OUR AMBITION
We are firmly committed to achieving gender equality across our organisation globally, with a greater ambition to become the best place to work for women in the industry. We have implemented policies, programmes, and practices to support this ambition. Moving forward, we pledge to continue working with our colleagues and external partners around the world to address key barriers and challenges facing women in the workplace and beyond.
OUR PROGRESS
- As part of our wider D&I strategy, we continue to work to eliminate gender and ethnicity-driven biases from recruitment and talent management. In FY21/22, 64% of new hires made across Burberry were women, while 66% of internal promotions were women as well.
- We aim for our development programme cohorts to be representative of the diversity of our workforce. Our Executive Development Programme (EDP) consisted of 60% women and our Manager Development Programme (MDP) consisted of 68% women.
- Burberry maintained a leading position in the FTSE 100 for women in leadership for a fifth consecutive year, being named the top performer in the 2023 FTSE Women Leaders Review and was included in the Bloomberg 2023 Gender-Equality Index for the third consecutive year. The index is a global benchmark for measuring companies’ progress across five pillars: leadership and talent pipeline, equal pay and gender pay parity, inclusive culture, anti-sexual harassment policies and external brand.
- In 2021, we adopted the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles. Spanning corporate leadership, wellbeing, training, community efforts and transparency of disclosure, the framework builds on the actions we are taking as part of our overall global D&I strategy.
- We are designing more inclusive policies to help achieve our ambitions:
In 2021, we introduced a new policy and resources for those affected by domestic abuse. Our policy sets out our commitment to supporting colleagues who experience domestic abuse, from paid leave through to direct support from the company. Alongside this, we provided manager training with an accompanying support guide and created a new section on our internal site with links to external organisations providing help and expertise in each of our markets. Viewing this new section of the site will not appear in any individual’s browsing history, and there is a safe button which will quickly close the site if necessary.
We have also launched our first Global Bereavement Policy in 2021 to support anyone impacted by bereavement, including pregnancy loss, again with an accompanying support site and managers’ guide. All colleagues who suffer a bereavement are entitled to paid leave and the support outlined in the policy, regardless of how long they have been with the organisation.
In April 2020, we launched an industry-leading Global Parental Leave Policy, designed to help all new parents feel supported as they take care of their families and when they return to work. The policy offers all colleagues who become parents 18 weeks of parental leave at full pay and the opportunity to work 80% of their normal hours at full pay for a further four weeks on their return. More than 100 new parents across Burberry have benefitted from the policy.
NEW COMMITMENTS
- Launching a summit featuring prominent women leaders and active allies. Taking place later in 2022, it will bring together colleagues across Burberry and beneficiaries of our programmes to discuss the most immediate challenges to achieving gender equality and inspire everyone to be changemakers.
- From March 2022, we have launched specialist advice, counselling and other resources for all colleagues experiencing menopause and their partners and family members.
- We have created a framework of mentoring resources to enable all colleagues to create and build successful mentoring partnerships, centred around principles of trust, inclusivity, openness, and communication. In 2022, we aim to build upon this and further invest in mentoring opportunities for all colleagues, particularly diverse women leaders.
- Engagement with our mentoring framework is driven through our Employee Resource Groups and local D&I working groups to further support the development of diverse and underrepresented talent.
- Actively engaging with our growing Employee Resource Groups, Internal D&I Council and Cultural Advisory Council to challenge us and ensure our programmes are best supporting our colleagues.
- Continuing to roll out allyship training across the business, equipping everyone at Burberry with practical ways to enact active allyship.
