Being a global organisation spread across 27 countries, multiple time zones and many cultures brings its challenges. We address these through our diversity programme, which embodies the key principles of respect, valuing differences and inclusion, and measures that ensure respect, fairness and equality among our employees.

These range from policies that embody the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Labour Organization’s core labour standards to specific initiatives promoting equal opportunities. Business units will be required to report against diversity targets in future.

Our diversity agenda has been strengthened by employee networks such as the Global Senior Women’s Network, established last year to help make senior women accountable for nurturing female talent around the group. An event in Madrid was attended by 50 women in senior management from across the group, and the network’s success has led to the creation of further groups in London and Norwich.

Pride Aviva, our lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender network, has increased its membership to 150 in the UK, and played a role in securing company sponsorship of Stonewall’s first-ever gay youth event in the UK. The event offered practical advice on being gay in 21st-century Britain through a mix of inspirational speakers and workshops.

Aviva was ranked 78th in the 2008 Workplace Equality Index, Stonewall’s Top 100 employers for gay people in Britain. While this shows improvement on our previous ranking of 120th, Aviva remains committed to improving its score and becoming an employer of choice to all employees by creating an inclusive and respectful workplace culture.

Norwich Union has been actively recruiting for a diverse workforce. In 2007, NU placed recruitment advertisements in specialist minority publications including Stonewall, Ethnic Britain, RADAR and Arberry Pink, alongside its mainstream advertising.

We continue to integrate the key principles of diversity into our business practices, and in 2008, we will raise awareness of multiculturalism, and the benefits this brings to us as a global organisation.

Case study

Embedding diversity

To integrate our diversity vision, we created an online ‘Respect Diversity’ toolkit that enables us to share best practice and benchmarking information across the group through training materials, interactive games, presentations and DVDs. Much of this information has since been included in Norwich Union’s ‘Respect’ intranet site for employees.

Our ‘Respect Diversity’ initiative and toolkit were recognised as best practice by the UK’s Equal Opportunities Commission and cited by the judges at the World Diversity Leadership Summit, hosted by the United Nations Global Compact, which honoured Aviva with a Global Innovation Award.

As part of the European Year of Equal Opportunities for All, Hibernian amended its Equality policy to include additional wording covering diversity and during Diversity Week, Aviva France demonstrated its commitment by signing a new Diversity Charter initiated by IMS–Entreprendre pour la Cite, an association of 180 businesses committed to social responsibility and partnership.

“Relying on teams that combine staff from different backgrounds, with diverse experiences and perspectives, represents a real competitive advantage.”

Myriam Saunier HR development manager, Aviva France