Freedom to be your true self
We are all about bringing as much of yourself to work as you want and encouraging others to do the same. Our Purpose drives everything we do and ‘making you happier about money’ is about supporting every person to be the best they can be as often as possible. You can read more in our Inclusion Pledge.
We actively promote a culture that fosters respect for others and reinforces self-esteem and self-regard. We have a zero-tolerance approach to any form of discrimination in any way on the basis of gender, gender identity, gender expression or sexual orientation. We’re committed to creating and maintaining a workplace where everyone connected to Virgin Money is treated fairly and equally.
Our action plan
To help us achieve our commitments and create a bank that is more representative of the communities in which we live and work, we have taken the following action;
Our LGBT+ focused development modules for customer-facing colleagues explore the assumptions we make about our customers and the impact this can have on their experience. Our goal is to improve the conversation around LGBT+ to make sure everyone feels included and to make our LGBT+ colleagues, friends and family feel safer in an increasingly diverse global marketplace.
Stonewall, the UK’s leading advocacy organisation for the LGBT+ community, will help us improve our understanding of LGBT+ identities and experiences, and ultimately create a fully inclusive work environment.
Our aim is to include additional options for colleagues to self-identify so everyone can feel confident bringing their whole selves to work. As at 30 September 2021. our data shows that 2.93% of our current colleagues have shared that they identify as LGBT+. We’ve committed to increase this representation across the bank in the medium and long-term to 4% representation by 2025 and 5% by 2030, which we aim to achieve through our action plan.
We’ll work with colleagues across the bank to refresh our approach to titles and gender on our products and services. One of the ways we encourage this is to highlight the use of gender-neutral pronouns, including the use of singular ‘they’ or ‘ze’.
Misgendering is to refer to someone using a word, especially a pronoun or form of address, that doesn’t correctly reflect the gender with which they identify. It’s always best to check what terms and pronouns a person prefers to use.
We’ve chosen to add an optional field for our colleagues to write the pronouns they best identify with in their email signatures. Thanks to our partner Hive Learning, we’ve also been able to include further context in our email signatures as to why sharing pronouns is so important Link opens in a new window.
Working with our partners
Working in the communities we serve is really important to us and we work hard to forge links where we can. Our commitment to working with Pride and Stonewall Workplace Equality Index will help us push the boundaries in our marketing and advertising, making it much more inclusive and representative of our customers.
Led by Fergus Murphy, our Chief Experience Officer, our colleague network Vibrant will continue to advocate for colleagues and allies of the LGBT+ community.