Shaw Trust, one of the UK’s leading purpose-led organisations, has achieved one of its stated aims of driving gender parity within its senior leadership team. The charity, which supports more than 200,000 people each year through its employment, education and care work, currently has a workforce of 2,600 staff with 66% of employees women.
In the last year the senior leadership team membership has moved from 31% women to 53%. Across the organisation senior appointments held by women have increased from 28% to 43% since August 2020.
Speaking about the increase in gender diversity Michelle Jackson, Equality Diversity and Inclusion Adviser commented: “At Shaw Trust we welcome the fact that more talented women, including women from ethnically diverse backgrounds, are joining our senior leadership teams across the organisation. For us diversity is more than a tick box, we are committed to bringing a range of people into our organisation with a diversity of thought, life experience and ways of working. We believe our increasing diversity has been a significant factor in our resilience, agility, perseverance and innovation throughout the last year and in dealing with Covid-19.”
Chris Luck, CEO, commented: “We are determined to do more to achieve our diversity goals across all measures of diversity. Doing so will ensure we have access to the best talent and thought that comes from diversity; this will allow us to deliver the best outcomes to our participants, as well as make us fully representative of the society we serve.”