Responsible
New tech must earn people’s trust and transform lives for the better.
Inclusive
The future of tech must be diverse and inclusive for everyone to benefit.
Sustainable
Tech must accelerate our journey to net zero emissions and a circular economy.
Why disability matters
From informing government strategy to connecting individual homes and businesses, BT Group is shaping the UK’s digital future. We are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive future where everyone is involved.
To achieve that, we’re making sure that our workforce reflects the customers we serve and the communities we operate in. That includes the growing number of people in the UK – around 16 million or 24% of the population – who are disabled or have a long-term health condition.
We see what disabled people have to offer our business. We welcome their perspective. Put simply, we can’t build an inclusive digital future without it.
That’s why we’re striving to make it as fair and easy for people with every kind of disability to apply to work here, to join our business, and to feel welcome and well supported as they build a career with us.
We’re committed to offering interviews to a fair and proportionate number of disabled applicants who meet our minimum criteria for a job.
We’re actively encouraging more disabled people to apply for jobs with us and making sure that we provide the right support to our existing colleagues.
We’re making sure that disabled people have the opportunity to demonstrate their skills, talent and abilities – both at the interview stage and throughout their careers here.
You’ll have the opportunity to indicate you wish to be considered under the Disability Confident scheme when you apply for a role with us.
On the application form, you can tell us about your disability and why you need an adjustment.
We’ll ask you to suggest possible adjustments that might help, including previous adjustments
you’ve had.
If necessary, you can discuss things in more depth with one of our recruiters. This isn’t an exhaustive list – if you need an adjustment to help you be at your best, just let us know and we’ll take it into account.
Possible adjustments
- Extra time to complete online or in-person tests/assessments
- Changing the time or location of an interview or assessment
- Supplying information in different formats
- A sign language interpreter
- Supported tests, with help from a support worker – for example to read questions out loud
- Assistive technology or physical adaptations to equipment
Passport
A 'passport' is a simple document which can be completed by any colleague who feels their ability to work is
being impacted due to health, disability or caring responsibilities.
We've developed this tool to help
colleagues and their managers record any information and agreed actions together.
Workplace Adjustment
A 'workplace adjustment' is a positive adaptation to help colleagues who either have a disability, health
condition, or are experiencing a change in personal circumstances that may be preventing them from performing at
their full potential.
Changes can be agreed privately between colleagues and people managers, or implemented with the assistance of
our referral service.
Declaration
A 'declaration' is where we encourage our colleagues to share their disability status. This is held alongside
all other personal details in our secure and confidential HR System.
Sharing this information helps us understand more about the communities that work here, and empowers us to make
BT Group a more inclusive place to work.
At 31 March 2023, 33.4% of our Board members, 30% of our Executive Committee members, and 22.5% of our senior leadership team were women.
Our Gender Equality Network (GEN) continues to represent its members effectively to help shape our D&I plans.
We’ve built relationships with Code First Girls, Women Returners, Black Girls Tech Summit and Girls Talk London to create more opportunities for women to move into technology careers.
Our last Gender pay gap has improved to 6.1% (6.7% previously) because we’ve recruited more women into senior roles. There has also been a slight rise in female representation in the upper 23.3% (0.3%) and lower middle 16.62% (1.3%) pay quarters.
The award-winning "Not her problem" campaign tackled sexist hate and ran during the UEFA Women’s Euros 2022.
At 31 March 2023, our Board comprised two directors from ethnic minority backgrounds. Our Ethnic Diversity Network (EDN) continues to champion its members’ concerns to help shape our D&I plans.
We’re making good progress in our ethnic minority representation, with notable gains against the diversity targets set in our Manifesto launched in 2021.
As lead sponsor of the Avado FastFutures programme, we’re helping upskill over 7,000 18-24 year old learners from ethnically diverse backgrounds. We want to help them develop digital and data skills to unlock opportunities and launch their careers.
We’ve built partnerships with The Aleto Foundation and 10,000 Black interns to attract and recruit young people from ethnic minority backgrounds.
Our Black middle managers continue to participate in the McKinsey Black Leadership programme which provides career development and networking opportunities..
At 31 March 2023, our Board had one disabled director.
Our Able2 Network continues to provide invaluable lived experience input into our D&I plans.
We’re a member of Valuable 500, a global business collective made up of 500 CEOs and their companies that are committed to disability inclusion. At the December 2022 disability summit, we renewed our commitment to three priorities: Workplace adjustment; Disability advocacy; and Career progression of our junior managers.
We renewed our status as a Disability Confident Leader and continue to work with several teams across the business, our Able2 People Network and external partner, the Business Disability Forum.
We partnered with Purple Goat, the UK’s only communications agencies run by disabled people, to deliver a series of awareness raising videos highlighting the experiences of colleagues with a range of disabilities – including diabetes, autism and visual and hearing impairments
We’re making good progress against the disability representation targets we set in our Manifesto.
- This year we ran several learning and Talent programmes to support our colleagues’ development such as Digital Campus, Accelerate, Elevate, and Aspire, a career development programme in our Consumer unit.
- We launched our reskilling programme CAPSLOCK, training existing employees for cybersecurity roles. Everyone who graduated now has a BT Group cybersecurity job. The programme won the ‘Recruitment and Workforce Planning Strategy’ award at the 2022 HR Excellence Awards.
- We launched our new ‘My HR’ system to simplify and digitise our HR technology landscape and give colleagues a better experience.
- We created our two-step ‘Covid Recovery Programme’ to help all employees manage the effects of long Covid and improve their health, wellbeing and functional capabilities. Those off work with long Covid dropped from 46% to 12% after referral to step two of the programme.
- To support our colleagues during the cost of living crisis we awarded a cost of living pay rise to 85% of our UK-based colleagues.
- Our 11 People Networks continue to play a key role in ensuring we maintain an intersectional lens as we work to achieve our D&I ambitions.
- We were a Gold Sponsor of London PRIDE 2022.
- The CCLA report on mental health for investors places us in the top 10% of the FTSE 100.
- We’re helping our most vulnerable customers during these tough times. We offer eligible customers our Home Essentials broadband and EE Basics mobile. This helped almost 180,000 customers this year. 3 million customers were excluded from April 2023 price increases.
- This year we helped 4.6m people and over 465,000 businesses and their employees in the UK improve their digital skills – a total of 19.3m people since FY15.
- We continuously engage with and challenge key suppliers on pricing and supply chain diversity.
Making progress
We’re making good progress against the disability representation targets we set in our Manifesto.
At 31 March 2023, our Board had one disabled director.
Our Able2 Network continues to provide invaluable lived experience input into our I&D plans.
We’re a member of Valuable 500, a global business collective made up of 500 CEOs and their companies that are committed to disability inclusion. At the December 2022 disability summit, we renewed our commitment to three priorities: Workplace adjustment; Disability advocacy; and Career progression of our junior managers.
We renewed our status as a Disability Confident Leader and continue to work with several teams across the business, our Able2 People Network and our external partner, the Business Disability Forum.
