How did employee survey feedback support Crown Agents Bank’s D&I work?

Employee survey feedback helped Crown Agents Bank identify areas where employees wanted more support, including career development opportunities. With People Insight’s survey platform and reporting, the organisation could use employee feedback to guide action and track progress over time.

Why is measurement important for diversity and inclusion?

Measurement is important because it helps organisations understand whether D&I initiatives are working. Regular employee surveys can show whether employees feel respected, included and treated fairly, while also highlighting where further action is needed.

How can employee surveys help improve inclusion at work?

Employee surveys help improve inclusion by giving employees a confidential way to share their experiences. Survey results can reveal patterns around fairness, belonging, development and wellbeing, helping leaders focus action where it will have the greatest impact.

How does People Insight support diversity and inclusion surveys?

People Insight supports diversity and inclusion surveys through survey design, confidential data collection, dashboard reporting, benchmarking and expert consultancy. This helps organisations understand how inclusive their workplace feels and turn feedback into focused action.

Crown Agents Bank: Promoting equality and diversity at work

Outstanding Workplace Award

The team at People Insight are delighted to recognise Crown Agents Bank with our Outstanding Workplace Award.

We celebrate Crown Agents Bank for building a consistently positive workplace culture, acting on employee feedback to spark change and achieving an engagement score in the top quartile across all organisations surveyed by People Insight.

This recognition reflects more than a strong survey result. It shows the value of a long-term employee listening partnership, where employee feedback is gathered consistently, reviewed carefully and turned into practical action.

Through People Insight’s employee survey platform, Crown Agents Bank has been able to track employee sentiment, identify areas for improvement and focus action where it can make the biggest difference. The partnership has helped the organisation build a clearer, more evidence-led approach to engagement, inclusion and workplace culture.

Congratulations Crown Agents Bank! Find out more about the Outstanding Workplace Awards for employee engagement.

8 effective actions that promote 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 are 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 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.

Action	Why it matters
Get senior management buy-in from the start	Inclusion needs visible sponsorship from leaders if it is going to shape decisions, priorities and behaviour
Develop and adopt a Diversity Strategy	A clear strategy gives D&I work direction, accountability and measurable goals
Review and redesign key HR processes	Recruitment, promotion and development processes can reinforce bias unless they are actively reviewed
Build Diversity, Equity and Inclusion into your L&D programme	Learning helps employees understand bias, inclusion and expected behaviours
Sponsor and organise diverse events for employees	Events create visibility, conversation and a stronger sense of belonging
Establish a mentoring programme	Mentoring supports development, progression and access to opportunity
Sign up to relevant charters	External commitments help create accountability and show intent
Evaluate process and performance	Measurement helps organisations understand whether D&I initiatives are working

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 has since experienced significant growth and transformation. The organisation has 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, shared how the organisation is taking action to improve Diversity and Inclusion and the impact of the initiatives it has put in place.

People Insight’s role has been to give Crown Agents Bank a consistent, confidential and measurable way to understand the employee experience throughout this period of change. Through regular employee surveys, dashboard reporting, benchmarking and expert support, Crown Agents Bank can see where progress is being made and where further action is needed.

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.

The difference is that Crown Agents Bank moved from reflection to visible action. Its employee listening programme helped leaders keep inclusion connected to evidence, feedback and accountability, rather than relying on good intentions alone.

How to redesign HR processes to create a more inclusive workplace

Crown Agents Bank have made significant changes to their HR processes to improve Diversity and Inclusion, particularly around recruitment and hiring.

The organisation previously 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 forgot 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 spoke to their external recruitment partners to understand their D&I approach. They asked how those partners operated to reduce bias during hiring and, if their commitment and values did not 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 multiple people interview each candidate.

This is a strong example of turning employee listening and leadership reflection into process change. Inclusion becomes more sustainable when it is built into everyday systems, rather than relying on individual awareness alone.

People Insight helps organisations identify where employees experience fairness, belonging and opportunity differently. This kind of insight can help HR teams review key people processes, ask sharper questions and prioritise the changes most likely to improve employee experience.

Building equality and diversity at work into your wellbeing programme

Like many organisations, Crown Agents Bank experienced a 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 testing time, so Crown Agents Bank 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 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.

The important point is that wellbeing and inclusion are connected. Employees’ needs differ depending on their circumstances, caring responsibilities, working environment and access to support. An inclusive wellbeing programme recognises those differences and responds in a practical way.

People Insight’s employee survey data helps organisations understand how wellbeing is experienced across different employee groups. By combining engagement, inclusion and wellbeing insight, leaders can see whether support is reaching the people who need it and where additional action may be required.

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 do not stand still. However, recent survey results identified that employees felt their career development opportunities were limited.

In response to this employee feedback, Crown Agents Bank’s senior team asked 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.

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 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 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 strong ethnic diversity at low to mid-level, but this reduces at more senior levels.

To improve this, Crown Agents Bank have committed to recognising people for the role they are performing and the skills they bring, as well as offering employees the development they need to move upwards.

This is exactly where survey insight can support a stronger inclusion strategy. Employee feedback highlighted career development as an area of concern. Crown Agents Bank responded by building practical pathways for mentoring, apprenticeships and leadership progression.

People Insight’s platform helps organisations track whether initiatives like these are changing employee perceptions over time. That means D&I work can be measured, reviewed and improved, rather than launched once and left untested.

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 six months.

Their measurement process shows the impact of the initiatives put in place, highlights where further research is needed to understand issues and keeps the organisation accountable to the commitments within its Diversity and Inclusion strategy.

This is also where People Insight’s strengths are most visible. Regular survey measurement gives Crown Agents Bank a way to understand whether inclusion initiatives are landing, whether employee perceptions are improving and where further action is needed.

Dashboards and reporting make that insight easier to interpret. Benchmarking helps the organisation understand results in context. Expert consultancy can support leaders to identify priority themes and avoid trying to tackle everything at once.

Importantly, it can take a while before initiatives start to pay off, and this should not be disheartening. As Marcia 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 or done differently.”

That point is central to strong employee listening. D&I progress depends on communication, feedback and visible follow-through. Employees need to understand what has been done, what is still being worked on and how their feedback is influencing decisions.

People Insight helps 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.