Halma has today signed up to Change The Race Ratio, a campaign founded by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) to increase racial and ethnic participation in British businesses.
As a signatory, Halma will commit to set targets for greater racial and ethnic diversity across the business. Alongside this we will publish a clear action plan to achieve targets and share progress.
In recent years, Halma has made significant efforts to improve diversity, equality and inclusion across all its businesses. This year’s Black Lives Matter movement has served to reinforce our commitment to this goal and accelerate our plans to ensure we live up to the broader societal awakening we see all around us.
To drive lasting change we recently launched a global inclusion programme to all our 45 companies. This micro-learning programme has been deployed within each company to provide them with their own bespoke path towards building a more inclusive culture where everyone can feel welcome and able to bring their true self to work.
As part of our ongoing commitment to building fairer and more inclusive businesses, in October 2020 Halma launched a global parental leave policy for all its employees in over 20 countries. This new policy offers men and women equal paid parental leave regardless of their gender, their sexual orientation or the market in which they live and work.
We have also taken steps towards improving the diversity of our senior leadership. Today our Executive Team includes five women, making up 63%, and from 1 April 2021 this will rise to 78%. This compares with no women represented in the team just 7 years ago.
In addition to the positive progress on gender we have also made progress on ethnicity at the global senior leadership level, with more men and women from BAME communities appointed to senior roles leading our businesses. We recognise we still have more work to do to improve ethnic and racial diversity at all levels of our organisation.
Andrew Williams, Halma Group Chief Executive, said:
“We know that our purpose to grow a safer, cleaner, healthier future for everyone, every day can only be achieved if we have diverse and inclusive businesses that reflect the communities in which they live and work. Our commitment to increase diversity, equality and inclusion across all our businesses is driven by this purpose and underpinned by our DNA. We are pleased to join the Change the Race Ratio as part of our ongoing efforts to accelerate the changes we need to make.”
