Introduction

The BT Group Manifesto was launched in 2021 and is our plan to  accelerate growth through responsible, inclusive and sustainable technology. It is rooted in our purpose, to connect for good, and it will help us achieve our ambition – to become the world’s most trusted connector of people, devices and machines. Our Manifesto includes measurable commitments to amplify our positive impact for people and planet – combined with a clear commercial agenda.

Responsible

New tech must earn people’s trust and transform lives for the better.

Inclusive

The future of tech must be diverse and inclusive for everyone to benefit.

Sustainable

Tech must accelerate our journey to net zero emissions and a circular economy.

We recognise that Inclusion and Diversity (I&D) is not just a ‘nice thing to do’, it’s critical to our growth. Our commitment to I&D remains resolute and unwavering.

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We connect for good - BT Group plc Annual Report 2023
We connect for good - BT Group plc Annual Report 2023

Along with our financial reports, our 2023 Annual Report contains a summary of the initiatives we delivered in FY23 (2023 Financial Year) to build a diverse and inclusive BT Group. The report also highlights our sixth Gender pay gap report, third voluntary Ethnicity pay gap report, and the progress we have made so far towards achieving our diversity targets in relation to women, ethnic minority colleagues and disabled colleagues.

  • BT Group plc - Annual Report 2023 - accessible version

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Our I&D ambition

Our Manifesto includes bold targets for diversity. We’re making progress in our ethnic minority and disability representation. But we’re clear that there’s much more to be done. 

This table shows the progress we have made against our stated Manifesto targets for women, ethnic minority and disability representation at various levels of the organisation.

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Diversity data for all protected characteristics and special category data (as defined by UK employment law and GDPR respectively or local laws as relevant to other geographies) is collected through voluntary disclosure directly into SAP SuccessFactors (our nominated HR system). Data is stored, reported, and used subject to local laws and advertised employee privacy notices. Due to local restrictions on capture and reporting of ethnicity and disability, only information relating to the UK is shown.

1 For the purpose of the UK Corporate Governance Code 2018, our leadership comprises the Executive Committee (excluding Executive Directors on the Board but including the CEO, Openreach) and all of their direct reports (excluding admin roles). This totals 22 women (30%) and 51 men (70%).

2 For the purposes of the Companies Act 2006, our senior management comprises those employees responsible for planning, directing and controlling the activities of the group, or a strategically important part of it (members of our senior leadership and senior management teams, and directors of the group’s subsidiaries but excluding directors on the Board). This totals 256 women (34%) and 497 men (66%). Numbers presented include 60 subsidiary directors (39 men and 21 women) who are not otherwise members of our leadership or senior management teams.

Ambitions into actions

Inclusion and Diversity at BT Group

Our approach to I&D is evidence-based and intersectional, recognising that our colleagues and customers have diverse needs and intersecting identities. Our mission is to ensure that I&D at BT Group are key differentiators for our colleagues and customers and that we deliver a positive impact to wider society.

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Our Inclusion and Diversity Strategy is a programmatic, evidence-based approach to help us understand and remove bias and other cognitive barriers from policies, processes, systems and decision making. It supports our aim to build the strongest foundations by making sure we apply an inclusion lens to everything we do, and by promoting a culture where colleagues can thrive. We have five clear strategic priorities. 

  • A representative workforce that reflects the different regions in which we operate.

  • Inclusive, innovative culture where people feel respected, engaged and able to speak out and this translates into innovative inclusive design for customers – creating differentiation for BT Group.

  • A best practice inclusive design approach is embedded into our policies, practices and offerings for all our people and customers.

  • We’re proactively using digital technology to connect for good and actively removing barriers to learning to ensure fairness and inclusion. This is essential for our business and nation, now and in the future.

  • Strong external reputation for leading the I&D agenda through bold action, research, influencing others in industry and sharing best practice.

Partnering across our business to deliver inclusion

We believe that everyone has a role to play in making our business truly diverse and inclusive. Our established governance processes make sure we integrate I&D into decisions and policy development.

The I&D Centre of Expertise oversees our overarching I&D approach, strategy and portfolio, and we report to the Executive Committee on our strategy’s relevance and effectiveness, and on progress against our diversity targets. We also update the Board. Our People Networks champion members’ concerns and are sponsored by Executive Committee members. Our Colleague Board also helps shape and influence I&D plans. We review policies every year, updating them when needed.

  • At 31 March 2023, 33.4% of our Board members, 30% of our Executive Committee members, and 22.5% of our senior leadership team were women.

    Our Gender Equality Network (GEN) continues to represent its members effectively to help shape our I&D plans.  

    We’ve built relationships with Code First Girls, Women Returners, Black Girls Tech Summit and Girls Talk London to create more opportunities for women to move into technology careers.

    Our last Gender pay gap has improved to 6.1% (6.7% previously) because we’ve recruited more women into senior roles. There has also been a slight rise in female representation in the upper 23.3% (0.3%) and lower middle 16.62% (1.3%) pay quarters.

    The award-winning "Not her problem" campaign tackled sexist hate and ran during the UEFA Women’s Euros 2022.

  • At 31 March 2023, our Board comprised two directors from ethnic minority backgrounds.

    Our Ethnic Diversity Network (EDN) continues to champion its members’ concerns to help shape our I&D plans.

    We’re making good progress in our ethnic minority representation, with notable gains against the diversity targets set in our Manifesto launched in 2021.

    As lead sponsor of the Avado FastFutures programme, we’re helping upskill over 7,000 18-24 year old learners from ethnically diverse backgrounds. We want to help them develop digital and data skills to unlock opportunities and launch their careers.

    We’ve built partnerships with The Aleto Foundation and 10,000 Black interns to attract and recruit young people from ethnic minority backgrounds.

    Our Black middle managers continue to participate in the McKinsey Black Leadership programme which provides career development and networking opportunities.

  • At 31 March 2023, our Board had one disabled director.

    Our Able2 Network continues to provide invaluable lived experience input into our I&D plans. 

    We’re a member of Valuable 500, a global business collective made up of 500 CEOs and their companies that are committed to disability inclusion. At the December 2022 disability summit, we renewed our commitment to three priorities: Workplace adjustment; Disability advocacy; and Career progression of our junior managers.

    We renewed our status as a Disability Confident Leader and continue to work with several teams across the business, our Able2 People Network and external partner, the Business Disability Forum.

    We partnered with Purple Goat, the UK’s only communications agencies run by disabled people, to deliver a series of awareness raising videos highlighting the experiences of colleagues with a range of disabilities – including diabetes, autism and visual and hearing impairments.

    We’re making good progress against the disability representation targets we set in our Manifesto.

  • This year we ran several learning and Talent programmes to support our colleagues’ development such as Digital Campus, Accelerate, Elevate, and Aspire, a career development programme in our Consumer unit.

    We launched our reskilling programme CAPSLOCK, training existing employees for cybersecurity roles. Everyone who graduated now has a BT Group cybersecurity job. The programme won the ‘Recruitment and Workforce Planning Strategy’ award at the 2022 HR Excellence Awards

    We launched our new ‘My HR’ system to simplify and digitise our HR technology landscape and give colleagues a better experience.

    We created our two-step ‘Covid Recovery Programme’ to help all employees manage the effects of long Covid and improve their health, wellbeing and functional capabilities. Those off work with long Covid dropped from 46% to 12% after referral to step two of the programme.

    To support our colleagues during the cost of living crisis we awarded a cost of living pay rise to 85% of our UK-based colleagues.

    Our 11 People Networks continue to play a key role in ensuring we maintain an intersectional lens as we work to achieve our I&D ambitions.

    We were a Gold Sponsor of London PRIDE 2022

    The CCLA report on mental health for investors places us in the top 10% of the FTSE 100

    We’re helping our most vulnerable customers during these tough times. We offer eligible customers our Home Essentials broadband and EE Basics mobile. This helped almost 180,000 customers this year. 3 million customers were excluded from April 2023 price increases.

    This year we helped 4.6m people and over 465,000 businesses and their employees in the UK improve their digital skills – a total of 19.3m people since FY15.

    We continuously engage with and challenge key suppliers on pricing and supply chain diversity.

In 2018, we announced a five-year programme to modernise our property estate and consolidate BT Group’s footprint, reducing from more than 300 locations to around 30.

Our new locations are created with our colleagues in mind. The services and facilities in our buildings include a host team in our strategic hubs, flexible workstations, communal areas, multi-faith rooms, rooftop terraces, extensive office biophilia, tech bars, relax and refuel areas, and health and wellbeing facilities including cycle storage, showers and changing rooms.

These are more than just buildings to us. They underpin our transformation and are a symbol of the kind of company we’re becoming – modern, flexible, customer and colleague focused, with seamless tech and spaces that make you feel good.

. . .

Our pay gaps

Athalie Williams
Athalie Williams

I'm pleased that BT Group has made progress and narrowed our gender pay gap this year. But we are far from perfect, and we recognise that we still have more to do to make sure we build a truly equitable and inclusive culture across our business.

Athalie Williams Chief Human Resources Officer

2022 Gender pay gap

Our overall UK gender pay gap figures have decreased this year to 6.1% median and 3.7% mean, versus 6.7% and 5% in 2021. While both the median and mean figures still sit significantly below the telecommunications industry, we are not complacent and we are doing more to attract, recruit and retain women in order to achieve balanced gender representation at all levels across the business. 

2022 Ethnicity pay gap

Although UK organisations are not legally required to publish their ethnicity pay gap, as part of our overall commitment to I&D, we have published our third Ethnicity pay gap (EPG) figures.

At the snapshot date of 5 April 2022, our median (binary) ethnicity pay gap was -1.2%, a reduction from -2.7% in 2021. The mean (binary) ethnicity pay gap was -0.3%, an increase from -0.1% in 2021.

Like last year, we have examined our UK EPG data in more granular detail. This is because we recognise that a binary ethnicity pay gap can mask the disparate issues that people from different ethnic groups face at work and in wider society. Examining the data at a more granular level provides a more nuanced picture:

Pay gaps by ONS ethnic groups

Asian / Asian British

Black / African / Caribbean / Black British

Mixed / Multiple ethnic groups

Other ethnic group

We recognise that we currently have unequal representation of different ethnic minority groups across the different roles and levels within the business.  To address our current ethnicity pay gap, and improve ethnic diversity across BT Group, we are delivering a number of initiatives to attract, recruit and retain more people from ethnic minority backgrounds.