Menu
Gender DEI remains a main core part of the Alliance support for members, as it is so critical for the success of external Women’s Markets programs. The DEI Taskforce is part of this support and follows the publication of the “How To Guide On Becoming The Employer Of Choice For Women”, which codified the practices of 15 members written in partnership with Mercer; and several webinars and working groups on different components of this practice area.
The DEI taskforce’s goal is to create the right environment and opportunity to openly discuss the challenges, share experiences, and think through key actions to be taken to further develop and grow the DEI strategy and enhance FIs’ positioning as the Employer of Choice for women. This is a win-win for financial services providers (FSPs): As they undertake efforts to enhance their gender D&I, they attract and retain top female talent. This enables fresh perspectives, creativity, innovation, and a greater capacity to tap into the female economy—all of which leads to strong business results.
Compared to sector averages, the Alliance network has higher percentages of women at the Board level (36%) with women’s representation reaching parity at the staff level (47%). Yet significant gaps remain in certain functions such as IT, and increasing the pipeline of women senior managers is still a challenge.
This Task Force supports institutions to deepen their DEI strategies with a particular focus on increasing women in senior leadership.
March 27, 2024
This session integrated the deep experience of Alliance members’ DEI experts who openly shared the key challenges and invisible levers to overcome when driving and embedding cultural change in their organizations. They also discussed the ebbs and flows of overcoming organizational resistance and actions taken to overcome obstacles faced to build an inclusive culture in which women thrive.
December 7, 2023
Programs that support female employees’ overall health and well-being will enhance morale, help retain valued female employees, and contribute to creating a positive and inclusive workplace culture. Studies show that women typically save less for retirement than men—and that they feel more stress about retiring and less confident about retiring well. And yet, only 15 percent of financial services companies look at the financial wellbeing of their employees by gender. These studies highlight an opportunity to bring added value to female employees by helping them become financially resilient and better prepared for the future.
We welcomed in this Session, Sharon Midwinter, Benefits & Wellbeing Lead at NatWest Group in the United Kingdom to share with us key steps that orgnisation can put in place to guarantee the employees wellbeing that are particularly relevant to female employees.
Sharon discussed four main pillars of wellbeing within a wider ecosystem of support and behaviours at Natwest Group: Mind (Mental Wellbeing); Body (Physical Wellbeing); Life (Social Wellbeing), and Money (Financial Wellbeing)
September 13, 2023
The session looked at how to create an inclusive employee value proposition particularly focusing on improving policies and processes to enable the right environment for women to work and grow. Daniel Sharaiha, Chief Human Resources and Customer Experience shares the policies and practices implemented at Bank al Etihad in Jordan – despite the challenging environment – to promote equality as well as those prioritized as part of an employee value proposition that is inclusive and supportive towards women.
Daniel openly shared Bank al Etihad’s procedure to implement the EVP and their strategy to Become the Employer of Choice in Jordan in addition to some results and key goals achieved.
August 3, 2023
Following the Case Study: HBL Pakistan – The Path to Inclusion from the Inside Out, we focused on this session on the best practice example from HBL Bank in Pakistan and their strategy in a challenging environment on different fronts to achieve gender pay equity. Zinia Kothari, Head of Human Resources and rewards at HBL Pakistan, shared HBL’s tools to diagnose pay equity, the tactics used to try to reach gender pay equity, the key obstacles they have encountered, and actions taken to overcome these obstacles.
June 28, 2023
This session focused on “Preparing the pipeline and getting women to the top” integrating the deep experience of Westpac with guest speaker Christine Parker, Group Executive, Human Resources, Westpac Group, Australia. Christine shared the challenges that Westpac has faced getting women into Senior Leadership, the key levers that have made the most difference and their strategy to build a strong pipeline of women aspiring to more senior roles.
July 2024: Addressing Power Dynamics
September 2024: Achieving an Inclusive Culture
December 2024: Measuring Results and Employees Socrecards
The DEI Task Force is for Financial Alliance for Women members only, for further information and to join the Task Force, please contact: peerlearning@financialallianceforwomen.org