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Our people

Our aim is to attract, develop and retain outstanding people who can deliver our future strategic goals

Early Careers

We are committed to supporting the next generation and offer people the opportunity to start their career or gain work experience with us. This includes graduate schemes, two types of apprenticeships for those whole have just left school/college and those with a degree. We also offer 12 month placements for undergraduates and work experience.

For more information on these opportunities please go to our careers site.

Personal and Career Development

Personal and Career Development is something we think is important to help colleagues truly thrive. We offer colleagues opportunities to develop themselves for their future success. We also develop the skills capability of the business to meet future needs.

We have a range of self-development, career development and wellbeing resources on our Learning Management System, Workday Learning, to support our colleagues. In addition, Workday Learning hosts our regulatory and mandatory training modules so that we remain compliant with our regulator.

We encourage attendance of both external and internal programmes. Our development approach aligns to the 70:20:10 learning model, which emphasises the importance of learning through experiences, regular reflection and mentoring and coaching conversations that support personal progression.

Mentoring at HL

Developing colleagues skills, knowledge and experience is a core reason for our success. We want everyone to have the opportunity to develop as far as their effort and capability will take them, building a diverse pipeline of in-house talent.

Our HL Mentor Scheme encourages colleagues to develop their skills and build their careers. It’s an opportunity to meet people from other areas of the business and make an impact, whilst identifying and working on development areas and considering future career goals.

We launched the South West Mentoring Awards to recognise people for their contribution to supporting diversity through mentoring and have developed the South West Mentoring Network to ensure that best practice is developed across organisations in the South West.

We also take part in external mentoring schemes to support the development of an inclusive and diverse culture. For example, we are participants in the Stepping up Mentoring scheme, which unlocks and develops leadership talent within Bristol from a variety of backgrounds and are proud winners of the Stepping Up Diversity Champion Award.

Our Coaching Community of Practice allows HL colleagues that are interested in coaching to meet likeminded people and practice coaching, get coached and observe coaching sessions. The Coaching Community of Practice aims to improve coaching skills, raise self-awareness, make a network, and feel part of a supportive group of colleagues in a learning environment.

Mental wellbeing

Wellbeing is an issue we take seriously and actively strive to fulfil our responsibility to support colleagues. We aim to create the right culture, as well as provide supporting tools and services to ensure our colleagues can be the best version of themselves at work.

We offer a range of physical, mental and financial health and wellbeing services:

  • We have internal Mental Health First Aiders, in addition to Wellbeing Champions who are there for colleagues needing mental health support. We support their development and ongoing training to ensure they are fully equipped to take on their role.

  • All colleagues have access to LifeWorks – an Employee Assistance Programme that provides 24/7 confidential access to professional support to help manage stress, anxiety, depression, grief, financial concerns, and much more. There’s also a vast library of wellbeing resources. Counselling sessions are also available following an initial assessment.

  • We have an internal colleague-led Wellbeing Network currently being formed, which will cover the four pillars of wellbeing – mental, physical, psychological and financial.

  • Managers have access to the manager consultation service to support leaders in dealing with stressful situations or ongoing mental health and wellbeing issues within their team.

  • A wellbeing check is available to all colleagues who may be struggling with their wellbeing – helping them to make realistic changes that can help to improve their performance, mood, energy and productivity.

Physical wellbeing

We’ve increased the number of qualified first aiders to 90, each having successfully completed a three-day course.

Our ‘fruit Wednesdays’ give colleagues access to free fruit to help support healthy eating habits.

We have HL sports teams in local Bristol leagues, run sport tournaments and offer discounts on gym memberships. Sport is an important part of daily life and a way of engaging and evolving different community groups. Many colleagues also do sporting activities to raise money for our HL Foundation, such as the Bristol Half Marathon.

We offer a comprehensive health package that allows colleagues to select the right cover for themselves and their family. It includes cashback on various treatments as well, such as out-patient, dental and eye care. We also offer annual health checks for colleagues who sign up.

Unum’s Help@hand gives all colleagues and their families access to four key support services: remote GP, mental health support, physiotherapy and medical second opinions.

We offer a Cycle to Work Scheme which allows colleagues to save money on a new bike and accessories. We have recently increased the scheme loan value to £5,000.

We’ve partnered with Gympass to make wellbeing more accessible for our employees. Through Gympass, colleagues can access a network of fitness facilities, health and wellbeing apps, personal training and fitness classes.

We offer discounted gym memberships, allowing colleagues to spread the cost over 12 months.

We provide movable standing desks for colleagues in the office, to ensure comfort and physical wellbeing.

Financial wellbeing

Our Employee Assistance Programme from LifeWorks has a wealth of information on personal finances, as well as a confidential helpline open 24/7 to discuss any concerns with an independent adviser. LifeWorks Perks offers savings on everyday purchases and important life events, such as getting married, buying a home or car, family outings and holidays. Colleagues can enjoy thousands of gift cards, discounts, as well as cashback offers.

In order to achieve our purpose, to empower people to save and invest with confidence, we want to encourage people to take control of their financial future and support them in establishing and maintaining the resilience that this requires over a lifetime. We know our clients need support and our colleagues are no different. To this end, HL has established a Savings and Resilience Barometer, based on the 5 key areas of our 5 to Thrive campaign produced every 6 months with Oxford Economics.

Reward and recognition

We offer competitive rewards including independently benchmarked pay and benefits. We believe that working together as a team is key to our success and so to complement pay we include the majority of our colleagues in a Group bonus scheme, linked to the financial success of Hargreaves Lansdown and distributed on an individual performance-related basis identified via a performance appraisal system.

Our colleagues have the opportunity to participate in our ‘Save As You Earn’ scheme allowing colleagues to become HL shareholders with up to 20% off the market value.

We provide pension contributions including double matching to encourage colleagues to save for retirement and extended life insurance protection. We have HL Rewards, flexible benefits scheme, including health checks, extended holiday entitlements, medical health cover, a cycle to work scheme and child care vouchers.

Engaging our people

It is crucial that we communicate with our people, ensuring they understand our purpose, vision and priorities and how they each play their part in the development of our business. We do this via a coordinated internal communications programme which includes presentations by the CEO, senior management insight talks, monthly CEO updates, weekly and monthly newsletters for all colleagues. Celebrating success and our achievements, also serve as a great means of engagement. We believe it is important to listen and understand our colleagues’ views and motivation. Their honest feedback is crucial in evolving our colleague engagement programme. Our most recent annual colleague engagement survey received a strong response rate of 75%.

Working practices

Colleague Forum

We have set up a Colleague Forum to help feedback between colleagues and the board. The Forum gives colleagues the opportunity to voice their opinions on some key topics including: HL Culture, People Strategy and Corporate Strategy.

Currently the forum has 21 members from across the business from a variety of different business areas, role levels and backgrounds to give us a diverse representation from across the business. We will periodically rotate members and give other colleagues who are interested the opportunity to put themselves forward to become a member.

The forum is meant to improve consultation between colleagues and the Board on various strategic matters, which will in turn improve the decision making process.

Policies

We ensure that all international human rights are respected and that we promote sustainable livelihoods for our colleagues by having policies on:

  • Human rights
  • Modern slavery
  • Corruption and bribery
  • Anti-Fraud
  • Inclusion, diversity and equality
  • Health and safety
  • Whistleblowing
  • Password policy
  • Trans and Non-Binary Equality Policy
  • Menstruation and menopause policy
  • Family friendly policies

For more information please read our corporate policies.

Groups and events

Colleagues are able to join or form a network. Our networks are formed and led by passionate colleagues and play a positive role in helping to shape a diverse and inclusive culture. As part of our commitment to I&D, we support our colleague-led networks with protected time and financial support to make a positive change within HL for various it’s communities. Our colleague-led networks are:

  • Cultural Diversity
  • Chronic Conditions and Disability
  • Gender Diversity
  • Wellbeing
  • Kaleidoscope (LGBT+)
  • Sustainability

Celebrating diverse events is important to us, and so we encourage our colleagues to join in with all opportunities, including (among others):

  • Black History Month
  • Chinese New Year
  • Diwali and Bandi Chhor Divas
  • International Women’s Day
  • Mental Health Awareness Week
  • Ramadan
  • Rosh Hashanah
  • St Pauls Carnival*
  • Trans Pride South West*
  • World AIDS Day

*We are not only committed to sponsoring our colleagues but also our community. Due to this we sponsor key calendar events held within the City of Bristol.

Inclusion and diversity

Our strategy

We are committed to building an inclusive and diverse workforce, this is one of our strategic pillars, not simply because it is the right thing to do, but because we believe it will lead to better outcomes for clients, colleagues and our business and enable our sustainable growth.

Our Inclusion and Diversity (I&D) strategy focuses on 4 pillars, each pillar is supported by a detailed action plan to ensure we attract, hire, progress, engage and retain diverse talent and build upon the progress we have made.

Building an inclusive culture and brand

  • Inclusive culture objective for all colleagues
  • 7 colleague led network groups, sponsored by Directors
  • Supporting the community – Bristol Pride and St. Paul’s Carnival
  • Inclusion and diversity training for colleagues and leaders

Data and Accountability

  • Aspirational representation targets for gender and ethnicity
  • ExCo have I&D specific objectives
  • ExCo and Board oversight and tracking of progress against I&D strategy

Recruitment and Representation

  • Hiring manager training to reduce bias
  • Ongoing commitment to diversifying advertising channels
  • Diverse candidate slates and interview panels for senior roles, where possible
  • Standardised and accessible recruitment processes
  • Review of job adverts for inclusive language. Inclusion and flexible working statements included in all adverts

Progression and Retention

  • Mentoring and Sponsorship schemes for diverse talent
  • Career Confidence Mentoring Scheme for all colleagues
  • Supporter of the Bristol City Council Stepping Up Program
  • Standardised pay, performance and promotion processes

The HL Way

We have launched the ‘HL Way’ as an umbrella term for ‘how’ we act at HL. The HL Way encompasses our values, our standards and the way we behave to deliver the best outcomes for clients, colleagues, communities and the business. The HL Way has been created through consultation with colleagues and is based on the best practice that already exists within the business. It is made up of a set of tools and guidance that helps colleagues with putting our values into practice and making good decisions.

Our I&D Objectives

The objectives of our Inclusion and Diversity strategy are to build upon our inclusive culture, increase ethnic minority representation and to continue with progress we have made around increasing female representation.

Our Inclusive Culture

I&D Objective

We believe that this is everyone’s responsibility to contribute towards building an inclusive culture and have introduced an I&D specific objective for all colleagues to ensure we are playing our part.

Colleague engagement and listening

We believe it is important to listen and understand our colleagues’ views and motivation as their honest feedback is crucial to our continued success as a business. As well as our twice-yearly engagement surveys we have also run regular pulse surveys to keep a constant monitor on colleague sentiment and respond to the insights.

We also have our workforce advisory panel, the HL Colleague Forum. The Forum was set up in January 2019 in line with the UK Corporate Governance Code to make sure that the ‘voice of the workforce’ is considered in the decision-making process of the Board. This is an important forum for obtaining and discussing colleagues’ views on key matters affecting the key matters affecting HL.

Network Groups

As part of our commitment to I&D we have a number of colleague-run networks which provide community, awareness and engagement alongside helping to challenge us to keep improving.

Developing our people

We have signed up to a range of schemes to help grow the skills and capabilities of all of our colleagues and have set up programmes to offer additional support for our diverse talent. Here are some examples:

  • 30% Club Women Ahead program is a cross-sector mentoring programme focusing on the progression of high potential women into more senior roles. Participate as mentees and mentors in the programme.
  • Participation in the Bristol City Council’s Stepping Up Initiative, a programme focused on changing the future leadership landscape. Stepping Up is open to colleagues from ethnic minority backgrounds and/ or colleagues with disabilities.
  • Sponsorship - A programme aimed at mid-level female and ethnic minority talent to support their progression through to more senior levels.
  • Reverse Mentoring – A scheme providing junior colleagues with the opportunity to build senior leaders' understanding of the experiences of junior colleagues in HL from a range of underrepresented groups and give senior leaders the opportunity to support their career development.
  • Career Confidence Mentor Scheme – An internal mentoring programme open to all HL colleagues with a focus on building mentees confidence and supporting them to reach their potential.
  • #iamremarkable initiative - Selected HL colleagues have trained to become facilitators of Google’s #iamremarkable initiative which aims to empower women and other under-represented groups to celebrate their achievements and support their career progression.
  • Women in Tech Group - Colleagues in technology have established a group which aims to support the hiring, progression and retention of women in Technology at HL. They support all colleagues through advocation, open communication, training and coaching initiatives.

Diversity by numbers

(as at June 2023)

  • Gender
    (%)
    Female 40.7
    Male 59.3
  • Disability
    (%)
    Yes 3
    No/Unknown 97

External Commitments and Partnerships

50:50 The Equality Project

Hargreaves Lansdown is delighted to be part of 50:50 The Equality Project.

The initiative is committed to inspiring and supporting organisations around the globe to consistently create journalism and media content that fairly represents our world. It started in the BBC’s London newsroom and aims to fundamentally shift representation within the media and has since been taken up across the BBC and has also been adopted by a global network of more than 130 partners in 26 countries.

We will be using 50:50’s core principles to help improve diversity – including gender, disability and ethnicity representation through our editorial content and spokespeople. We’re part of this project as we care about diversity, recognise the importance of role models, and it also feeds into our Inclusion and Diversity action plan.

Race at Work Charter

We have signed up to the Race at Work Charter which is designed to improve the outcomes of ethnic minority people in the workplace. The 5 ‘calls to action’ outlined in the charter have helped shape many of the actions outlined in our new strategy such as implementing targets and doing more to support career progression. Alongside the activity mentioned above this will be a visible commitment that helps hold us to account on our actions.

Living Wage Accreditation

Hargreaves Lansdown is proud to be accredited by the Living Wage Foundation as one of the 7,000 businesses nationwide recognised for being a living wage employer, paying a real Living Wage based on the cost of living, not just the government minimum.

Women in Finance Charter

We are committed to building an inclusive and diverse workforce. It is the right thing to do and we believe it will lead to better outcomes for clients, colleagues and our business and help enable sustainable growth.

Our commitment to diversity and supporting the progression of women into senior roles aligns with the aims of the Women in Finance Charter, a government initiative which promotes diversity and inclusion.

When we signed up to the Charter in 2018, we had 26.6% female representation, and our target was 25-30% by 30 August 2021. As we met this initial target, we updated our target to 36–40% by 2025. As of 31 August 2023, we have 34.5% female representation in senior management.

We are on track to meet our Charter target of 36-40% and to align with our internal performance process, our deadline has been extended to 30 June 2026.

Aug-18 Aug-19 Aug-20 Aug-21 Aug-22 Aug-23
26.6% 27.9% 30.4% 31.5% 31.6% 34.5%

We are pleased to see improvement in our diversity this year and continue to be committed to hire more, promote more, and lose fewer women at mid to senior level. Our commitment to build an inclusive culture will create a workplace where everyone can flourish.

Stonewall

We are one of a growing number of leading organisations who with the specialist support of Stonewall are creating LGBTQ-inclusive workplaces. We are proud to have become Stonewall Diversity Champions. This partnership enables us to access the tools, resources, expertise and best practice so that we can better support our colleagues and ensure all LGBTQ+ colleagues can be themselves at work.

Inclusive Employers

Partnering with Inclusive Employers shows our commitment to building a market leading culture. This partnership gives us access to expert inclusion and diversity support from established leaders in the field, ensures we understand I&D best practice and helps drive us forwards to create an environment where everyone can thrive.

Bright Network

We are proud to be partnered with Bright Network who connect the next generation with the opportunities, insights and advice to succeed as the workforce of tomorrow. This partnership enables us to reach a wider pool of candidates, access more diverse talent and advertise our early career opportunities through different channels.

30% Club

We are a proud member of the 30% Club which works to increase the numbers of women on FTSE-100 boards and support diversity at all levels of an organisation.

Bristol Equality Charter

The Bristol Equality Charter has been set up to help improve equality, diversity and inclusion across Bristol. We have been involved from the outset in this important initiative and were one of the first signatories.

Women in Business Charter: Bristol

We are proud to be signatories of the Women in Business Charter which supports businesses in and around Bristol that are making progress towards gender equality and aims to accelerate the pace of change for the benefit of women, the businesses they work in and the communities they live in by driving action around their seven goals.

Age-friendly Employer Pledge

HL have signed the Age-friendly Employer Pledge and are proudly committed to ensuring our recruitment processes, working practices, and training and development opportunities are all inclusive and accessible to workers over the age of 50.