Taking proactive steps to address
under-representation Our goal is to reflect the society we serve. For gender inclusion, this means increasing the number of women in more senior and technical roles, which will in turn reduce our gender pay gap. Embracing flexible working For Animal Friends, flexible working wasn’t just something we did in response to the pandemic; we’ve continued to embrace flexible working patterns, offering our colleagues the choice of remote, hybrid, or office-based contracts, because we believe that an individual’s postcode should never be a barrier to working with us. This has helped us widen the net and attract more diverse talent from across the UK, including into senior and technical roles. This flexible approach to working has proved hugely popular with all our colleagues, regardless of gender. We know from our 2023 Inclusion Survey, which asked our colleagues what inclusion truly means to them both in and outside of the workplace, that 20% of our colleagues have caring responsibilities, and being able to work remotely or with a hybrid pattern makes a big difference to balancing work life with personal life.
Our flexible approach has also resulted in an increase in part-time working during the last reporting period, with a total of 85 colleagues (17%) across our business working part-time. Of these colleagues, 75 were women (up from 41 in 2022) and 10 were men (up from 5 in 2022). Amongst full-time workers in our IT and Data teams, 38% of men and 44% of women have a flexible working pattern. We understand that balancing a career and family life can be challenging, which is why in 2023 we made improvements to our maternity and parental leave policies to better support our colleagues in finding that balance.
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