Crown Agents Bank: Promoting equality and diversity at work

Taking action to promote equality and diversity at work is a crucial step for organisations.  

According to research conducted with People Insight’s client partners, work experiences that include fairness, respect, inclusion, equality and diversity are becoming critical drivers of employee engagement.  

We’re starting to see positive progress and repercussions that demonstrate discriminatory or exclusionary behaviours are not acceptable. However, there is more work to be done and with Governments starting to hold organisations accountable for Diversity and Inclusion reporting, organisations must start preparing for these future regulations.  

We recently spoke to Marcia Jones, Group Head of HR at Crown Agents Bank, about how their organisation is taking action to create a diverse workforce where everyone feels they can belong.  

8 effective actions that promote equality and diversity at work 

1. Get senior management buy in from the start  
2. Develop and adopt a Diversity Strategy  
3. Review and redesign key HR processes 
4. Build Diversity, Equity and Inclusion into your L&D programme 
5. Sponsor and organise diverse events for employees 
6. Establish a mentoring programme 
7. Sign up to relevant charters  
8. Evaluate process and performance (of what has been put in place). 

Keep reading to learn how Crown Agents Bank have put these actions in place to create visible progress with diversity and inclusion in the workplace.  

Crown Agents Bank are taking visible action to promote equality and diversity at work

Crown Agents Bank is a leading global transactional bank focused on emerging and frontier markets. Their long-term mission is to open safer trade corridors with developing countries and enhance financial inclusion.  

In 2016, Crown Agents Bank was acquired by Helios and have since experienced great growth and transformation. A lot has changed for the organisation. They have evolved from a more traditional bank to a digitised and technology-driven organisation, working towards becoming a fintech bank.  

Crown Agents Bank have partnered with People Insight for their employee engagement survey since 2016. Marcia Jones, Group Head of HR at Crown Agents Bank, recently shared how they are taking action to improve Diversity and Inclusion and the impact of the initiatives they have put in place.  

Like many organisations, 2020’s Black Lives Matter movement led Crown Agents Bank’s senior leadership to reflect on how they could build a more diverse and inclusive workplace. 

How to redesign HR processes to create a more inclusive workplace 

Crown Agents Bank have made huge changes to their HR processes to improve Diversity & Inclusion, particularly around recruitment and hiring. The organisation had a very traditional recruitment process, however line managers and HR leaders recognised that their current methods left them open to unconscious bias. During internal discussions with line managers, a number openly admitted they often forget to remain conscious about their biases or expectations while reviewing CVs or candidates.  

After discussing how Crown Agents Bank could adapt their recruitment processes to improve diversity in the workplace, Marcia’s team then spoke to their external recruitment partners to understand their D&I approach. They asked how they operate to reduce bias during the hiring process and if their commitment and values didn’t match Crown Agents Bank’s, they decided not to use them.  

Crown Agents Bank’s updated recruitment process is designed to foster Diversity and Inclusion. To reduce the risk of unconscious bias and support their ambition to build a diverse workforce, they now use blind CV screening and ensure they have multiple people interviewing each candidate.  

Building equality and diversity at work into your wellbeing programme

Like many organisations, Crown Agents Bank experienced a very sudden transition to working from home at the start of the Covid-19 lockdown. Employees found this new way of working unusual and were not prepared for the sudden change. It was a very testing time so Crown Agents Bank ensured they worked with employees to understand what support they needed while working from home and, for many, also juggling being a carer, parent, or teacher.  

Crown Agents Bank ran training sessions for employees to encourage healthy behaviours while working from home and provided support for employee mental health and wellbeing. Recognising that mental wellbeing would be impacted by the pandemic, they also trained several mental health first-aiders. This group continues to be supported with training and development, as well as receiving mental health support themselves.  

Learning and Development programmes that improve Diversity and Inclusion  

Crown Agents Bank have worked with People Insight since 2016 to deliver their employee survey. As a fast-paced organisation, Crown Agents Bank are focused on growth – they don’t stand still. However, recent survey results identified that employees felt their career development opportunities are limited.  

 In response to this employee feedback, Crown Agents Bank’s senior team asked themselves how they could ensure employees are developed and prepared to move into other levels within the organisation. They put several initiatives in place to support development and foster a diverse workforce at all levels of the organisation.  

Related: How British Business Bank & StepChange embed behavioural change

L&D initiatives that promote equality and diversity at work 

• In March 2020, Crown Agents Bank rolled out a mentoring programme across the organisation to support employees with their learning and development aspirations. Their robust mentor matching process welcomed applicants from across the organisation and has resulted in cross-mentoring since some individuals are both being mentored and mentoring somebody else. The programme has been a great success. 

• To encourage a pipeline of young, diverse talent Crown Agents Bank recently introduced an apprenticeship programme. They work closely with their apprenticeship provider to share their commitment to presenting a diverse range of candidates for every opportunity. Each member of the Executive Committee has committed to taking on apprentices, with Marcia’s HR department leading the way. 
• Crown Agents Bank became a signatory for the ‘Women in Finance’ charter and committed to having 30% of women in the organisation at a senior level. Crown Agents Bank recognise that there is currently a great diversity of ethnicity at low-mid level, however this peters out as you move up the organisation. To improve this, Crown Agents Bank have committed to recognising people for the role they are performing and the skill they bring as well as offering employees the development they need to move upwards. 

How measurement helps Crown Agents Bank promote equality and diversity at work 

Marcia advises regularly evaluating the performance of your initiatives to improve diversity and inclusion. At Crown Agents Bank, this data is reviewed every 6 months. Their measurement process shows the impact of the initiatives put in place, highlights where further research is needed to understand issues and keeps you accountable to the commitments within your Diversity and Inclusion strategy.  

Importantly, it can take a while before your initiatives start to pay off and this shouldn’t be disheartening. As Marcia brilliantly put it,  

“Diversity isn’t a race. It’s a crawling state. If you’re looking to [get started with D&I], get to know your organisation and establish a framework around what you want to achieve. Communication, communication, communication is the key. Remind [employees] of what you’ve done and what you are doing. Give opportunities for feedback on what could be improved/done differently.””  

People Insight help organisations assess how diverse and inclusive employees feel your workplace is. Book a demo today to see our Diversity and Inclusion survey dashboard in action.