Vodafone Group Plc Annual Report 2025 15
Strategic report
Governance
Financials
Other information
Our people strategy continued
Embedding inclusion Multiple employee networks operate across Vodafone which all employees can join. These include networks for women, disability, LGBT+, parents and carers and multicultural inclusion. We actively support them, and this year we provided 14 network chairs with leadership training focused on how to effectively create and assess a network’s strategy, as well as help five network communication leads with how to effectively build a brand. Global withstander training, which upskills employees on how to become active allies by challenging negative and inappropriate behaviours when they witness them, continues to be delivered in 11 languages. Over 65% of employees and 88% of managers completed the training in FY25. This year we have launched four new allyship programmes for LGBT+, Race, Ethnicity and Cultural Heritage (‘REACH’), gender, and disability. These programmes encourage colleagues to continue their journey of active allyship through participating in community and network events and learning. We continued to engage with colleagues and raise awareness of why inclusion matters through celebrating cultural moments such as Pride, International Day for Persons with Disabilities, International Women’s Day and the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. During the year, we held webinars and virtual training sessions globally on diversity and inclusion topics and these received over 59,000 viewers across all markets. Gender diversity Goal: We aim to have 40% women in management roles by 2030. We have reached 36%, which is on track towards our ambition. We continue to drive progress through programmes, policies and leadership incentives.
LGBT+ We accelerated our focus on supporting our LGBT+ community with 3,257 allies and active support from senior executive sponsors. We include the question ‘Are you out at work?’ as part of our Spirit Beat survey to better understand experiences of our LGBT+ employees in the workplace 1 . 48% of our LGBT+ community are out at work. To further support them, we upskilled 48 mental health first aiders across four markets in how to support LGBT+ colleagues that may face challenges specific to their identity. In addition, we launched the ability for colleagues to display their pronouns across our HR system. Note: 1. Markets not asking LGBT+ questions include: DRC, Tanzania, Türkiye, and Egypt. Disability and accessibility Our work on disability inclusion focuses on creating an accessible digital and physical workplace to support colleagues to be at their best. We published application adjustments on our careers site to remove barriers for candidates during the selection process and our recruiters have been trained on how to implement these adjustments. We introduced more in-depth disability and accessibility training for hiring managers and recruiters and to support the progression of disabled talent, we provide managers guidance on reasonable adjustments for our performance development processes. Click to read more about our application adjustments at Vodafone: careers.vodafone.com/application-adjustments During the year, we educated our people about accessibility features available in our core tools by the introduction of Microsoft Copilot. We adhere to global standards, such as Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (‘WCAG’) 2.1, through establishing and training developers on our accessibility design guidelines. Informed by the insights from the #ChangeTheFace neurodiversity research, we built a neurodiversity website to support recruiters and managers to take proactive action on disability inclusion. We hosted training for our mental health first aiders and we piloted quiet spaces in our UK offices.
To transform our customer experience and embed a customer-first culture, we continue to take actions to improve the experience of our front line. Spirit Beat results of frontline colleagues from the October 2024 survey show the Engagement score as 74% and Team Spirit Index as 84%. Outsourced contractors who serve our customers also participate in ‘Spirit Beat’: 75% responded, an increase of 3% from April 2024. Insights have been used to inform our overall customer action plan, with improvements to systems, processes and streamlining operations to impact the frontline and customer experience. ‘Spirit of Vodafone Day’ takes place once a quarter with employees dedicating time to focus on connecting to the customer experience through local activities, including learning, team connection and wellbeing. During these days, learning hours increased on average by three times compared to other days in the year. Workplace equality As part of our purpose, we empower people by seeking to connect everyone, regardless of who they are or where they live. We are passionate about making the world more connected, inclusive, sustainable and a place where everyone can truly be themselves and belong. Diversity and inclusion Our aim is to create an inclusive and equitable workplace for all. This year we have continued progression on gender equality, accelerated focus on LGBT+, race and ethnicity, and implemented actions to create an accessible and inclusive workplace for our disabled colleagues. Our focus on inclusion supports our ambition to create a global workforce that reflects the customers, communities and colleagues we serve, and the wider societies in which we operate. We believe that embedding equity and inclusion to enable diversity is important to achieving these goals in a sustainable way.
2025 2
2024
Women on the Board Women on the Executive Committee Women in senior leadership positions 1 Women in management and senior leadership roles 3 Women as a percentage of external hires Women as a percentage of graduates Women as a percentage of employees 4
38% 42% 45% 33% 37% 37% 36% 35% 44% 44% 55% 53% 39% 39%
Notes: 1. Percentage of senior women in our top 147 positions includes the Executive Committee and Senior Leadership Team (FY24: 135). 2. Excluding discontinued operations such as Vodafone Italy and Vodafone Spain 3. Percentage of women in our 5,676 management and leadership roles (FY24: 6,350). 4. Percentage of women based on 86,702 total employees (FY24: 85,225). The total number of employees represents the position on 31 March for the applicable year and excludes employees that left the Company after this date. The numbers do not represent prorated headcount. Further information on how employees are defined and calculated can be found in the ESG Addendum Methodology document: investors.vodafone.com/esgmethodology . We work to achieve gender diversity when resourcing for senior leadership roles, and our leadership team is accountable for maintaining diversity and inclusion in their teams. Women in management targets are also included in our long-term incentive plans. Across early careers programmes, 50% of hires were women. We have also now connected with over 20,000 girls via the digital skills programme ‘Code Like a Girl’ since 2017. We support managers on inclusive hiring practices through training and by embedding inclusion in our talent acquisition systems. This includes the introduction of blind CVs, which exclude personal details such as the candidate’s gender and age.
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