Creating a Highly Diverse and Inclusive Culture Will Be a Key Priority For Us This Year: Head HR, NatWest Group India

How focused you were on Diversity and Inclusion initiatives during the latest disruption times in the last 9 months?

During the pandemic, our focus was to ensure that the most vulnerable colleagues felt supported and included. We also fast-tracked a lot of interventions to support our colleagues with disability during virtual working. We ensured that no development offering is de-prioritized given the situation. Thus, the way we delivered might have changed but what we planned to deliver remained intact.

Share your experience of working with differently-abled professionals? Share the statistics as to how many employees are a part of the D&I plan?

Disability inclusion is not easy to embed and follow through. However, I am proud to say that at NatWest Group we have made real progress towards including persons with disability. Disability inclusion forms a core part of our inclusion agenda and our focus is much beyond just hiring and accessibility. Our approach is focused on developing and upskilling our colleagues with disability to ensure they have successful careers and disability does not come in way of their professional growth. With a purpose to champion potential, we have worked in partnership with CII India Business Disability Network to develop “Sambhav” - a portal which serves as a networking platform for People with Disability (PWD) and their carers. Sambhav will bring together experts, volunteers, carers, and PWD, enabling information exchange and learning through experience.

As we have witnessed major transformations in various areas during pandemic times; According to you, how diversity and inclusion as a whole would transform in the post-pandemic era?

The current virtual working environment has provided a level playing field for everyone, encouraging more women, people with caring responsibilities and other diverse populations, to focus on their careers while working from home. This has proven to be a boon in many ways. Post-pandemic, many organizations are expected to adopt a hybrid working model with flexibility to work from home. The new way of working definitely presents an opportunity to improve “diversity” by hiring people who prefer to work from home.

Reports are suggesting a hike in the number of women professionals across industries. What are Men and Women employment ratio and how many transgenders are currently enrolled with you? What are your plans to scale this up?

Our gender ratio like most of the organizations is quite balanced at an entry level i.e 50:50. However as we move upwards in the hierarchy, it is tilted more towards men. We have launched various development offerings to support female talent at mid and senior level to create a better balance. We have recently launched a Female sponsorship program to ensure a strong pipeline of female colleagues ready to take on leadership positions. In 2015 we set ourselves a target to have >30% women in our most senior roles (CEO-3+) by the end of 2020, and to reach full gender balance and distribution at every level in the bank by 2030.

As in Q3 2020:

· 37% of our most senior roles are held by women – an increase of 8% since targets were introduced

· Top 4000 roles global have 43% women, representing a 1% increase over the same timeframe

· NWG Board has 36% female representation

· NWG Executive Management Team has 33% (6/18) female representation

· We’re a founding signatory to HMT’s Women in Finance Charter, a Times Top 50 Employer for Women (since 2005); Rated in the top organisations in Bloomberg’s Global Gender Equality Index (fourth year); and have an investor for our gender performance

· At NatWest Group, having women on the leadership table in the role of our Group CEO, CHRO, CMO, CFO, CTO, ensures we have the right tone from the top and a culture of inclusion running deep in the veins of the company.

We also run a targeted hiring program for transgender people and for the last two years have been hiring from the community through this program.

What are your special budget allocation and plans for D&I this year?

Our budget approach is consistent with what we follow for any people initiatives across the bank. While we will continue to focus on key segments like Gender, LGBTQ+, Disability, Ethnicity and Multi-generations, we will also be looking at it from an intersectional point of view. Additionally, inclusion with the new ways of working will be a key priority for us this year. More than the financial budgets, our focus is on ensuring we have an inclusive workplace where everyone can be what they are and do their best. At our best, we are an open, inclusive, progressive organisation, but until that is everyone’s experience, every time, we have more to do.

D&I Hiring is part of our overall Budget. We have a special focus on ensuring we hire diverse talent and explore all possible resource pools both internally and externally. Through our D&I programs, we ensure people have the right support (physical and social infrastructure), right development, and opportunities to help candidates have a successful career at NatWest Group.

As a leader, how has the leadership changed? What change have you experienced as a leader in this era?

Leadership is becoming a lot more empathetic and resilient, which is the need of the hour. Leaders who were traditionally opposed to work from home, have realized that it could work successfully as it did during the pandemic when processes were virtually managed. Several leaders have been going through the same challenges as their teams of managing work and home commitments during these times. Leaders have understood that they need to trust their teams, who are not physically present in office, to do the right thing. This is also a time when leaders have been genuinely be committed to the wellbeing of their employees, and even their families, and ensured they are well supported through the pandemic.

What initiatives have you taken to build a diverse and inclusive workforce culture?

NatWest Group India has a strong commitment to create a more inclusive workplace and help deliver on our purpose of championing potential by relentlessly breaking down barriers to make sure everyone can bring the best of themselves to work every day through creating a culture where our people feel comfortable being their true selves, knowing we will support them. We have made good progress in the last five years towards becoming a sustainably inclusive workplace, by delivering against our five inclusion goals: gender-balanced, disability smart, ethnically diverse, LGBT+ innovative and striving to create an inclusive workplace. Committed at Board level, we operate a formal Boardroom Inclusion Policy with several measurable objectives, targets and ambitions, reflecting the Board’s ongoing commitment to inclusion and having a more ethnically diverse and gender-balanced workforc