Colleagues
Bank of Ireland supports the adoption of modern ways of working; enabling colleagues to work remotely, increasing flexibility of hours and all colleagues have been encouraged to sign a Team Wellbeing Pledge. Our new Colleague Wellbeing App is a vital resource for colleagues during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Our Career Development Programme supports colleagues to take ownership of their professional wellbeing, through awareness, support and recognition. Our Career Portal provides colleagues with a wide range of resources to help them plan their career journey and access courses, articles and tutorials. In 2019, over 25,000 training hours were completed by employees in the UK.
New initiatives include our ‘You as a Manager’ programme for people managers and a pilot Female Leadership Programme, ‘Rise’.
Our Graduate Programme continues to attract high quality candidates from a variety of backgrounds.
We are committed to creating an inclusive and diverse place to work where colleagues can be themselves and perform to their full potential. We want to attract, promote and retain diverse talent at all levels, to create a more innovative and high-performing business that can enable customers, colleagues and communities to thrive.
Our Inclusion and Diversity strategy, ‘Many Voices: One Bank’, focuses on valuing and celebrating diversity within the workforce, reflecting the communities in which we operate, an inclusive culture, which values diverse talents and recognises the unique needs of colleagues, and an organisation that meets the needs of all customers. Many colleagues support our International Women’s Day events.
We signed the Women in Finance Charter in March 2018, demonstrating our commitment to inclusion and diversity and pledging to increase gender balance in our Management and Leadership populations.
We are making progress towards achieving our Women in Finance target in December 2024:
- Increase female representation in Management and Leadership roles to 43%
Having achieved 40% against our initial target of 38% by December 2021, our new target is 43% by December 2024. At the end of June 2023, women in our Management and Leadership roles has reached 42%. We are cognisant that many of the actions we are taking will take time to have an effect e.g. continued improvements to recruitment practices; impact following participation on female development programmes; providing more family friendly policies; and commitment to hybrid working. We hope to see further progress as we move forward.
- 50% of appointments to Management and Leadership positions to be female
Between January and June 2023, we have made 6 appointments to Management and Leadership permanent positions. External hires have reached the 100% target (2 of 2 hires), compared to 40% (4 of 10 hires) of internal promotions to Management and Leadership positions filled by women. Management and Leadership roles are reviewed on a monthly basis by the Executive Committee to ensure balanced interview pools and panels are in place for every role, and we always hire the best candidate for the role.
Our UK Gender Pay Gap report is published here.
The Bank of Ireland group-wide employee engagement survey ‘Openview’ is held annually. The current results show increased levels of employee engagement, along with heightened awareness, understanding and demonstration of the Group’s values. We also participate in the Banking Standard Board Survey annually, which had 29 participating UK banks and building societies in 2019.
Our Begin Together Fund for Colleagues aims to support colleague-nominated causes that positively impact the lives of vulnerable groups where we live and work. The Fund enables all colleagues in the UK to deliver practical, hands-on support to support local financial, physical and mental wellbeing initiatives suggested by them. It also supports and encourages volunteering activities.