At IAG Cargo, we are always striving to be a leading employer within the logistics industry. Our achievements were rewarded earlier this year when we were recognised as one of the UK’s Top Employers by the Top Employers Institute, an accolade that is a testament to the resources we’ve dedicated to improving our learning and development initiatives and facilities. IAG Cargo’s Chief People Officer, Caroline Andrews, highlights some of the latest initiatives the business is taking to foster a more inclusive workplace.
Investing in our people
We’re constantly working to create an enriching office environment. We recently opened a new learning hub and a 24-hour gym at our London HQ. We also launched our CoLAB programme, which encourages employees to share their ideas in an open forum, established a mental health first aider programme, and introduced our ‘Leading the Way’ – our culture development programme, designed to energise all employees across the globe on IAG Cargo’s vision, mission, values and customer essentials. The programme also focusses on Diversity and Inclusion.
We recently introduced Insights Discovery, a valuable tool designed to enhance communication and collaboration within teams. By understanding how each team member thinks and behaves, our people can work together more effectively.
Our Gender Pay Gap report
IAG Cargo released its latest Gender Pay Gap Report in March. The report revealed a steady gender composition across the workforce over the past three years, with females representing 37.9% of colleagues. This is compared to an industry average of around 20%. While the ongoing retention of female colleagues is encouraging, we want to see this figure grow even further and through various initiatives we are trying to support women in joining and developing their careers in our sector.
How we are building a more inclusive workplace
Our mean pay gap has seen a significant decrease, moving from 8% in 2022 to 5%. This shift is accompanied by an increase in the number of females who now make up our upper hourly pay quartile. These changes are indicative of progress towards achieving our goal of 40% female representation at the leadership level by 2025. We believe that this visibility is essential in motivating younger women to consider a career in logistics.
We have been establishing robust networks with local schools and colleges to increase the awareness of a rewarding career within the logistics industry. In line with this, we have reinstated our graduate and apprenticeship schemes and implemented a new recruitment evaluation method that focuses on application scores. This resulted in job offers for 40% of female graduate applicants in its first year, with a further 4% improvement by 2023. Since the launch of our emerging talent programmes a decade ago, we have supported introducing great talent into the industry, and it’s really encouraging that 94% of our graduates stay on and develop their careers with us.
We’re committed to reflecting the communities in which we operate, and so it’s also encouraging to see that so far in 2024, 50% of applicants to our business came from ethnic minority groups.
We are also making concerted efforts to promote a healthy work-life balance among our employees by modernising our policies. This includes hybrid work arrangements, a flexible public holiday scheme, and a policy that allows colleagues to purchase extra leave, in addition to a ‘work from anywhere policy’ that offers colleagues the opportunity to work up to 20 days from various locations around the world. As part of this, we also offer support services such as a 24/7 GP helpline and assistance for those with care duties outside of work, including senior care. We recently enhanced parental leave policies to support new parents.
By adapting to the ever-changing working landscape, we hope to create a more diverse and inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive. We’re proud of the progress we’re making, but we know there’s still more work to be done. That’s why we’ll continue to listen to our employees and invest in their development to create a workforce that leads with curiosity, collaboration, and pride to deliver a high-quality service to our customers.
