3 good reasons to check out the Diversity & Inclusion report

Discover the flagship Diversity & Inclusion initiatives carried out by BNP Paribas Personal Finance between 2021 and 2023 through an interview with Wonjé Bytha, Head of Diversity & Inclusion.

Could you give us 3 good reasons to check out the Diversity & Inclusion report?

First of all, this report provides access to an overview of actions carried out by the different countries where BNP Paribas Personal Finance operates to serve the same ambition: becoming an inclusive company.

Secondly, it allows us to understand that the company’s 5 commitments in terms of Diversity & Inclusion are not only addressed to our employees but also to our customers and the civil society.
As such, we work in collaboration with our partners and stakeholders, including many associations in all countries.

Finally, this report allows you to enrich your own reflections on diversity and inclusion and to identify practices that could be replicated in another country/company or adapted to another context.

If you had to name a few figures or initiatives that are emblematic of the company’s commitment to this subject, what would they be?

Two figures in particular catch my attention: 83% of our employees worldwide consider BNP Paribas Personal Finance’s management to be inclusive in 2023 and 57% of our young talents are women in 2022 (international scope).

I think we can be proud of these two figures, which are constantly increasing, but there is still room for improvement.

As for the flagship initiatives, I would mention three:

The publication of our Diversity & Inclusion Charter, which provides a global vision of our Diversity & Inclusion policy and is a kind of compass for our countries. Depending on their culture and their level of maturity on the subject, they have recommendations on the actions to be put in place to make progress on all our subjects,

The plurality of employee networks that have emerged in the countries (e.g. BNP Paribas Pride, Ability, Cultur’all, Ex-Aequo or Findomestic Donna). They play a very important role because they allow our employees to have a voice on subjects that are important to them and contribute to disseminating our Diversity & Inclusion policy within the company and externally, thanks to the regular presence of our employees in the field.

Anything related to support for vulnerable people, whether it is in relation to:
our employees I think, for example, everything that Tilia,a 100% subsidiary of BNP Paribas Personal Finance, does to support caregivers in their efforts or the commitments made by some employees to have zero tolerance for racism in a video,
our clients, through a variety of programmes made available to them around financial inclusion such as training or initiation.

Companies regularly evolve the topics addressed as part of their Diversity & Inclusion policy to meet new expectations or changes in society. Could you name a topic that could become a next challenge?

So far, we have addressed several themes that each concerned very specific categories of people.
At a time when the population of some countries is ageing considerably, particularly in Europe, a new subject is becoming more and more important and cuts across several categories of people, regardless of their gender, origins or sexual orientation: it is that of age and more particularly of the elderly.

The new challenge will consist in the coming months and years of rethinking the company and the ways of working in order to take into account the expectations of both the youngest and the most experienced.

We will obviously capitalise on the experience of our European neighbours, but above all we will have to reinvent career management as well as the transfer of skills or the management of stereotypes.