Our people

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

We offer colleagues opportunities to develop themselves for their future success. We also develop the skill capability of the business to meet future needs.

Our HL Learning Academy allows us to run induction programmes, career development programmes, a management qualification and team building events. Over 30% of colleagues have attended team events focusing on building diverse, high performing teams.

We encourage attendance of both external and internal programmes. We’ve introduced the 70:20:10 learning model, which emphasises the importance of learning through experience. We want to encourage colleagues to get involved in more activities outside of their daily role.

Mentoring at HL

A large part of our people strategy is about developing our in-house talent. 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.

We’ve identified many people in the business that have all the attitude and skills to develop their career, but confidence holds them back.

In 2019 we launched our Career Confidence Mentor Scheme to help those colleagues whose confidence was holding them back from progressing their careers.

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. Find more information on the SW Mentoring awards here.

We are participants in the Stepping up Mentoring scheme, which unlocks and develops potential talent from around Bristol from a variety of backgrounds, and are proud winners of the Stepping Up Diversity Champion Award.

In 2019 we also rolled out training for our marketing department to help them better understand investing and how it works. Whilst this was to aid them in their daily role, it was also an opportunity for them to improve their knowledge for their personal needs.

Mental wellbeing

We promote wellbeing for our employees and take our responsibility to support our colleagues seriously. We offer a range of physical, mental and financial health and wellbeing services for our colleagues.

2019 has seen the launch of our new and improved Employee Assistance Programme app, Lifeworks, which gives colleagues access to counselling 24/7.

We have an internal colleague led Mental Fitness group and have introduced training of wellbeing champions to help those that need support. We have also introduced our first mental health first aiders and will expand this number in the next year.

HL completed the Mind Wellbeing at Work survey and were awarded a ‘Silver’ rating.

Physical wellbeing

We offer annual health checks for colleagues who sign up. 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 as this is key to making sure colleagues have 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 a variety of sporting activities to raise money for our HL Foundation.

We run Personal Development, Healthy Living and Healthy Mind weeks where a range of workshops and classes are run to raise awareness and promote a healthy working environment for employees.

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.

Financial wellbeing

Financial wellbeing has become a key focus. Managing money and understanding pensions and retirement options is complicated. We know our clients need support and our colleagues are no different. We’re beginning to run educational talks for colleagues on investing, budgeting and pensions to help empower them to save and invest with confidence.

In 2019 we also rolled out training for our marketing department to help them better understand investing and how it works. Whilst this was to aid them in their daily role, it was also an opportunity for them to improve their knowledge for their personal needs.

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 72% and our overall engagement score increased to 61 from 53 in 2016, reflecting the work that has been done over the past year to improve internal communication and the working environment.

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:

Modern slavery Act and Policy
Bribery and Corruption training and policies
Flexible working
Discrimination and harassment policies
Equal pay
Human Rights Policy

Groups and events

As part of our commitment to diversity and inclusion, we support our people in establishing diversity networks.

Cultural Diversity
Gender Diversity
Mental Fitness
Kaleidoscope (LGBT+)
Financial Inclusion
Environment, Sustainability and Climate Change group
Sport and Social Groups

We support, and encourage our colleagues to join us in celebrating diverse events, including (among others):

Chinese New Year
International Women’s Day
Bristol Pride (which we sponsor)
Ramadan
St. Paul's Carnival
Diwali
Black History Month