Purpose Led
Becketts believe in diversity and inclusion across all our workforce and at all levels of our firm.
We are committed to attracting, developing and retaining a wide range of talented people irrespective of their gender, race, age, sexual orientation, disability, religion, beliefs or any other characteristic.
Women in Finance
We are proud to have become one of the signatories of HM Treasury’s Women in Finance Charter which aims to support gender diversity at all levels across financial firms. Around 433 financial firms have signed up to the Charter as of February 2024.
As part of our commitment to the Women in Finance Charter we pledge to promote gender diversity by:
- having one member of our senior executive team who is responsible and accountable for gender diversity and inclusion;
- setting internal targets for gender diversity in our senior management;
- publishing progress annually against these targets in reports on our website; and
- having an intention to ensure the pay of the senior executive team is linked to delivery against these internal targets on gender diversity
Samantha Owen is the senior team member who is responsible and accountable for gender diversity and inclusion at Becketts.
Gender Diversity At Becketts
Our firm enjoys exceptionally high levels of gender diversity across all levels and our aim is to maintain gender balance across all parts of the business.
We first published our gender diversity information and our parity target at the end of Q3 2017 and, since then, the split has changed as we have recruited new staff to help with our growth, and we made some changes to our structure.
As at 31/08/24, we have 48% female representation in senior management. Last year, we had 50% female representation and this has changed due to promotions: two of the three recent promotions were male.
Gender diversity, and all diversity strands, are as important as when we first signed up to the Women In Finance Charter in 2017. We are always looking at our recruitment and training & development policies. For example, through our Beckett Academy app, personal objectives logged must link to the corporate objectives, which include our WIF parity ongoing target as part of our “leaders in ESG” objective.
Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives
Our mission is to make diversity and inclusion a priority in everything we do, and here are some of the initiatives that Becketts is undertaking to promote it in our team:
- We include items on diversity in our staff newsletters
- We are capturing data at staff appraisals on staff education levels in order to show a spread of social background by position.
- Ensure our Opportunity Reports will highlight additional knowledge being added to the team through courses
Gender Pay Gap
What is the gender pay gap?
The gender pay gap is the difference between the average (mean or median) earnings of men and women across a workforce. The gender pay gap is not to be confused with equal pay, but instead looks at all roles at all levels of an organisation, rather than comparing pay received by men and women for the same role. The financial services sector has typically shown one of the largest gender pay gaps in Britain, often attributed to a lack of women in senior jobs.
From 2017, if you are an employer who has a workforce of 250 or more on your ‘snapshot date’ (the date by which you must comply with government regulations for gender pay gap reporting), you must comply with government regulations on gender pay gap reporting.
The financial services sector has typically shown one of the largest gender pay gaps in Britain, often attributed to a lack of women in senior jobs.
According to a recent Reuters article that collated pay gap data from 21 major financial institutions, there is a narrowing in their average mean gender pay gap of two percentage points from a year ago to 28.8% – but it still remains far higher than the mean average for all industries in Britian which was 10.7%.
We are smaller so why have we decided to calculate ours?
We voluntarily calculate and report ours as we are not required by regulation to report due to size.
What is our gender pay gap?
We last calculated our mean Gender Pay Gap data in December 2023 which was 25%, the previous calculation was done in November 2021 at 33% so in 2 years we have reduced it by 7%.
What happens next?
There is still a way to go and we remain committed to reducing it further. We will accomplish this by:
- attracting more women into the world of financial services by attending careers fairs and working with local schools;
- capturing the broadest range of candidates for new roles;
- focused talent programmes in our business, aiming to achieve more women in senior roles and higher earning positions.
Supporting Employees with the Menopause
The wellbeing of our employees is a core value at Becketts.
The menopause can have a big impact on a person’s working life and so, at Becketts, we have a network support group that employees can talk to if they are struggling and need support.
Our aim is to provide an inclusive and supportive environment, and with the network support group and regular articles and guidance, we are able to guide employees through this period of change – and signpost them to help if required.
We offer an Employee Assistance programme under our BUPA Cash Plan and we have the 24/7 GP, mental health & healthy diet and fitness service programmes available.
A guide has been produced for line managers so they are able to support a member of their team.
