Corporate responsibility

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 (BAME)
• 40-44% of our senior managers to be female 
• 23% BAME 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 BAME
• 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:

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 64 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 (shown below).

The wellbeing of our staff is important to us

We provide a wide range of services, benefits and initiatives to support staff with their mental, physical, social wellbeing and financial wellbeing. This includes:

• flexible working
• a network of Wellbeing Champions, Peer Supporters and Mental Health First Aiders
• seminars to help support wellbeing and good work-life balance
• practical advice and support through our employee assistance programme
• in-house counsellors
• discounted gym memberships

We encourage staff to be open about mental health

We work hard to challenge mental health stigma. For example, we provide our line-managers with training and we made a video of our staff talking about their experiences Opens in a new window to encourage others to.

We have a staff mental health network that raises awareness and provides support. For example, by taking part in the Green Ribbon Campaign and turning our Threadneedle Street building green Opens in a new window.

Our senior staff support this work too. Our former Governor Mark Carney highlighted it in The Express Opens in a new window. And our executive directors explained our approach Opens in a new window in a case study by the City Mental Health Alliance.

We also recognise mental wellbeing is an important issue for people starting their career Opens in a new window. Watch a video Opens in a new window featuring some of our most recent joiners, as well as colleagues further along in their career, discuss their own experiences of mental ill-health.

In both 2020 and 2021, The City Mental Health Alliance Opens in a new window awarded us its highest accreditation mark in their annual 'Thriving at Work' assessment.

Community

Many of our staff choose to support the charitable causes that they care about through fundraising and volunteering.

We encourage this by offering volunteering leave and matched funding.

We also support our ‘charities of the year’ which are chosen by our staff. Each year colleagues put forward charities of their choice via a nomination process. The nominated charities are shortlisted by staff and all colleagues then have the opportunity to vote for the charity they want to support. The two shortlisted charities with the highest number of votes become our charitable partners for a 12 month period. We then come together to fundraise or volunteer for these charities, and raise awareness of their work, throughout our partnership.

We are currently supporting Childline (a service provided by NSPCC) and Shelter as our chosen ‘charities of the year’.

Last year we were in partnership with Pancreatic Cancer UK and YoungMinds and our staff helped to raise over £240,000. 

And in December 2019 we announced our staff helped to raise over £180,000 for The Brain Tumour Charity Opens in a new window Opens in a new window and London’s Air Ambulance Opens in a new window Opens in a new window.

Previously in 2017/18 our staff helped us raise over £65,000 each for Child Bereavement UK Opens in a new window Opens in a new window and Samaritans Opens in a new windowns Opens in a new window.

Between 2013 and 2019 our staff chose 17 charities to support. As a result, a total of over £1.1 million was donated in that time.

Early in 2020 our former Governor Mark Carney invited representatives from these charities to celebrate our partnerships. 

We also give our time

Many of our staff volunteer and we partner with a range of organisations such as Governors for Schools Opens in a new window Opens in a new window, Tower Hamlets Education Business Partnership Opens in a new window Opens in a new window and Career Ready Opens in a new window Opens in a new window.

In 2019 staff volunteered a total of 1320 days. This includes volunteering at a local homeless charity and at local green spaces or city farms. In addition staff mentor young people from the local community, and volunteer in local schools to help build pupils’ literacy, numeracy and problem solving skills. 

Our governors get involved too

Staff at all levels get involved, including our governors. In 2019 Deputy Governor Jon Cunliffe hosted a reception for London’s Air Ambulance Charity. In 2018, our then Governor Mark Carney and Deputy Governor Sam Woods, supported our ‘Brew Monday’ event for the Samaritans. And Deputy Governor Joanna Place hosted a reception for Child Bereavement UK.

Environment

We’re committed to improving our environmental performance. We’ve developed a ‘Greener Bank’ programme that’s supported by a staff network of over 150 ‘green champions’. Our approach includes:

• using the Mayor of London’s RE:FIT framework to make our buildings more energy efficient
• adopting more environmentally-friendly business practices like holding virtual meetings to reduce travel and using less paper
• encouraging our staff to use reusable cups and food containers
• changing how we produce and recycle our banknotes
• using a 100% renewable energy supply (electricity and gas) for all our sites
• supporting biodiversity at our sites, including introducing beehives.

In 2019 we won the Plastic Free City Award and received special commendation in the Clean City Awards.

You can find out more about our carbon footprint and our work to reduce our environmental impact on pages 65-68 of our annual report.

Since 2015/16 we have:

We recycle our banknotes

We recycle the vast majority of banknotes that are no longer fit to use. Our decision to move to polymer banknotes will have lasting environmental benefits. In 2017, we obtained independent certification from the Carbon Trust of the carbon-reduction benefits of polymer banknotes notes over paper banknotes.

And reduce our carbon footprint

There is a pressing need to reduce global carbon emissions to prevent catastrophic and irreversible climate change. We are committed to playing our part in addressing the risks of climate change, including cutting the carbon emissions of its operations.

We established our carbon footprint in 2016 and set ourselves a target of reducing this by 20% by 2020. We have exceeded this target, achieving a reduction in our carbon footprint of 33%.

In 2019, we set ourselves a new target in line with the aims of the Paris Agreement and consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. This target is to cut the absolute greenhouse gas emissions from our Scope 1 emissions (use of gas, fuel and refrigerants), Scope 2 emissions (electricity) and business travel by 63% by 2030 compared to our 2016 baseline.

We base our 2030 target on the latest climate science and informed by Science Based Targets. The Carbon Trust validated our baseline footprint and target in this validation letter.

2019/20 carbon footprint was 17,056 tonnes CO₂e.