. Our colleagues also benefit from participating in our social activities. During the year, we appointed a new charity partner, Hourglass. Further details of the charity can be found in our Colleagues and culture report. • We supported colleague fundraising (half matching their funds up to £500). We also encouraged colleagues to take part in a range of volunteering activities, including cleaning, painting and gardening at residential homes. • We provide helpful tips and guidance on our website, wearejust.co.uk , on topics relating to retirement and the events that can impact finances in retirement on matters such as inheritance tax and writing a will. • For further information about our social activities and the impacts, see our Colleagues and culture report.
RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS • While the Board considers that the risk of human rights violations is low, we have implemented effective systems and controls to ensure slavery and human trafficking is not taking place anywhere in our supply chains or in any part of our business anywhere we operate. Our Modern Slavery Statement available on our Group website provides further information. We conduct due diligence on potential suppliers, impose obligations on those suppliers and monitor their compliance with those obligations. • We have a responsibility to protect our customers’ privacy when processing and using their data. We handle our customers’ sensitive personal data and are aware of the importance that this is used appropriately and is protected. All of our colleagues, including those who are not customer facing, are trained on data protection, and internal communications campaigns are used to remind staff of the importance of data privacy. Rigorous steps are taken to ensure the security of all the personal data we handle. • Some of our customers may have additional or different needs and we want to ensure that they receive a fair outcome with the appropriate support being provided when needed. Our Vulnerable customer policy defines our approach to ensuring vulnerable customers receive consistently fair treatment across our Group. Relevant training is provided to colleagues to help them identify the characteristics of vulnerability and provide appropriate support to our customers. Our policies and processes will be adapted if necessary, and where possible, to accommodate specific customer needs. ANTI-CORRUPTION AND ANTI-BRIBERY MATTERS • We have a Financial crime policy which is a zero tolerance policy. This policy helps us to prevent and detect financial crime. • Our gifts and hospitality procedure supports the financial crime policy, by providing the rules and guidance to help prevent all colleagues receiving or providing an undue influence over the making of a business decision. • We have a comprehensive mandatory compliance training programme which covers the above policy and procedure as well as other important areas of compliance which all colleagues must complete on an annual basis. Completion is monitored by the Compliance team and reported to the Group Risk and Compliance Committee, with repeated failure to complete the training being a disciplinary matter. NON-FINANCIAL RISK MANAGEMENT The Risk management report sets out our approach to risk management. Our approach enables all colleagues to take more effective business decisions through a better understanding of risk. The Annual Report and Accounts sets out our principal risks and uncertainties including non-financial risks and how we mitigate those risks. The Group Risk and Compliance Committee (“GRCC”) considers various non-financial risks. These include risks arising from people and culture, operational processes, information security, conduct and climate change. The aim is to prevent non-financial risks from materialising and having a detrimental impact on our business (including our reputation), our colleagues, our customers, our suppliers and other stakeholders. Our Compliance team manages the Group’s Policy Framework, which was refreshed in 2022. The revised framework comprises three Group policies and underlying company policies. Each policy has a policy owner and an executive sponsor, who review the policy at least annually and provide an attestation as to its adherence and any material breaches. Under the new framework, the GRCC and Board will receive updated Group policies with details of all underlying company policies established to address each subordinate risk for approval together with an opinion from Risk and Compliance on the effectiveness of the risk management framework and how this has been addressed through the Group policy framework. Material breaches of policies are recorded in our risk management system and escalated to the Group Chief Risk Officer. Any serious breaches are reported to the GRCC or Board. This ongoing management of risks highlighted by breaches enables the business to take necessary action to mitigate the risk such as through training or improving a process or policy.
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