Vodafone

Creating an inclusive environment where everyone can thrive

Katrina Lowes, Head of Operations, Vodafone Centre for Health

At Vodafone, we are passionate about making the world more connected, inclusive, and sustainable, committed to creating a place where everyone can truly be themselves and belong.

In fact, it’s only when we harness the power of the different perspectives around us that we progress as an organisation; challenging the way we do things and doing them better – not just for our customers, but our people and communities too. That’s why we’re building an inclusive environment where everyone can thrive.

There has never been a better time of achieving our goals. Beyond recruitment, there are many barriers that have prevented women from staying in the workforce and progressing in their careers.

Today we employ 94,200 full time colleagues, representing 137 different nationalities and our commitment to inclusion is encouraged at every level. From Vodafone’s senior leadership to each colleague in every country, we have built our culture (Spirit of Vodafone), code of conduct, and business principles to create and maintain inclusion across our organisation.

We work to ensure there is gender diversity when resourcing any team, not only in achieving balanced recruitment candidate lists, but also ensuring that talent reviews and rewards also represent our broad community.

Carrying the greater responsibility for childcare and, increasingly, elderly relatives. Dealing with the Menopause. Not recognising people like yourself in a management career path. These are just some of the hidden issues that impact women more than men.

We’ve set targets to help us track our progress and achieve our goals, and by 2030 we aim to have 40% women in management roles and 25% of our global senior leadership – the most senior 160 leaders across Vodafone’s markets in Europe and Africa – will come from ethnically diverse backgrounds.

Beyond recruitment

At the same time, we recognise that recruitment policy and business principles are only part

Since the pandemic, there has been an increase in women in the workforce. In the UK for example, flexible working has enabled more women to be working mothers and around half a million women went from parttime to full-time working1 .