The terms of equality as well as diversity practices are essential to the sustenance of the institution. It represents the specification that is being used by the Company to maintain its suppliers and employees. Also, to sustain a diverse organization means to retain and manage people from different ethnicity, background, religion, education, sexual orientation, and gender. The more diverse and equality a workforce is the more chances of excellence, innovation as well as new ideas of the firm being conducted (Song, Wee and Newman 2017 p.85). Therefore, this report makes a study of equality and diversity practices prevalent in other banks that are located in the UK. Also, comparison, analysis, and contrast are conducted. The report will compare HSBC with other banks such as Standard Chartered Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland.
Diversity is about building a culture which values individual variety and differences for the benefit of individuals, society, and organizations. Diversity and equality exist in an organization to bring about inclusivity in the workplace (Ali and Konrad 2017 p.37). In the United State, procedures and practices are in place to ensure that employees are given the same opportunities and are treated equally regardless of their race, age, gender, sexuality, culture or disability. Equality is about fostering and promoting everybody. It is about giving everyone an equal chance in the organization (Kelan and Wratil 2018 p.104).
Today Companies have realized the power and need for diversity. Different researchers conducted suggest that valuing diversity improved the performance of the business. It is also true that despite some crucial and significant obstacles and issues the organizations have to maintain their diversity programs to improve business productivity and growth (Civitillo et al. 2017 p.24).
HSBC is a well-known British bank that believes that inclusion and diversity mean strength. The goal of the bank is to be the leading international bank in the world. The diverse workforce increases the competitive advantage as well as the secure future of the business. The contribution of each supplier, employer and customer are considered essential by the organization (Vomberg, Homburg and Bornemann 2015 p.122). The components of the inclusion and diversity strategy include the values of being open to new cultures and ideas, connection with community regulator, customers and so on. The culture of HSBC describes Diversity as the heart of the organization. The company also has a strong belief in ethical business principles, entrepreneurial spirit, and professionalism as a guide. The core values of the organization are the inclusion of diverse culture and ideas (Biasio and Murray 2017 p.60). The success of HSBC lies within the association between communities and clients. Thus, the organization has established a module for e-learning diversity training to assist the employees in understanding the diverse knowledge and information. Also, voluntary training program and internal network groups form an inclusive environment to allow for gender balance workforce. Finally, with its branches in different countries, the organization employs from around the nation to sustain and train a diverse workforce (Cox and Soobiah 2018 p.129).
Therefore, the organization has embedded Diversity Councils and Employee Resource Groups to carry out the activities. HSBC aims at promoting the talents of an individual to gain distinctive and unique insights into the outward growth (Trudeau and McLarney 2017 p.45).
Firstly, the company uses Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy to support environmental and social, for example, BGCI and HSBC aim at protecting twenty thousand plants from extinction.
Secondly, the organization is one of the biggest financial and banking services throughout the world.
Thirdly, HSBC has many customers around the world
Fourthly, the bank has a lot of professional staff that deal with the inquiry from the customers.
The main weakness of HSBC is that most of the customers confuse their brand in the market. This is because the organization had set up many banks worldwide under different names, for example, the Hong Kong Bank of Canada. Changing of the brand name has hurt the bank in brand recognition.
At HSBC men are being paid two and half times more per hour than the amount being paid to Women. This represents the largest gender pay gap. The gender pay report also revealed that of all the senior staffs less than a quarter are female and more than 2/3 of those in junior roles are women (Khan and Sultana 2017 p.92). There are fewer women in a senior management position. In HSBC, the mean average measure of the pay gap is approximately 59%. This calculation is done by taking the wages of all female and male and then dividing the total amount by the number of employees (workers) in the organization (Holst and Wrohlich 2018 p.71). This year 2018, the group provides a provisional mean pay gap of sixty percent (60%). The organization also has sixty-one percent bonus payments between its female and male employees.
The gender pay gap is the differences in hourly earnings between women and men working for the company regardless of the roles which they perform in the organization.
Under the new scheme of the government of UK, all organizations with 250 or more employees must report to the public and the government their pay gap. This enables the government to establish suitable action for changes on issues of gender inequalities at the workplace (Amis, Munir and Mair 2017 p.54).
The government of UK requires that all Companies should promote equality in everything that they do. It also states that all companies should meet their legal duties of promoting equality in the workplace (Manokaran et al. 2018 p.102). HSBC follows the government rules and regulation by offering similar opportunities to all people regardless of their sex. HSBC believes in providing equal opportunities and fair treatment to those who applied for the job. The workforce of HSBC is highly diverse. The organization promotes the diversity of its workers and is committed in the creation of an inclusive working environment (Ng and Rumens 2017 P.26). The equality law legally offers protection of individuals from discrimination in their place of work. HSBC is in line with government regulation because it discourages discrimination of people in the workplace. The organization discourages the following: sex discrimination, Race discrimination, and Disability discrimination. HSBC strategic policy relied on a diverse culture. Different cultural background enables the organization to get access to broader consumer insight. The strategic priorities of HSBC are entrenching and the inclusion of diverse cultural practices and values and supporting diversity among the customers and employees. The company only lack enough number of Woman bankers in the organization (Yang, Basile and Letourneau 2018 p.78).
The main strategy of HSBC is to connect their customers to different opportunities for more than one hundred and fifty years (150 years). HSBC uses many strategies for example SWOT Analysis, Marketing mix, Porters 5 Forces Analysis and PESTLE Analysis. The strategies focus on four groups of customers includes Commercial Banking, Personal Financial Services, Private Banking and Corporate Banking. Diversity and equality will enable the organization to grow, innovate as well as outperform the competition (Rowley, Wei and Warner 2018 p.95). Diversity and equality allow the organization to provide equal opportunities thereby creating a fair balance between women and men. This enables HSBC to be ahead of their competitors. HSBC also use diversity as a holistic strategy that values its employee’s customers and suppliers. Diversity practices allow the organization to understand their customers thereby increasing the profitability of the business (Kumar, Pande and Afreen 2018 p.76). Organization can only achieve the issues relating to diversity practices only when the workforce is in line with the organization strategy and policies. Therefore, it is essential to develop and train the employees according to the strategy of the Corporation. Also, it is hard to retain diverse employees when there are many conflicts and issues of interest in the organization.
The gender pay gaps of standard chartered bank as compared to HSBC reveal that there is a large gap between men and women in terms of the salaries paid per hour. The bank announced its commitment towards gender parity. The organization has pledge to recruit 30% female in senior positions by 2020. The organization will achieve this by developing fair processes and policies including the reasonable pay charter. The organization pay charter will reward the employees in a free and fair manner. The bank also incorporated Diversity at the management level of the organizations to allow managers to understand the requirements and needs of the organizations. The essential function of the Company is to conduct a proper inclusive and diverse program to recruit the best talents. Standard charted bank is more focused on employing Women and disabled into their team. The company promoted gender equality. There are some negative impacts on the diversity practices at the standard chartered bank such as disrespect of the opposite sex (Johannes Dedy and Muksin 2018 p.50).
Women who are working at the bank earn an average of 37.2% less than their male counterparts. The bank manager admitted that strategies are to be put in place to allow more females in senior positions in the organization. The figures reported also shows that women received 64.4% less bonus than those earned by their men counterparts. These suggest that more effort need to be put by the management to close gender pay disparity. Royal Bank of Scotland should engage in training individuals in a diverse work culture. RBS should give their customers the priority.
After a brief analysis and study so conducted on gender pay gaps and diversity practices undertaken by RBS, HSBC and Standard Chartered Bank, the issues faced by the customers and by the organization are identified. They include:
HSBC has the largest differences in female and male staff salaries as compared to other largest bank in Europe. In order to close the Bank’s gender pay gap, the following should be done:
Conclusion
Diversity refers to the differences in ethnicity, demographic and ethnicity among the people that are in the workplace. Equality is the process of giving everyone an equal chance in the organization (Nie, Lämsä and Pu??tait? 2018 p.64). The concept of equality and inclusion are the essential factors as they improve the performance of the organizations. Special attention should be given to equality and diversity practices in the organization. The management should also consider the well-fair of the LGBT community as well as the disabled. These issues together with gender equality can make an organization to run at a loss (Dhanani and Jones 2017 p.72). The organization should also offer similar training to all the employees to boost their talents.
This paper makes a study of 3 major Corporations in the UK. The three organizations include Standard Chartered Bank, HSB and Royal Bank of Scotland. The three organizations are completely different regarding their structures, goals, and objectives. The paper compared, contrasted and then analyses their diversity practices. Finally, the paper provides different recommendations that can improve the performance of the three organization.
References
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