Representation

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

We strongly believe that all colleagues are leaders. By harnessing our Leadership Standards, all of our colleagues will play a critical role in driving Burberry’s performance, better serving our customers and meaningfully supporting our communities. We embed Leadership Standards across the business by making forums accessible to all of our people and creating opportunities for conversations around our values to take place. In addition, we run leadership development programmes, which are designed to elevate leadership capability and support the continued diversification of our organisation.

Our New Manager Development Programme (NMDP) focuses on the principles of good leadership for people managers. Core to this is equipping leaders with the capability required to foster an open and inclusive environment for teams and colleagues. This programme also explores leadership accountability and personal commitment to our sustainability and diversity and inclusion strategies. Our Executive Development Programme (EDP) continues to deepen leadership capability, building on learnings from our NMDP and our allyship training. Participants focus on elevating and reaffirming their commitment to fostering an inclusive culture as well as taking accountability for diversifying our workplace. During FY 2021/22, we worked to ensure the cohorts for each programme were balanced from gender and ethnicity perspectives. 

Recruitment

How we attract and retain the best people at Burberry is a critical part of our global diversity and inclusion strategy and vital to our ongoing success. We are taking measures to ensure our recruitment practices remain inclusive.

For instance, we use a gender decoder tool to analyse the language we use across all job advertisements to ensure they are gender neutral. In FY 2020/21, we began piloting anonymous curriculum vitae screening and included diversity information monitoring forms in candidate applications in the UK and US, with all disclosures voluntary and data collected in line with local market regulations. We aim to implement these practices across our business in certain markets by FY 2022/23.

To identify and engage with a wide range of candidates at all levels, we collaborate with organisations running diverse leadership networks and job boards around the world, and engage with a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) in the USA. Building on mandatory annual unconscious bias training for talent acquisition teams, we have also introduced interview skills training for all line managers to support inclusive interviewing techniques and mitigate unconscious bias throughout the interview process.

We also continue to support creative art scholarships in a bid to improve access to the creative industries for people from underrepresented communities. The scholarships support more than 50 students over five years at renowned creative institutions, including The New School’s Parsons School of Design in New York City, Institut Français de la Mode in Paris and Central Saint Martins in London. This also includes our support for scholars at the Royal College of Art via separate funding from Burberry and The Burberry Foundation.