Britannia Building Society
Gaining top level involvement
As the UK's second largest mutual building society, Britannia are keen to stay ahead of the game and to ensure that they deliver best practice in all aspects of diversity. After attending an EFA Induction Workshop we gained a variety of ideas on how to start working on age. Age profiling was something we had considered, but it was only when we pulled together figures from a number of profiles that we fully understood some of the issues we were facing.
Age profiling confirmed a number of suspicions we had about the shape of our workforce. We found that we had large numbers of younger workers with a relatively high turnover for our industry of 20% and comparatively few workers aged over 45. These profiles did not compare well with that of our customers or in fact with the regional age profile in the West Midlands. We discussed this with our members' council, who represent our broader membership, and they expressed the view that our balance didn't 'look' quite right in many branches. When this evidence was put to the Board, they agreed that we needed to increase our age diversity to better serve our customers, to reflect the ageing demographic and to reduce attrition costs. The Board were also made aware of the potential impact of age laws.
As a result, we now have senior level buy in for the HR and diversity teams to take forward work on age. We are now reviewing our recruitment processes to ensure that we have removed bias against older workers. Ian McFaul, Diversity Manager
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Gaining top level involvement
As the UK's second largest mutual building society, Britannia are keen to stay ahead of the game and to ensure that they deliver best practice in all aspects of diversity. After attending an EFA Induction Workshop we gained a variety of ideas on how to start working on age. Age profiling was something we had considered, but it was only when we pulled together figures from a number of profiles that we fully understood some of the issues we were facing.
Age profiling confirmed a number of suspicions we had about the shape of our workforce. We found that we had large numbers of younger workers with a relatively high turnover for our industry of 20% and comparatively few workers aged over 45. These profiles did not compare well with that of our customers or in fact with the regional age profile in the West Midlands. We discussed this with our members' council, who represent our broader membership, and they expressed the view that our balance didn't 'look' quite right in many branches. When this evidence was put to the Board, they agreed that we needed to increase our age diversity to better serve our customers, to reflect the ageing demographic and to reduce attrition costs. The Board were also made aware of the potential impact of age laws.
As a result, we now have senior level buy in for the HR and diversity teams to take forward work on age. We are now reviewing our recruitment processes to ensure that we have removed bias against older workers. Ian McFaul, Diversity Manager
Click icon to download a printable version of the case study
download pdf
