The Women in Finance Charter has been announced today, publically committing 72 financial services firms to pledges setting firm targets for helping women into senior positions. The targets will be linked to executive pay increments on achievement of these goals.
Big names, such as Aviva, Barclays and PwC have signed the Treasury-led Charter following a review of the representation of women in the UK financial services sector commissioned by the Bank of England and led by Virgin Money chief executive Jayne-Anne Gadhia.
Firms have been left to set their own targets, following the example of Virgin Money, having set a target to have equal numbers of men and women at all levels of the business by 2020 (although it has allowed itself a tolerance level, with the aim to achieve a minimum of 40% women).
Gadhia said, “It demonstrates that a growing number of chief executives and boards within the sector are taking the issue seriously and recognise the strong link between greater gender balance and improved productivity and performance.”
The challenge will be to find ways to link the targets (which are inherently long term goals) with pay decisions that are generally made on an annual basis, calling for robust and transparent alignment.
Career-Mums will be keeping a close eye on whether other industry sectors follows suit and sets their own gender balance targets. And here are a few cautionary points:

 • Training and development – an essential part of the diversity jigsaw is ensuring that sufficient women have access to training programmes, apprenticeships, etc so that they have the best grounding in your industry sector and are encouraged to acquire skills, knowledge and experience rather than put off and turned out.

 • Communication – publically setting targets is the easy task; ensuring that all leaders in your organisation are committed and understand the importance of their targets and the desired returns to the business of improved gender balance is critical.

 • Business as usual – if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll get the same results. To change the gender balance of your organisation significant shifts in the way your organisation operates will need to be undertaken. To attract, retain and develop more women through your organisation it is likely that flexible, agile, choice-driven working arrangements will be at the centre of your achievements. Taking a fresh look at your organisational working habits, and questioning who they suit and why, will start to reveal where attention must be focussed.
Career-Mums exist to help you improve your gender balance. How long do you envisage taking your organisation to achieve a gender balance 50% male : 50% female throughout each level?
Contact Career-Mums on 0121 717 4728 to talk to us about how we can help promote gender balance through recruitment, training, development, reward and leadership.