FCA's new roles on diversity; will this be the catalyst for real change?

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) recently announced new rules for listed companies to report on targets and data collection for ethnicity and gender representation in Boards and executive management roles.  

The Parker Review also recently reported on the progress of the FTSE 100 organisations against the target to have at least one ethnic minority executive in their Board. 89% had met this target by the end of 2021.  It is evident that by having making a commitment to a target and implementing a supporting plan enables organisations to improve their overall representation.

Here at AMS we established an ethnicity action plan in October 2020, we made a commitment to double the ethnicity representation of our global leadership community by the end of 2021.  We met this target and we have now committed to double again by the end of 2023.  We developed a robust plan with the support of our Board and Exco and implemented a number of different initiatives and programmes eg. reverse mentoring, Rooney rule for hiring etc.  However, in agreeing to a clear target it has helped us to maintain focus, momentum and priority on the end goal.