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ITV is committed to employing people from diverse backgrounds. By ensuring that our workforce reflects society, we can better make programmes that represent diverse cultures and appeal to as wide an audience as possible.

Under our talent and diversity strategy we strive to be an inclusive workplace for all, regardless of ethnicity, disability, sexuality, gender or age. In 2009 we made a public commitment to diversity by signing up to the Cultural Diversity Network’s broadcasting industry Diversity Pledge. Under the Pledge, we agree to:

• Recruit fairly and from as wide a talent pool as possible and encourage applications from industry entrants and production staff from diverse backgrounds
• Work to increase the diversity of our senior managers and decision-makers
• Encourage diverse programme output that reflects society
• Take part in, or run, events that promote diversity

ITV’s in-house production business has also made its own public commitments to improve representation both on screen and within its production workforce. From 2010 we will work with the casting agencies we use to select talent and audiences to help them meet the requirements of the Pledge.

During the ITV recruitment process, we gather information about new employees’ ethnicity, sexuality, gender, age, and whether they have any disabilities. This information does not form part of our selection criteria but we use it to ensure we treat all employees equally, and to identify aspects of diversity that are under-represented within our workforce. We also collaborate with external organisations to benchmark the diversity of our workforce against industry best practice and source recommendations for improvement.

Raising awareness about diversity

We have programmes in place to raise awareness, within and outside the company, about ITV’s commitment to employee diversity and progress towards being an inclusive workplace.

In 2009, we appointed nine new ‘talent champions’, each of whom advocates for a particular aspect of diversity. Talent champions are ITV employees who were selected to volunteer for the role alongside their existing responsibilities.

We have also launched a new diversity awareness intranet campaign, and now feature at least one item per month about aspects of diversity on The Watercooler. The campaign’s primary focus in 2009 was on raising awareness about disability and the support we offer. It resulted in more staff than ever before coming forward to declare a disability. One item about dyslexia featured a self-assessment that employees could take to see if they showed signs of this common learning difficulty. Having done so, several employees asked to be formally assessed and some were found to be dyslexic. We have since provided them with the help they need at work.

Other disability awareness initiatives in 2009 included an online course available to all ITV employees, and a training programme designed to help production teams provide a better service to contributors and audience members with disabilities.

We display diversity quality marks that have been awarded to ITV, including the ‘Two Ticks’ disability equality symbol, and the logos of diversity organisations that we belong to on recruitment documentation and other ITV branding. This helps to ensure job applicants and employees alike are aware of our commitment to an inclusive workplace.

In 2009 we began working towards the Investors in Diversity standard, managed through the National Centre for Diversity. Achieving this quality mark will demonstrate ITV’s commitment to diversity and act as an external benchmark of the progress we are making.

Promoting diversity with the Cultural Diversity Network

ITV’s work with the Cultural Diversity Network (CDN) stretches far beyond signing up to its Diversity Pledge.

In 2009, we and other CDN members sponsored a supplement in The Guardian newspaper about the importance of diversity to the media industry. We used the opportunity to showcase some of our own best practice, with the aim of encouraging new talent from minority groups to contact us about working in television.

We also supported the creation of the CDN Awards – an event that provides companies like ITV with the chance to celebrate their achievements and those of their employees. This year, our own talent and diversity manager was shortlisted for an award recognising her ‘outstanding contribution to promoting diversity’.

Ethnic and cultural diversity

People from ethnic minorities comprised 9% of our workforce in 2009, slightly more than the UK average of 7.9% (1) . Our aim is for ITV’s workforce to be representative of the communities where we operate. A large number of our employees work in London and Manchester where the proportion of ethnic minorities is higher than the national average.

ITV supports the Cultural Diversity Network’s (CDN) senior mentoring scheme, designed to provide high potential individuals from ethnic minority backgrounds with the contacts and advice they need to progress to the next stage in their careers. In 2009, fifteen ITV senior managers – more than twice as many as in 2008 – made a voluntary commitment to act as a mentor under this initiative.

We offer one-year paid placements for talented people from ethnic minorities in the north of England who want to embark on a career in television. This is done through the Foundation Placement Scheme, originally piloted by ITV in partnership with regional funders and screen agencies, and which now includes other regional media companies. Of the 100 trainees that have taken part in the initiative since its launch, around 70% have gone on to work in their chosen field.

Initiatives to increase ethnic minority representation in our newsrooms include a mentoring programme to support and encourage aspiring journalists from ethnic minority backgrounds, and placements for ethnic minority students at City University to spend one day a week at ITV.Read more about diversity in our newsrooms and news programmes.

We build links with local communities and organisations that represent cultural or minority groups to increase awareness about our diverse talent schemes. We also use these connections to advertise specific roles and get people from ethnic minorities involved in careers events and workshops at ITV.

Disability

Around 3% of our workforce has a disability and over the last five years we have seen increasing numbers of people with disabilities applying to work at ITV.

We aim to increase disability diversity at ITV through our ‘Enabling Talent’ initiative, aimed at high-potential individuals with disabilities. It provides support to potential new recruits, offers career guidance and facilitates partnerships with external organisations. Our focus for 2009 was to offer traineeships to existing employees with disabilities who had been made redundant, to provide them with the skills needed for different roles within ITV. We also offered 12 people a four-week placement, and have subsequently recruited two of them for a longer, paid traineeship in 2010. We are continuing to enhance the Enabling Talent initiative and plan to develop partnerships with other organisations to expand the number of traineeships available.

Championing diverse talent at ITV

“Enabling Talent made me feel valued for my abilities, not my disability,” says David Cooper after completing the ITV talent scheme for people with disabilities and becoming a member of the Broadcast Resources team in Leeds.

David, who has social anxiety disorder, spent his Enabling Talent placement working as a script archivist at Emmerdale’s production base in Leeds. “The role was challenging but a huge amount of support was available, including regular meetings and training sessions, and workplace ‘buddies’ who gave me advice and encouragement”. At the end of his placement, David was assigned a mentor and provided with job interview training to make sure his transition into the working world went smoothly.

Just one day after he left Emmerdale, David successfully secured a post within ITV’s Broadcast Resources department, producing weekly schedules for transmission.

In 2009, he signed up to become an ITV Talent Champion to help give others with a disability the support they need to succeed in the workplace.

“When the call for Talent Champions went out, I felt it was time to give something back. ITV managed to take someone with a mental health condition so inhibiting they could barely walk out the front door, and make them confident enough to stand up in front of ITV’s Chairman and tell him what needs to change – I want others to have that opportunity too”.

We work closely with disability organisations Remploy and Access to Work to ensure new and existing employees with disabilities are aware of, and have access to, the support they need.

ITV is a member of the Broadcasting and Creative Industries Disability Network (BCIDN), which brings together major UK broadcasters to discuss disability issues on-screen and behind the scenes. Our activities with the BCIDN in 2009 included:

• Participating in the second ‘Sparks’ event in 2009, having hosted the first in December 2008. Aimed at senior decision makers and programme makers from across the industry, the events focus on improving disability representation on- and off-screen.
• Joining forces with the Job Centre Plus Access to Work Scheme and Remploy to improve opportunities for people with disabilities in our industry. As a result of our collaboration, Access to Work created a new team dedicated to reducing barriers for disabled people wanting to work in broadcasting. We invited the team to come to ITV to learn more about what we do, including a visit to the set of Emmerdale

Our Granada region supports the DaDaFest Awards for talented creative people with disabilities. Julie McNamara, who is deaf, won the 2009 ITV Granada Writers Award. Her prize will be the chance to write for Coronation Street, a highly competitive and sought-after opportunity.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) employees

We do not tolerate harassment or discrimination against employees on the basis of their sexual orientation. Members of the LGBT community can benefit from our maternity, paternity, adoption and parental policies to the same degree as heterosexual employees.

We are part of Stonewall’s Diversity Champions programme, which brings together employers from across the UK to promote LGBT equality in the workplace and share best practice. We implemented the Stonewall Index benchmarking exercise – which ranks companies on their efforts to promote LGBT diversity - for the second time in 2009. ITV is now ranked 169th out of 352 organisations, a jump of 78 places from 2008 when we came 247th out of 317. This progress is down to changes we implemented in response to Stonewall’s recommendations following last year’s index results. For example, in 2009 we introduced questions about sexuality to our equal opportunities monitoring form for new starters. The purpose of this is so we can monitor if employees are being treated fairly, and it provides us with statistics that show how representative we are of the LGBT community. From next year we will use these statistics to inform our further progress and the implementation of recommendations from this year’s Stonewall Index.

Gender equality

Nearly half of ITV employees (48%) are women. This is higher than the UK national average of 46% overall and 38% for the broadcasting industry (2) .

We look at trends across our workforce to identify areas where we can increase gender representation and are a member of Opportunity Now, an organisation that promotes the employment of women and benchmarks our gender diversity against industry best practice.

We are working to increase the number of women in management roles, for example by ensuring our succession planning tools promote equality and flexible working.

Work-life balance

A flexible workplace that helps employees balance the demands of work and home life encourages loyalty and promotes wellbeing. It also supports gender diversity, since women are most frequently the primary carers of young children and usually benefit most from working a flexible schedule that suits their needs.

Our aim is to accommodate flexible working requests beyond what is required of us by law. Any employee who has been at ITV for six months or more can apply for a flexible working option. During 2009 we approved 60 applications for flexible working, including nine from men.

We also provide childcare vouchers for qualifying employees.

Age

We work to ensure that potential recruits and existing employees do not experience age discrimination while applying for, or during, a role at ITV. In 2009, 13% of our employees are over 50, slightly less than in 2008.

Some individuals chose to take early retirement from ITV in 2009, when we offered voluntary redundancy as part of our redundancy programme.

ITV is a member of the Employers’ Forum on Age, which provides us with expertise and advice on age matters.

(1) 2001 UK Census

(2) These figures come from the 2006 Skillset Employment Census. The results of the 2009 census will be published in early 2010. http://www.skillset.org/research/activity/census/