People
As an employer, we value diversity, encourage inclusion and support staff wellbeing.
Diversity and inclusion go together
We’re working to create a workforce that reflects the diversity of the society we serve. And we think diversity and inclusion go hand-in-hand. So we’re also developing an inclusive workplace culture that allows people to be themselves at work and achieve their potential.
As part of his appointment as Governor, Andrew Bailey committed to leading an institution that is truly diverse. At the launch of the Meeting Varied People initiative in Spring 2021, Andrew highlighted that identity and cognitive diversity are equally important and that his desire to have an inclusive and open culture will mean people can speak up, ensuring we make better decisions.
We’re building a diverse workforce
Diversity targets
We’re building a diverse workforce because we believe it will allow us to build trust with the people we serve and help us make better decisions.
We set our original diversity targets in 2014 (revised in 2017), aiming to increase gender and ethnic diversity. By setting targets, we can be held accountable for our actions, and these actions will benefit all staff whatever their characteristics. Our new targets are set for end-February 2028 (with a review in 2025). We want:
- 18-20% of our senior managers to be Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic
- 40-44% of our senior managers to be female
- 23% Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic representation in roles just below to be senior management
- 43% female representation in roles just below to be senior management
- 20% of new appointments at Executive Director (ED) and Director-level to be Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic
- Gender parity on new appointments at ED and Director-level
- 10% of graduate intake to be Black (including mixed)
- 5% of our managers and above to be Black (including mixed)
Our targets support focus on where progress is most needed and reflect our commitment to greater senior female and ethnic representation, both in appointments to senior management but also in ensuring that our pipeline of talent is diverse.
We have also introduce Black specific representation targets to address disproportionately low Black representation at the Bank, particularly at senior scales (this includes all staff with Black heritage).
Our new gender and ethnicity targets will be supported by the development of clear action plans and the introduction of processes to support truly effective accountability. Importantly, our targets are in no way a limit to our ambitions which, if our actions are effective, we can exceed.
While our targets are focused on gender and ethnicity, we also considered whether we expand our targets beyond gender and ethnicity and in National Inclusion Week 2020 we published our approach for disability and sexual orientation.
End-2020 targets
We acknowledge that we have not achieved our goal for 2020 for greater female representation. As other organisations are finding, meeting ambitious targets is taking longer than we would like. Now we are looking to the future and aspire to make greater progress than we have to date. This will come through building an even more inclusive culture and increasing accountability for the day-to-day decisions we make.
As at end-December 2020, the Bank of England was at the following position against its targets:
June 2014 | End-November 2020 | End-2020 Target | |
---|---|---|---|
Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic below Senior Management | 15% | 21.4% | 20% |
Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Senior Management | 3% | 8.2% | 10% (end 2020 interim) 13% (end-2022) |
Female Below Senior Management | 43% | 46.0% | 50% |
Female Senior Management | 20% | 31.7% | 35% |
We publish all our diversity targets and our progress on pages 60 to 61 in our 2021 annual report.
We are signatories of a number of Charters – Women in Finance Charter; Business in the Community’s Race at Work Charter; The Valuable 500, which aims to get disability on to the agenda of Boards and Tech Talent Charter. In early 2020, we launched our own Out and Proud Charter, a public commitment to support LGBT+ colleagues
Our Career Returners Programme supports employees who’ve taken a career break, including many women and people from ethnic minorities.
In 2020 and 2021 our work experience programme became virtual. We recruit students through partner organisations such as Speakers for Schools, Mayor’s Fund for London and Social Mobility Foundation. None of these students have a personal connection to the Bank of England, and in 2021 some of the students came from across the country. Find out more about our work experience programme on page 71 in our annual report.
And inclusive workplaces
We want everyone who works for us to feel that they can be themselves at work. We encourage a workplace culture that makes that happen. For example, we support many staff networks:
- Age network
- Bank Employees That Served (BETS)
- Bank of England Ethnic Minorities (BEEM) network
- Carers network
- Christian union
- disAbility network
- External recruits
- Jewish network
- LGBT+ and allies network
- Mental health network
- Muslim network
- Parents network
- Women in the Bank (WIB) network
