QBE is creating a diverse and inclusive workplace that respects all employees, irrespective of their differences – visible and invisible. This is essential for attracting and developing the best people. We want a diverse workforce as we know this will generate better outcomes.
Delivering a clear message
We are pleased to have been signed up to the Women in Finance Charter, an initiative by HM Treasury and financial services firms to build a more balanced, fairer industry since 2018.
Since then, women in leadership across our European Operations population has grown from 27% to 36.6% as at the end of August 2024. Whilst we have achieved our Global Women in Leadership target of 40% at the end of December 2023, 2 years ahead of our deadline, we also recognise our responsibility to ensure we are driving progress at a divisional level. We set ourselves a target of 38.0% by the end of this year which we are not on track to currently meet. We have seen a positive increase in our senior female representation since the start of this year but unfortunately this has not been enough to achieve what we had hoped. Regardless we will continue to embed the actions outlined in our Women in Leadership plan to ensure we are building an inclusive culture and nurturing the existing and future talent at QBE, to achieve our desired outcome of 40% senior female representation across European Operations.
We continue to monitor our Sense of Belonging targets that were established in 2023, ensuring that our colleagues, regardless of gender, feel like they belong in our organisational culture. In October 2023, we successfully closed the belonging gap between our male and female colleagues and will be reviewed again in October 2024.
We continue to explore ways of further supporting the belonging of our people, including empowering flexible approaches to work. Our Flex@QBE approach is designed to give people the power to flex the way they work in a way that ensures we are enhancing performance and supporting effective work/life balance. We are committed to continually reviewing our approach which includes remote working abroad, flexible public holidays, and embracing flexible working structures, such as part time positions and compressed hour contracts.
The wellbeing and safety of our people continues to be a top priority. We have evolved our approach to wellbeing to become much more than just programmes, apps, tools and nice to have resources, to an approach that has been designed to enable a more resilient future for our people to thrive. At Our Best sets out our holistic view across five key areas of wellbeing: work life blend, finance, health, community, and career.
Our commitment to supporting the development of our existing and future female leaders is ongoing, with the launch of our partnership with ISC Group in March 2024. This partnership not only provides all our colleagues with access to the ISC Group community at a global level, but also includes tailored pathways for leadership development for several of our female leaders. Each pathway is curated to recognise the different path each of our leaders is currently on, whether they are just starting out, or supporting them within senior roles.
This year also saw the launch of our Women in Reinsurance community, recognising the lack of representation throughout the reinsurance sector, and understanding the need to further support our female colleagues who are aspiring for senior positions within reinsurance. Alongside our Women in Tech community and our gender employee network, Circle, we strive to ensure our people have platforms to connect and use their voices to drive tangible change throughout QBE and the wider industry.
Our in-house Talent Acquisition team are dedicated to driving more female representation throughout financial services, looking beyond traditional talent pools to attract diverse talent. Our Inclusive Hiring Principles are designed to guide and support our Hiring Managers throughout the recruitment process to reflect on traditional ways of recruiting and consider opportunities to leverage new sources of talent. Our partnerships with Women in Data, DiverseJobsMatter and iCAN, to name a few, are all designed to expand our reach to untapped talent pools and encourage diverse talent to apply.
Equipping our people with the correct awareness and knowledge around gender ensures our progress towards a resilient and inclusive culture. 2024 saw the launch and distribution of our Gender Workplace Guide, as well as the first ever Global Future Festival, a 4-week learning festival focused on giving all of our people opportunities to harness new skills or expand their thinking, including a dedicated session on The Gender Conversation, looking at societal perceptions of gender across the world, and understanding how we can collectively drive change towards removing barriers to female progression.
Jason Harris, CEO of QBE European Operations, is our nominated executive responsible for this initiative.
Accreditations and partnerships
QBE awarded 5 stars
Thousands of employees from across the insurance sector were surveyed in 2021 and QBE was voted a 5* employer.
Part of this nomination comes from the support we have offered over the past year during the pandemic. We were proactive and acted quickly to what our employees were telling us. We placed a lot of focus on the wellbeing of our employees, offering support for mental health and being accommodating of all our employees unique circumstances during this time. It also reflected our overall strategy. Our people are at the heart of our initiatives and being able to listen, act quickly, and provide them with the tools they need to do their jobs well has really been valued.