An inclusive employer

In an intensely competitive industry it is important for us to find, develop and retain the most talented people available.

Organisations hoping to achieve global ambitions need to bring together different cultural and international perspectives, and draw on the ideas of the widest possible range of people. Our Executive Diversity Group meets three times a year under the leadership of Group Vice Chairman Gary Hoffman to monitor our businesses' progress against diversity action plans. In 2007, we moved our diversity specialists from our corporate centre into the businesses, where they can be more directly involved in decision making.

We also changed the way we recruit at graduate level in our UK retail operations, resulting in a more diverse intake for 2007.

We have a wide range of development and leadership programmes for employees including sponsorship of a Chicago Graduate School of Business Executive MBA and intern programmes. Our policies ensure that employees are all treated with respect regardless of age, race, sexual orientation, gender, disability, religion or belief.

Becoming more diverse

As we grow internationally our workforce is becoming more diverse, reflecting our worldwide presence. We are determined to hire employees from the communities in which we operate, as this not only helps those communities prosper through job creation but gives us local understanding of customer needs. The percentage of ethnic minority employees in our UK businesses has increased from 7.2% in 2001 to 12.3% in 2007.

We made further investments, in 2007, in disability mentoring to enhance career prospects and 'reasonable adjustments' schemes to improve working environments for disabled colleagues. We need to work harder on making these schemes accessible by identifying and removing obstacles to career progression. We also introduced a new helpline for disabled colleagues and Group Chief Executive John Varley hosted two sessions of our Disability Listening Group.

We recognise that we have work to do on developing and recruiting more women for senior jobs. All of our businesses now have robust plans in place to improve in this area. In 2007, mentoring schemes were set up across our retail and commercial banking businesses and Women's Networks in Barclays Capital and BGI continued to grow. In Barclays Wealth there are dedicated programmes for high-potential women.