By Sophie Hulm, CEO, Progress Together
I can smell Spring in the air. The days are getting longer, and optimism seems to be growing.
This quarter, my wonderful team have launched our free online toolkit, convened our members at our workshop kindly hosted by Nomura, and responded to the regulators’ diversity and inclusion consultation.
We have also been working with our many Supporters on events and articles to attract new members into our network. I’m pleased to say that it’s working. Our members now represent a third of the UK financial services workforce.
Our Chair, former Lord Mayor Vincent Keaveny, and I held our annual meetings with our member CEOs and ExCo sponsors. There is a ground swell of action. More members are asking how to get ahead of any potential regulatory requirement.
I’m thrilled that Nationwide’s CEO Debbie Crosbie is speaking at our Progress Pioneers Summit on May 14th. I’m also delighted that City A.M. Editor Andy Silvester is moderating the event, with more speakers to be announced. Thank you to our members for submitting case studies for our impact report, which we’ll launch at the Progress Pioneers Summit.
Thank you to those who have introduced your communications and public affairs contacts to us. We are keen to work collaboratively as we build our brand as thought leaders. I’ve had a busy month, attending events with the Prime Minister, Shadow Chancellor, and Shadow City Minister. I was pleased to see socio-economic diversity feature in Labour’s Financing Growth review.
Following the launch of the Treasury Select Committee’s ‘Sexism in the City’ report, I would like to share the impact that target setting and reporting can have. The Committee states that the regulators should not ask firms to report data and set targets as it would be treated by many as a ‘box-ticking exercise’. I have greater faith in employers. Many recognise the business case relating to productivity, innovation and access to skills. This is articulated here by Andy Haldane, co-chair of a City of London Corporation-led taskforce on socio-economic diversity, commissioned by HM Treasury and the Department for Business. Many of our most successful businesses see diversity in their workforce as a powerful driver of their success.
I’m often asked what my vision is. It’s simple. Parity. Across our membership, I would like to see senior leadership mirroring the socio-economic diversity within the wider workforce. Last year nearly 150k employees reported their socio-economic backgrounds. Their data provides us with a baseline to track progress. Thank you to our members for working hard with our data partner the Bridge Group to submit data this year.
