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A MORE INCLUSIVE FUTURE

We are an organisation that appreciates and embraces the power of individuality, authenticity, and wellbeing. Our goal is to build a more inclusive workplace with a workforce that reflects the diversity of our global community and who wholeheartedly feel they belong.

"D&I isn’t just about quick wins that make us look good. It’s a long-term investment, welcoming difference and creating a space where inclusion and equity is embraced and celebrated. An environment where people feel safe to be their true selves. Our commitment to this is what binds us to create the change we aspire to see in the world."

Faizah Tahir, Head of Diversity and Talent Development

Our commitment to gender diversity

In 2020, we took our commitment to diversity further by joining the Women in Finance Charter. The Charter pledges gender balance across financial services.

It also commits us to supporting the progression of women into senior roles across the business: something we are already proud to be doing. The decision to join the Charter marked an important step change for OSTC, to show our existing and future female employees that prejudice or bias has no place in our diversity agenda.

As of October 2020, we had 23.8% female representation in senior management (defined as Executive Committee and Group Board). Our target is to reach 33% by October 2023.

Portrait of Klaudia

Klaudia Stelmachowicz

Chief People Officer

Portrait of Klaudia

“Advancing gender equality is one of the 17 UN SDG goals. Sadly, gender inequalities are deeply rooted in every society, with women still having to tolerate occupational segregation, gender pay gaps and heavy underrepresentation in senior leadership roles.

“OSTC’s mission is to promote a fair working environment that further harnesses women’s talents in the workforce. I’m proud that we are taking steps towards bringing greater equality at the very top of our organisation and joining the Women in Finance Charter.

Our goals to increase female representation at Board and ExCo level are ambitious, yet achievable. We will work hard over the next three years towards delivering on our pledges.”

Women in Finance Charter

We fully believe that increasing gender diversity is key to the long-term success of OSTC. As well as it simply being the right thing to do, we share the views of scholars and the regulator that gender diversity improves risk management culture and generates better results for companies and shareholders. We have been committed to addressing gender imbalance for several years now, and since becoming signatories of the Charter, we set ourselves some ambitious, yet achievable goals and focused on driving the change right from the top of our organisation.

Our progress

We fully believe that increasing gender diversity is key to the long-term success of OSTC. We also believe it’s the right thing to do. We share the views of scholars in the field and the regulator, that gender diversity improves risk management culture and generates better results for companies and shareholders. We have been committed to addressing gender imbalance for several years now, and since becoming signatories to the Charter, we set ourselves ambitious but realistic goals to drive change right at the top of our organisation.

When we signed up to the Charter in October 2020, we had 23% female representation at the senior management level. I am pleased to see that we have exceeded our target of 33% and already at 36.4% by August 2022; which is a year earlier than scheduled.

And although this positive news is in part attributed to recent restructure within the business, our targeted interventions and consistent work resulted in great progress towards demonstrating that our female representation remains a vital strategic component to maintain.

Our priority is to maintain this positive gain and build on it for the future, ensuring we embed the same focus across the business to continue to increase gender representation through our different departments and functions at OSTC.

Therefore, our aspiration for 2023 will be maintaining this outcome of 36.4% and not to regress. But improve representation across the wider organisation which currently sits at 18.2%

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Diversity In The Workplace

Creating a safe & welcoming environment

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Diversity in the workplace isn’t just about physical representation of minority groups, it goes way beyond that. It’s having an organisational culture that cultivates employee wellbeing enough for everyone to feel safe and welcomed. It’s having a culture where those with visible or non-visible differences are given the tools and support to thrive.

It goes beyond equality or meritocracy, it’s impartiality, inclusion and belonging. Then, once you create that culture of bringing different people together, it’s about embracing and celebrating it.

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Why is workplace diversity important?

Embracing every kind of talent

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It’s a fact that talents are widely distributed around society, irrespective of our differences. That’s why it would be foolish to restrict our search to just one group of society.

At OSTC, we believe in personal freedom, dignity and equal rights under law. We believe that everyone should have a fair opportunity without restrictions. And we will continue to fully embrace diversity to ensure our organisation remains relevant and attractive for future sustainability. We will continue to adapt our business model and strategy to attract and retain the diverse and talented workforce the world has to offer.

OSTC Wellbeing Charter

This Charter is a guideline for how the Wellbeing committee would envisage our company conducting itself through the promotion of policies and practices that would help us to adhere to standards that promote the physical and mental wellbeing of our staff and provide for an improved work-life balance.

Prioritize your workload

- Your work doesn't all have to be done today, understand the relative importance of each task and the timelines associated.
- Challenge bad habits and norms across departments and ensure adherence of approach to dealing with non-conformance to avoid offshoots and micro cultures.
- Manage expectations better
- be comfortable in saying no to some tasks and ask for more time or support in meeting deadlines

Display communication discipline

- We're re-enforcing this with mandatory out of hours email signatures.
- When emailing, think about who needs to be CC'd or if you need to reply.
- Only invite people to meetings who are required.

Build culture that includes physical meet-ups

- We should encourage meeting others to have those water cooler conversations and small talk about anything - business or personal.
- Encourage face-to-face creative and collaborative working sessions to bring about innovative ideas and quicker problem solving.
- Leadership will continue to promote and encourage culture of meeting up, be it in small groups or big where possible

Endeavour to take blocks of holiday in one go

- We will be encouraging and monitoring managers to ensure staff are taking adequate time off to properly “recharge".
- A strong recommendation where possible - aim to take a block of two weeks holiday at a time

Effective communication is key

- Where communication is clear, open, effective, manageable, and responsive, staff will be able to access all the information they need to do their job while avoiding overload
- Communication needs to be consistent from the top - there is no such thing as overcommunication during uncertain/challenging times.

Be "without guilt" for not being always "on"

- You don't have to follow your leader's example because everyone is different and you shouldn't have to rearrange your personal life outsife of working hours.
- Where possible, you should adopt a soft stop - hard stop approach (e.g. digital sunset)
- We also provide Microsoft Viva & Analytics to help plan your workload, breaks, and development time.
- You should keep your "out of office" on for an extra day when back from a long period of leave to catch up on emails and messages.
- Take a meeting or call away from your desk daily. Have a walk, enjoy the fresh air, and stretch

Working relationships and social activities

- We continue to encourage and support a culture of teamwork, collaboration and information sharing.
- We're providing for physical and social wellbeing support in the form of exercise classes (pilates & yoga) and team meet-ups to boost staff morale, teamwork, and wellbeing.

Have a start and end to each day

- Having an uncontrolled blended work and personal life is harmful to your wellbeing and causes burnout.
- Have a "pseudo" commute and "shut down" to signify the transition to and from work and personal life.

To hold each other to account

- We aim to have value led KPIs for employees with wellbeing as a factor.
- To drive recognition and rewards that are based on both employee performance and behaviours.
- We're continuing to promote positive behaviours and ensure we have robust policies on bullying, harassment, and discrimination for employees to feel safe to flag misconduct anonymously.

Spotlight on Diversity & Inclusion
OSTC Brand
IDAHOBIT Podcast 2021
People in a meeting

A diversified future

Always moving forward

People in a meeting

While we are proud of how far we’ve progressed through our diversity objectives, our Action Plan reminds us that we will never stand still or become complacent. We have already undertaken several collaborations with charities and organisations such as Evenbreak, Stonewall and the Social Mobility Foundation. You can read more about these activities here.

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Leading from the top

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We are constantly looking to improve diversity, wellbeing and inclusion at every employee level across our network. Our Managers take great pride in ensuring we constantly work towards our objectives: many of whom have already embarked on a number of key online D&I course, including:

• Mental health awareness
• Inclusive hiring practices
• D&I basic online foundation
• Psychological safety online training
• LGBTQ+ support in the workplace
• Disability support in the workplace
• Cultural Awareness and inclusion programs
• Mentoring programme

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Diversity Partnerships

We endeavour to build relationships that will continuously nurture and grow our diversity objectives.

View our partnerships