Treating people as individuals 

Equality and diversity is not just about complying with legislation - it is about talent management. We believe that our success results directly from the experience and quality of our employees.

Attracting, selecting, developing and retaining a highly skilled workforce helps to drive our business performance. By developing our employees' talents while recognising their differences, we benefit from their unique skills and are able to meet the needs of our clients' and their customers.

We are committed to encouraging diversity at the workplace. Our Joint Chief Operating Officers are responsible for championing diversity and inclusion from Board level downwards, and we use a network of diversity champions across the business to help communicate and deliver our diversity strategy. Working with our HR advisers they develop and embed local diversity action plans in their individual businesses. We also engage with a number of external partners including Employers Forum on Disability and Employers Forum on Age.

Employees must complete our online diversity awareness training. In 2010, we updated the training to reflect the changes resulting from the new Equality Act. All our employees must complete the new training within the next 12 months.

To create the conditions for a diverse workforce, we recognise that we have to offer a degree of flexibility over working arrangements. Where possible we support part-time working, job sharing and flexible working hours. In 2010, 14% of our employees worked part-time. We aim to have a culturally integrated workforce and where possible we employ local people so that our workforce reflects the diversity of our local communities.

We monitor the diversity of our workforce using our online HR administration system, and encourage our employees to disclose their ethnic origin. In 2010, 64% (2009: 53%) of our employees stated their ethnic origin and of these 25% (2009: 17.5%) were from ethnic minority groups.