Our people and culture

The board have been continuing to work on embedding our diversity policy into every area of LV=. They acknowledge that a diverse board provides a balanced approach to the successful delivery of our strategy is reflected through many of our new schemes. 

Application of the board diversity policy

The board diversity policy ensures that the board has a varied skill base, experience, education and professional background. The race and gender of an applicant will not impact the recruitment process. These are key considerations for the Corporate Governance and Nomination Committee when considering new applications in order to maintain an appropriate range and balance of skills, experience and backgrounds on the board.

Employee engagement goes a long way. If our people feel energised, fulfilled and connected to what we’re striving to achieve, they’re going to create fantastic green heart experiences for our members and customers.

During 2020 it was so important to keep in touch with our people as working from home created a barrier we hadn’t needed to navigate before. 

Stay Connected is our overall internal campaign. It was launched to help keep our people connected to one another and support their wellbeing throughout a turbulent 2020 and into 2021. This campaign has also allowed us to continue to provide colleagues with strategic business updates and these were supplemented with a large amount of initiatives, support and guidance to help them through lockdown and the ensuing pandemic.

Stay Connected campaign

• Stay Connected Stars - colleague recognition
• Working from home support
• LV= Good News - a monthly positive broadcast
• Wellbeing resource
• Summer games
• Over 250 intranet articles published
• Regular CEO and Executive updates
• Emails, Zooms, podcasts and videos
• Charity Votes
• LV= Chat discussion intranet app

Our policy is to promote an internal culture that is truly free from discrimination, harassment and victimisation. A place where we can all celebrate differences in a trusted environment. We proudly do this right from the start and throughout our people’s career journey with us.

We’re also committed to ensuring that vacancies are accessible to anyone who wants to work at LV=. We’ll always do whatever we can to make any adjustments that employees might need in order to do their job to the best of their ability.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has highlighted flexible working as its primary recommendation to improve gender equality in the workplace and tackle the gender pay gap. 
We recognise that there is a huge demand for permanent roles that offer flexible working options. This gives employees flexibility on where, when and how they’d like to work their hours, across all genders, ages and for a broad range of reasons.

At LV= many of our people benefit from fixed and non-fixed flexible working patterns which could help new parents return back to work, supporting those who are carers or transitioning back into the workplace after a long period off work.

Throughout the business we currently have a higher representation of males in senior positions and more females in junior roles. We’re confident that pay at LV= is fair and unbiased and that the gap is primarily driven by this gender representation across LV=. We continue to ensure that everyone is open to the same opportunities and we’re committed to change the gender balance of our workforce over time. One of the ways we can do this is to focus on promoting from within, when it’s appropriate to do so.

In 2020, we witnessed an improvement in our gender pay gap to 28.6% (30.0% in 2019) which we’re encouraged by. The number of female leaders at the most senior levels has increased over the same period which is driving this change within the business. We’ll continue to monitor our initiatives over the coming years to further improve the gender pay gap across the business.

Recognition is really important as it drives motivation, and makes people feel appreciated and proud of their achievements. Through the ‘My Recognition’ platform our people can reward their colleagues for outstanding work and for living our values. 
To make sure that we’re rewarding our people fairly, in line with the market, we assess the amounts we pay our employees regularly. All of our people are paid at least the Living Wage Foundation rates of pay and as well as their salary, they're all eligible to be considered for a bonus. This bonus is based on their own performance and how the business does overall. 

Anyone who starts working for us is automatically enrolled into the LV= Pension Plan. Our people can choose to contribute a minimum of 3% of their salary into their LV= pension and we’ll double match their contribution up to a maximum of 14%. To help them plan for their future our online tool, the LV= Pensions Village, allows them to track their pension and check the impact it will have on their retirement income. 

Through their employment, our people receive core benefits such as life assurance and a competitive holiday entitlement. We also have a flexible benefits package which gives them the chance to select other benefits for their lifestyle. Each year they can chose from a wide range including buying and selling holiday, private medical and dental care to name a few. 

In December 2020, we acknowledged the hard work and dedication of our Band As and Bs after what had been a difficult year. We gave each of them a £200 bonus to recognise that the adjustments they had to make to work from home, when this wasn’t something they were used to, was appreciated.

A main focus of ours has been supporting the mental health, wellbeing and resilience of our people throughout 2020 and beyond.  

Our Stay Connected campaign provided a continued rhythm of communication and ever expanding library of resources which were designed with our people at the heart. You can find out more in the next section. 

Courageous Conversations

With the help of mental health charity Mind, we provided our managers with mental health training. The two hour session was designed to improve their capability to have mental health conversations, spotting the signs of mental ill health, building emotional intelligence and providing practical tools and guidance to have better conversations. To further help foster an early intervention culture we also delivered webinars called Talking Mental Health with clinical psychiatrist Paul Murray and ran a number of mental health Tea & Talk sessions. 

Series of expert-led parental webinars

Acknowledging the additional pressures our working parents were under last year, we delivered a series of practical webinars designed to support parents and aid them to balance home-schooling, working, caring and managing the home. Lorraine Lee, a childhood education and training specialist, provided guidance on a number of issues ranging from mental health, home schooling, school holidays, work life balance and more. She shared practical ways of teaching whilst at home, how to manage conflict and address feelings like guilt and pressure. 

Our people were able to make real changes and put in place a new manageable plan which has led to better family and work outcomes.   

Virtual ‘Calm amongst the chaos’ coaching programme 

This new programme has been developed to address the feeling of being overwhelmed. It’s aim is to build personal resilience which will enable participants to find more energy to achieve what’s important to them, pursue their career ambitions and harmonise work and home.

We want talented people to have equal opportunities to grow their careers at LV=, and we’re committed to increasing the female population at senior levels in line with the voluntary HM Treasury Women in Finance Charter that we signed up to in 2016. We’re pleased to announce that in 2020 we exceeded both of our pledges; to reach 40%, or above, female representation in senior roles by 2020, and 33%, or above, female representation on our executive team and direct reports by 2019.  We continue to monitor progress towards gender parity on our executive team and direct reports so we’ve set a new target to achieve 43%, or above, female representation in our senior roles by 2021. Our efforts will still focus on taking action to improve our gender balance across all senior levels.

We continue to support and sponsor the Women in Finance Awards and in 2020 we’re thrilled to have two shortlisted nominations of our own; Lisa Simmons for Legal Advisor of the Year and Anna Rogers for Insurance Leader of the Year.