Shortening job descriptions, 50/50 candidate shortlists and encouraging men to take longer parental leave are just some of the ways Aviva ‘got honest’ and moved beyond a tickbox exercise to improve gender diversity, according to CEO Amanda Blanc.
Blanc told the Association of British Insurers (ABI) Diversity Equity and Inclusion Summit that when going through the blueprint, the insurer initially ticked all of the actions it had taken.
But once it dug deeper, it had to admit it had tickboxed its way through the exercise.
Consequently, Blanc revealed the insurer “got honest”, and put egos and what the firm hoped to be the truth to one side in place of the reality.
“We didn’t always like what we found,” Blanc revealed.
“We were way further back than we had hoped or imagined but once we dusted off those bruised egos, we realise it wasn’t a negative.
“In fact it was a huge positive as we now had a true understanding of where we were with gender diversity, where was good, where was bad, what was working, what wasn’t.
“It gave us our very own blueprint for change – a genuine change that is taking place and we intend to go through the exact same exercise, company wide with the ABI blueprint because I believe these blueprints for change work.
“I’ve seen it happen in real time and I urge all of you to take them very seriously because diversity in the workplace is a hugely important issue.”
Shortlists, job descriptions and parental leave
When asked about what initiatives had worked for Aviva, Blanc pointed to a number of examples.
“Some of the simple things were 50/50 shortlists right the way through the funnel and shortening job descriptions – because women have this awful thing of going through the 15 things on a role profile and ticking off that they can only do 10 of them and discounting themselves from applying for the role.
“So we have no more than five ways of describing the role.”
Blanc also highlighted efforts to look at its staff pipeline, including an active sponsorship programme much earlier on in the organisation and promoting parental leave.
“Now what we need to do is encourage particularly the men to take slightly longer leave than they’re taking today. Although there is a very, very good take up of that in Aviva because we’ve been doing that for a very long time,” she added.