BP fuels diversity and inclusion drive

BP UK is to launch a diversity and inclusion (D&I) plan‎ aimed at boosting the representation of minority groups within the company, including at senior levels. It also says it will report its ethnicity pay gap by 2022.

The plan also reflects what the company feels is its “obligation to improve society”. Currently, the new policy is being worked on, the company has stated, and many details are still to be decided.

A letter has been sent to all of BP’s UK employees from the company’s UK HR director Simon Ashley explaining the fuel giant’s ambition to improve inclusivity and tackle discrimination.

It stated: “We have listened to colleagues in the UK and around the world and have ‎identified three areas for ‎our ‎focused action against racial injustice.”

The “areas” referred to were transparency, accountability and talent. In terms of transparency BP has committed to reporting on the company’s UK ethnicity pay gap annually from 2022, perhaps earlier and will regularly report ‎progress internally ‎and externally on progress in improving diversity.

Data collection was an important component of this: “We will continue our focus on ensuring we have ‎access to robust ‎ethnicity data for our people, which is gathered via voluntary ‎self-identification,” said the company.

The letter set out the goal of increasing ethnic minority representation at senior levels (increasing from 10.2% to 15%) and across levels up to and including first level leaders (from 17.5% to 25%). At all levels of the company BP said it was looking for a “20% or greater uplift in black representation”. It added the company would work harder to tackle discrimination and unfairness in BP’s supply chain.

In terms of talent BP said it would, from January next year, intervene to ensure UK employees from ethnic minorities were able to develop and progress their careers at the firm. It would it said provide focused “development and progression interventions to support ‎career progress for UK ‎black employees and other underrepresented ethnic ‎minorities (from January 2021)”.‎

BP said it would increase funding of UK organisations “working to strengthen the STEM ‎education pipeline – focusing ‎specifically on black talent and other ‎underrepresented minorities (from January 2021)”.‎ It will also focus more on growing black and other ‎underrepresented ethnic minority ‎talent via internships and partnerships with racially diverse UK ‎institutions.


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