Tarinee Pandey, chief people officer at Puma Property Finance, said: “At Puma Property Finance, enhancing equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) has been at the heart of building our business and we are proud that half our team are female, and over 30% are from underrepresented minorities.
“We have worked for many years to ensure all our policies and procedures are conducive to a workplace that has inclusivity at its core.
”These include blind recruitment, mandatory inclusivity training, a focus on equal and fair pay, in addition to providing access to educational tools to learn more about the lived experience of under-represented minorities and numerous social mobility initiatives. But, we believe there is still a huge amount we and the sector can do to drive change.”
Puma managing director Paul Frost added: “Historically the property finance industry hasn’t done nearly enough to tackle entrenched privilege and improve the representation and lived experience of a multitude of minority groups.
”Initiatives such as this pledge, and the actions they promote, are integral to challenging the status quo. We’re really proud to be a signatory and look forward to delivering on our promises and supporting this initiative as we seek to drive meaningful change in the industry.”
Companies signing the pledge commit to establishing a continuous improvement plan with measurable objectives and clearly defined outcomes.
For some, this plan will involve only small changes; for others, improvement may be a long-term business transformation project. The panel below outlines the steps companies that sign the pledge agree to take.
1/ Attract, develop, and promote a more diverse workforce
Including promoting equality, making unconscious bias training mandatory for those involved in recruitment, making sure language in recruitment and job descriptions does not exclude anyone.
Devising and implementing development programmes for protected characteristics that support meaningful career progression.
2/ Take steps to close pay gaps
Including offering flexible and remote working as standard and considering job shares; using market salary and internal pay data rather than asking candidates what they currently earn; ensuring interviewers are diverse; publishing wage ranges; looking for discrepancies between pay rates, and ensuring high-achieving individuals are recognised equitably in succession planning.
3/ Champion and recognise the achievements of employees across all of the protected workplace characteristics
Including actively promotinge the success of workforce diversity; using diverse role models in marketing, advertising and PR campaigns; ensuring outreach programmes with schools and colleges target a more diverse population.
4/ Foster a culture of diversity and inclusiveness
Creating programmes and policies that promote equality; working towards more balanced representation at both management and board level; ensuring there are appropriate facilities; having a zero-tolerance approach to negative and demeaning behaviours, or to “banter” that undermines, belittles and excludes anyone; encouraging reporting processes.
5/ To set annual EDI objectives and transparently publish progress
Communicating EDI goals with employees and partners; gathering data to measure progress; sharing key metrics with employees and partners, highlighting both progress and setbacks; making diversity a core value.
