Zurich’s HR boss on why business needs to start celebrating part-time working

This arti­cle is part of our Going Against the Grain series, which tells the sto­ries of com­pa­nies bold enough to break busi­ness norms and try out new ideas. To explore the rest of the series, head here.

Back in 2019, Zurich insur­ance realised it had a prob­lem. Despite high num­bers of women in its work­force, there were too few in the top jobs.

This meant that despite the fact it paid men and women equal­ly for sim­i­lar jobs, its gen­der pay gap remained stub­born­ly high. It report­ed a mean gen­der pay gap of 22.8% and a medi­an of 22.6% in 2018, although both fig­ures were improve­ments com­pared to 2017.

Bonus­es, how­ev­er, showed a dif­fer­ent sto­ry, with the mean and medi­an pay gap com­ing in at 51.9% and 44.9% respec­tive­ly, up from 47.2% and 34.2% in 2017.

The com­pa­ny asked its behav­iour­al insights team to inves­ti­gate the issue. What it dis­cov­ered was that an appar­ent lack of flex­i­bil­i­ty could be hold­ing women back from apply­ing for more senior roles. 

Zurich there­fore made the deci­sion to adver­tise all its vacan­cies as part-time, job share or full-time. The hope was this would encour­age more women to apply for the top roles.

The behav­iour­al insights team used nudge the­o­ry to deter­mine the best word­ing for job ads. Every role that is adver­tised inter­nal­ly and exter­nal­ly car­ries the words “part-time, job-share, full-time” at the top; the only cur­rent excep­tions are for exec­u­tive posi­tions.

“We were aware there was a lack of women climb­ing to the top of the organ­i­sa­tion in both senior tech­ni­cal and senior lead­er­ship roles,” Zurich HR direc­tor Steve Collinson tells Racon­teur. “We want­ed to under­stand what was going on.”

The move to adver­tise more flex­i­ble work­ing aimed to test if being more open about the part-time oppor­tu­ni­ties at the busi­ness and extend­ing the option to every role would help to diver­si­fy its appli­cant pool.

“We can now see from the data, that’s pret­ty much exact­ly what’s hap­pened,” says Collinson.

Improving diversity through its part-time offer

After two years of col­lect­ing data, Zurich found that the num­ber of part-time hires dou­bled, while demand from women for part-time roles increased by 83% com­pared to pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els. Over­all, appli­ca­tions for vacan­cies at the insur­er have risen by two-thirds since the initiative’s launch.

Zurich believes this is because its jobs are now appeal­ing to a more diverse range of can­di­dates. While some of those who choose to work few­er hours than a stan­dard 35-hour week are doing so due to child­care, the com­pa­ny found a myr­i­ad of rea­sons why peo­ple want­ed to work part-time. These includ­ed the flex­i­bil­i­ty to pur­sue out­side inter­ests, peo­ple with health chal­lenges or dis­abil­i­ties and peo­ple who need­ed to care for oth­er rel­a­tives besides their chil­dren.

Collinson describes as an “inescapable fact” that, in the UK, the major­i­ty of child­care respon­si­bil­i­ties still tend to fall on women. This may explain why 23% of women have opt­ed for a more flex­i­ble work­ing arrange­ment over the past 12 months at Zurich, com­pared with only 2% of men.

The gen­der pay gap has also reduced. For 2020 (the most recent fig­ures avail­able), the mean pay gap had dropped to 19.7% and the medi­an to 17.5%. The bonus pay gap is down to a mean of 39% and a medi­an of 25.5%.

That year, Zurich also expe­ri­enced a 16% rise in women apply­ing for jobs and a 20% rise in appli­ca­tions for man­age­ment roles. The num­ber of women hired for senior roles increased by a third, although they still only account­ed for 31.6% of the high­est paid jobs, com­pared to 60.2% of the low­est paid.

Pay is cal­cu­lat­ed on a pro-rata basis and Collinson says some of Zurich’s most senior lead­ers have tak­en up the option to switch to part-time.

“We’ve seen lots of peo­ple apply for jobs with us who may nev­er have pre­vi­ous­ly con­sid­ered a role in finan­cial ser­vices,” he adds. “Even if they don’t need that lev­el of flex­i­bil­i­ty at this stage of their career, they are say­ing they want to work for an employ­er where its approach to work is reflect­ed in the organisation’s cul­ture.”

Collinson believes that the pol­i­cy, which is now per­ma­nent, will also have the long-term ben­e­fit of improv­ing employ­ee reten­tion.

“Employ­ees who want flex­i­bil­i­ty will often leave their employ­er if it’s not avail­able,” he says. “What we’ve done is pro­tect peo­ple and hope­ful­ly give them a long-term career which can pro­vide them with the flex­i­bil­i­ty they need as and when they need it.”

Rising demand for flexible working

The change in work­ing habits over the course of the pan­dem­ic has also influ­enced the new hir­ing pol­i­cy. Despite hav­ing a flex­i­ble work­ing pol­i­cy in place pre-Covid, uptake is far more wide­spread now.

“Man­agers have also realised that pro­vid­ing flex­i­bil­i­ty for peo­ple with dif­fer­ent work­ing pat­terns is what’s helped to keep the busi­ness­es going through­out the pan­dem­ic,” Collinson adds.

Mak­ing the tran­si­tion has not come with­out its chal­lenges. Train­ing has been cru­cial.

“Some hir­ing man­agers were say­ing that they need­ed peo­ple who were avail­able full-time, so we’ve had to edu­cate them,” he says. “It’s been a case of ask­ing: ‘Would­n’t you rather have the best per­son for the job out of the entire pool of tal­ent that’s avail­able, rather than the per­son who can work Mon­day to Fri­day?’”

Anoth­er issue that arose was that split­ting the work­load between part-time staff meant more work was need­ed to recruit enough peo­ple. Collinson believes that being part of a large organ­i­sa­tion has helped in this regard.

“Each hir­ing man­ag­er might have a cou­ple of vacan­cies a year where there’ll be hir­ing two peo­ple rather than one,” he says. “There’s a def­i­nite impact on hir­ing man­agers, but as an organ­i­sa­tion of 4,500 peo­ple we’re able to spread the load.”

At a point when com­pe­ti­tion for tal­ent is at record lev­els across most busi­ness sec­tors in the UK, hav­ing a point of dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion can be par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful. Collinson says: “It feels to me that a lot of employ­ers are dis­cour­ag­ing tal­ent­ed peo­ple from apply­ing by not adopt­ing part-time or flex­i­ble work­ing options.” 

Fol­low­ing the suc­cess of its ini­tia­tive, Zurich is urg­ing the gov­ern­ment to leg­is­late for all employ­ers over a cer­tain size to make their vacan­cies avail­able on a part-time basis.

Collinson says: “We need a cul­tur­al rev­o­lu­tion to cel­e­brate part-time work­ing. If your busi­ness is up for the chal­lenge, you need to make the com­mit­ment now and equip your hir­ing man­agers to dri­ve that cul­tur­al change.”