Our Colleagues are critical to our success as a business. We strive to support Colleagues in realising their full potential, by developing skills and capability, supporting their wellbeing and creating an inclusive, diverse culture that celebrates individuality, promotes respect and equity and allows everyone to bring their best self to work.
Our business and our industry is evolving and we need to look continuously at what critical skills our people need to ensure we have the organisational capability to succeed now, and that we are investing in developing the skills we will need in the future. There are three components to our colleague development offering:
Early careers
Our early careers strategy focuses on developing new skills through structured learning whilst practically applying newly acquired skills in different early talent roles across the company. We offer schemes for graduates and placement students across a range of disciplines and we continue to offer a series of apprenticeship programmes, alongside supporting universities with summer internships.
Role based development
We actively encourage personal development by offering role-based progression schemes for customer facing colleagues to develop through a structured career and remuneration path. To support both role based and broader personal development, we offer a range of easy access tools including a digital learning tool, CareerBuilder, which offers online , bitesize learning to aide personal skills development.
Leadership development
We recognise the important part that leaders play in creating our culture of continuous development, we continue to invest in leadership training, building leadership capability and enabling leaders to help colleagues reach their full potential and drive and deliver growth ambitions.
Wellbeing is a key part of our role as a responsible employer and we believe it has a positive impact on both our colleagues and the productivity and efficiency of our business.
We provide support for our colleagues when it’s most needed. In addition to providing educational activities, support tools and running awareness campaigns we offer essential core services such as a 24/7 confidential Colleague Assistance Programme and a smart health app that provides access to a suite of services, from a UK based 24/7 GP, to nutrition consultations, all of which are freely available to colleague’s dependants too. Our core wellbeing services are supplemented by a suite of free, supportive tools and supply a range of services from financial advice to mental health support.
Colleagues are also supported through our network of wellbeing Champions and Mental Health First Aiders. Colleagues fulfil this role alongside their day job and act as key contacts whilst promoting both preventative and supportive healthcare via the tools and resources available within our wellbeing programme.
We know that worrying about finances, in particular can take a huge toll on mental and physical health, relationships, and overall quality of life and there may be instances when colleagues require exceptional financial support.
Our Colleague Hardship Fund was established in 2020, in response to the Coronavirus pandemic, to support colleagues and their families who are experiencing significant and acute financial hardship. Applications can be made by colleagues, in complete confidence, for non-repayable grants and we are proud to continue to provide this extra level of financial support.
Doing the right thing for our 4Cs starts with our colleagues. We want to make sure we remain a place where all colleagues can contribute, thrive and be who they are, and to create a culture where every colleague feels that they belong.
We encourage our colleagues to be themselves in the workplace, because respecting diversity of thinking, and appreciating different perspectives, strengthens the way we work. This helps us to deliver better outcomes for our colleagues, customers and the communities that we serve.
Through our #CountMeIn campaign, we monitor colleague diversity through voluntarily declared data on gender, gender identity, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, social mobility, religion and family & caring responsibilities. We consider candidates from all backgrounds as part of any recruitment process and we are dedicated to attracting and retaining the best talent in the industry.
Through partnerships with external organisations focused on different elements of diversity, we continue to raise awareness and build understanding required to foster an inclusive culture.
We are signatories of the Women in Finance Charter supporting the progression of women into senior roles in the financial services sector by focusing on the executive pipeline and the mid-tier level. We are aiming to achieve at least 35% of senior roles held by women by 2025, increasing from the 30% achieved 2022.
We are also signatories of the 30% Club participating in both their Mission Gender Equity and Mission Include cross company mentoring schemes.
Our Inclusion council consist of a voluntary group of colleagues that all share the same passion about diversity and advocating an inclusive culture at Hastings.
They do this by:
Communication is essential to positive organisational change, and our culture allows everyone to contribute opinions and share information to make a difference.
Hastings Colleague Forum
The Hastings Colleague Forum (HCF) is used to communicate and consult on matters that impact colleagues. The forum is made up of democratically elected representatives from across the business who play a significant role in keeping us informed of issues faced by colleagues as well as raising awareness of topics and activities within their business areas.
YourVoice Survey
YourVoice is our annual colleague engagement survey and is a critical part of our commitment to create an environment where colleagues feel listened to, and their opinions valued. It generates helpful insight, helping us to understand how colleagues are feeling and what we can do better for them.
Our aim is to provide the best products, great value and a simple, straightforward service. We are committed to continuous improvement and constantly seek ways to be better for our customers.
We are making strong progress with our ambition of being the best and biggest digital insurance provider in the UK with over 4.7m downloads of our mobile app. The majority of our car insurance customers now choose to make changes to their policy online and we continue to invest in our Hastings app for claims, so more customers can notify us of a vehicle related incident via this channel manage their claim, submit evidence and for some customers arranging roadside assistance following an accident is now possible direct from the app too.
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