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Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion – Focus on Race, Culture and Ethnicity

18 May 2022


Permanent tsb is an equal opportunities employer committed to creating a professional environment in which our employees feel valued, included and empowered to succeed in their career, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, age, race, religion, ability/disability, background or life experiences.

We have made significant progress across a number of areas since first launching our Diversity & Inclusion Strategy in 2018. Actions taken include:

  • A review of all of our recruitment and promotion processes with a D&I lens to ensure the avoidance of bias in these processes.
  • The development of focused inclusive leadership development programmes that support career development.
  • The promotion and role modelling of New Ways of Working, such as reduced hours, home working, and compressed hours, which support enhanced flexibility and work life balance, for all colleagues.
  • Introducing a Multi Faith Room in our Head Office at St Stephen’s Green.
  • Encouraging the updates of personal data to include optional extra fields for colleagues to complete including race, religion and nationality (amongst others).
  • Establishing an Employee Resource Group “DiCE” to tackle challenges around race, culture and ethnicity.

Almost 300 of our colleagues come from 51 nations outside of Ireland. The list below demonstrates how globally diverse our permanent tsb community really is:

PTSB Colleague Nationalities:

Afghan

Chinese

German

Mauritian

Scottish

Zimbabwean

American

Croatian

Greek

Mexican

Slovakian

 

Argentinian

Czech

Hungarian

Moldovan

South African

 

Australian

Danish

Indian

Namibian

South Korean

 

Bahraini

Dutch

Irish / Northern Irish

Nepalese

Spanish

 

Bangladeshi

English

Italian

Nigerian

Swiss

 

Brazilian

Estonian

Latvian

Pakistan

Turkish

 

British

Filipino

Lithuanian

Polish

Ukrainian

 

Bulgarian

Finnish

Malawian

Portuguese

Venezuelan

 

Canadian

French

Malaysian

Romanian

Vietnamese

 

DiCE - Our Employee Resource Group For Race, Culture and Ethnicity

To support the delivery of our Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, we have set up a number of Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), whose aim is to enable employees to get together based on shared characteristics or life experiences. There are currently five ERGs in place, and one of them is DiCE, our Network for Race, Culture and Ethnicity.

DiCE (Diversity Inclusion Cultural & Ethnicity) has an Executive Sponsor who supports the team to achieve its Vision – To recognise, value, promote and celebrate people of all races, ethnicities, nationalities and cultural heritage.

The objectives of DiCE are as follows:

  • To align ourselves with the permanent tsb vision to foster a diverse and inclusive environment, one that represents a modern Ireland.
  • To educate as well as learn from our colleagues who hail from other cultural backgrounds.

Since its establishment, DiCE has achieved the following:

  • DiCE was launched in May 2021 in an attempt to align with the UN World Day for Cultural Diversity celebrated on the 21 May. The group highlighted its purpose to the permanent tsb network and encouraged colleagues to update their data in Core HR which would help the group to craft its diversity programme.
  • An Inspiration Week was held in July 2021 where a host of speakers were invited to share their life experiences with permanent tsb. Our speakers included Mariela Shaker (a famous violinist and Syrian Refugee Activist), Ogie Hollywood (a former marketing professional at Google), Matt Burke (the creator of the Magic Minds Foundation and Magic Minds Ireland Podcast) and Boidu Sayeh (the first African born inter-county Gaelic footballer who played for Westmeath).
  • DiCE went on to celebrate Samhain and Diwali before drawing the 2021 events to an end. For Samhain, a Celtic festival which is now commonly known as Halloween, the group organised a pumpkin carving competition for which the winners received vouchers. The same was also done for the Indian festival of Lights, Diwali in November, where colleagues were asked to send in pictures of their Indian outfits and home-made Rangoli.
  • In 2022, we wanted to celebrate our Polish colleagues. Hence, for the occasion of Fat Thursday in February, DiCE funded free doughnuts for our colleagues in Stephen’s Green, Blackrock and Cork Airport. The treats also made an appearance in March in the form of cupcakes to mark the most popular of Irish festivals, St Patrick’s Day. And, to mark Global Cultural Diversity Day in May 2022, DiCE has organised numerous events to celebrate all of our cultures in permanent tsb, including serving international menus in our HQ canteen and hosting educational events.

We are immensely proud of all that our DICE Network has achieved and the progress that has been made in supporting our community of colleagues. We look forward to supporting them further and working together on our journey to drive change and inclusion. 

Learn more about the Bank’s wider commitment to Diversity and Inclusion and in our Annual Report, beginning on page 36.


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