Treating everyone we deal with fairly and equally is central to the work we do.
Fostering a culture that goes beyond equality – one that promotes equity and embraces our differences
Our customers
We’re committed to:
- making sure that our service is accessible to everyone
- drawing on our understanding of equality law, where relevant, in our responses
- sharing our knowledge and expertise with financial businesses and other stakeholders, including how inequalities can impact customers
Our people
Being diverse and inclusive means that we can better understand our customer’s different perspectives and backgrounds, which is fundamental to our job resolving financial complaints.
We’re committed to:
- attracting and developing people from a wide range of backgrounds to reflect the diversity of our customers and the population as a whole
- using policies and guidelines to support our peoples’ needs throughout their career with us
- reporting each year on diversity, inclusion and wellbeing
- sharing information about working at the Financial Ombudsman, our culture and the ways we support our people
Our community
We want to reach groups of consumers who are under-represented in their contact with us or may face barriers in bringing complaints to us – for example, because of language difficulties or disabilities.
To do this, we:
- volunteer with local communities
- meet businesses, trade associations and consumer groups across the UK
- educate our staff on people’s different needs, especially if they’re vulnerable
- learn from the charities and other partners we work with
Find out more about how we work with other organisations.
Our work in more detail
2,330
employees
55%
women
35%
ethnic minorities
Our Giving Something Back initiative is how we collectively contribute to the community, develop ourselves and support charity.
Every two years, our people will vote on a charity partner and our employee-led Giving Something Back committee will coordinate a range of activities to raise money.
We’re delighted to have chosen Sands, the UK’s leading pregnancy and baby loss charity, as our charity partner for 2024-26.
Sands’ vision is a world where fewer babies die and when a baby does die, anyone affected receives the best possible care and support for as long as it is needed.
Colleagues across the organisation took part in a range of activities including skydiving, bake sales and events to raise money for Sands. So far, we’ve raised over £15,000.
We’re proud to be supporting Sands and raise our own awareness and understanding of the issue.
These are some of the memberships and groups we partner with, to align with best practice and continually push ourselves to improve.
Women in Finance Charter
We’re signatories to the Women in Finance Charter. Over 350 organisations have signed to commit to improving gender diversity at senior levels in the financial services sector.
Disability Confident Leader
We’re proud to be a Disability Confident Leader level 3 employer, the highest accreditation. A scheme led by Department for Work and Pension that helps employers recruit and retain great people and draw from the widest possible pool of talent.
Menopause workplace pledge
We’ve signed the Menopause Workplace Pledge, through this initiative, we hope to reduce the stigma and encourage better understanding of the menopause.
Race at Work Charter
We’ve signed the Business in the Community Race at Work Charter, an initiative designed to improve equal opportunities for ethnic minorities in the workplace.
Mindful Employer
We have signed the Charter for Employers Positive about Mental Health, making us a certified Mindful Employer.
Carer Confident
We’re proud to have attained Carer Confident accomplished status, the Employers for Carers benchmarking scheme that supports employers to build a positive and inclusive workplace for staff who are or will become carers.
We have an important job to do for our customers, but we also understand the importance of support networks and social activities for our people.
We want our people to be healthy and motivated, so we help to look after physical and mental wellbeing and promote learning and development.
We’re really pleased to have a wide range of employee-led networks, that play an important role in our diversity and inclusion and help us understand what really matters to our staff.
Here are examples of some the work of our employee networks in the past year:
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Our Enable network organised an online event to mark International Day of Persons with Disabilities and celebrate Purple Light Up.
Enable spoke about the importance of diversity and inclusion in the workplace, and highlighted the role that our employee networks play in raising awareness and educating our people on key issues. -
The theme of 2024’s Black History Month was Reclaiming Narratives. To mark this, our employee-led network, Embrace, organised a calendar of events. This included an engaging and lively session with Michael Barrington-Hibbert and David Olusoga, focusing on this year’s theme.
Embrace also organised actions throughout October to help us all:
- learn about the experiences of other colleagues
- reflect on our own actions, and
- commit to ongoing action to support a more racially inclusive environment
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In June 2024, the Carers’ network organised a session with our Chief Executive and Chief Ombudsman, Abby Thomas and Carers UK, to celebrate Carers week.
We discussed the challenges working carers face and how we, as an organisation, can support our people with caring responsibilities.
Raising awareness of these challenges is a key focus for the Carers’ network – as is helping people self-identify as carers.
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To celebrate pride month 2024, our LGBT+ employee network, OutRight and colleagues marched at Pride in London and Coventry.
In London, we marched with a group of LBGT networks that includes the FCA, FSCS, Bank of England and other members in the Financial Services regulatory family.
In early 2021, we lost our friend and long-time colleague, Juliana Francis. Juliana was our Head of Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing, a hugely experienced Ombudsman, and a driving force for inclusivity across the organisation.
About the award
We launched the Juliana Francis Inclusion and Wellbeing Award in honour of Juliana, her achievements and the ongoing work she inspired.
The award recognises and celebrates the work of colleagues whose contributions help to embed inclusion and wellbeing in the organisation.
The winner receives funding towards an activity or course to support their development or wellbeing. We also showcase their work in this area and celebrate some of the highly commended submissions.
Our inclusion strategy
Our diversity, inclusion and wellbeing strategy – Together we Thrive – brings together a set of commitments to foster a culture that goes beyond equality – one that promotes equity and embraces our differences.
Our strategy is defined by four main pillars. These set out our key focus and what we plan to do to help us meet our pay gap target and improve representation in our workforce.
We’re aiming to:
- reach 50% female representation in senior roles by 2026, and
- reduce our gender pay gap to 2% and our ethnicity pay gap below 10% by 2027.
Our four main pillars
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We want everyone who works with us to feel a sense of belonging.
So we’re taking a more active role in inclusion – making a conscious effort to understand and address barriers, such as:
- building equity through innovation
- taking a localised approach to action planning and encourage everyone to take meaningful action
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We want to achieve diversity of thought and innovation by retaining our people and attracting from the widest possible pool of talent.
We’re planning to:
- increase our focus on socio-economic diversity, including signing the social mobility pledge
- introduce reciprocal mentoring opportunities and,
- increasing our disability disclosure so we can identify and address any gaps in pay or progression
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Fairness is not only about achieving fair outcomes for our customers but embracing equitable ways of working.
So, we will review our current policies and processes to ensure fairness is embedded into our everyday work, for example, by:
- maintaining our commitment to the Race at Work Charter, being ‘Disability Confident’ and supporting Women in Finance
- working with suppliers who share similar diversity, inclusion and wellbeing values
- addressing key contributors to our pay gaps in recruitment, retention and representation with a bespoke action plan
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Covid-19 showed us the value of being prepared for when something happens. So, we’ve shifted our approach from reactive to proactive support.
We’re providing more opportunities for early intervention and good wellbeing practices, such as:
- financial education and coaching
- manager mental health training, and
- health and wellbeing benefits.
And of course, we support our people to develop professionally throughout their career journey with us.
Since we launched our strategy, we have:
- introduced a new Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing Board focused on localising actions
- reviewed the recruitment process to remove unfair barriers, and introduce alternative recruitment methods like sharing interview questions, introducing internal pathways, and trialling situational judgement assessments.
- had a drive to increase our disability disclosure to allow us to effectively report on disability gaps, increasing from 29% to 54% disclosure
- piloted a new equity sequencing approach to drive equity through innovation when we’re reviewing processes and policies
- introduced a parent buddying system to support those returning from family leave, and employee and manager toolkits to better support the family leave journey for our people
- introduced regular wellbeing focus initiatives, including lived experience sharing and an employee benefits review
- conducted various community outreach activities, including a career insight day for young people with experience of living in care and work experience with college students
We are still early on our journey with many of these new initiatives. But we will be reviewing them for impact and regularly updating our action plan in line with feedback we receive.
