Lloyds Banking : What's next with our Race Action Plan?

Tell us about your role and what you hope to achieve?

My role is to lead the delivery of our Race Action Plan and coordinate activity across multiple workstreams to help create a more inclusive environment and enable colleagues from a Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic background to grow and flourish within Lloyds Banking Group.

Black colleagues aren't broken. Our capability isn't in question. What we need to fix is the environment. The Ethnicity Pay Gap Report highlights how our Black colleagues experience the biggest pay and bonus gap by some distance and remain underrepresented at senior levels. That needs to change and so we're looking to make improvements which specifically support and address the challenges faced by our Black colleagues.

What progress has been made since the Race Action Plan was launched in July?

The announcement of the Race Action Plan was a massive statement of intent that as an organisation we stand against racism and are taking steps to drive meaningful, long-term change.

Since we launched the plan, we've held more virtual focus groups with our Black colleagues to help fully understand their experiences within Lloyds Banking Group. In parallel, over the summer, we held a series of sessions led by some amazing influential thinkers to help our senior leaders feel more comfortable in having positive conversations about race with their Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic colleagues.

To help inform our plans, we've established a new Race Advisory Panel made up of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic colleagues from across the Group. The Panel, along with our ethnicity network, will play a critical role in helping us to shape the initiatives we need to deliver sustainable change.