Representing our global workforce
All voices at Aviva deserve to be heard.
Aviva Communities are one of the ways we are working to become a more inclusive organisation. We have established six employee resource groups, bringing together a wide range of support networks from across the business.
From mentor programmes and apprenticeships, to social awareness campaigns, these groups help ensure that all our employees have an equal voice and are fairly represented.
Our communities are:
- Ability – driving accessibility for everyone
- Balance – supporting gender parity
- Carers – supporting carers and parents
- Generations – an intergenerational workplace
- Origins – embracing cultural diversity
- Pride – empowering our people to be themselves
Our carers community
Supporting Aviva colleagues so that they can have full, rewarding careers aswell as the space they need to care for loved ones.
Transcript for video Our carers communnity
It's time to celebrate and support all our people who have a caring role.
Whether that be for a family member, partner or friend.
At Aviva, our carers community provides a space for those with caring responsibilities to access, support, guidance and friendships from Aviva and other colleagues with similar caring roles.
We also aim to secure educational resources and awareness sessions for our leaders to stay up to date on the policies and support services available to our carers.
We want to be recognised and celebrated internally and externally for the support we provide our people, enabling everyone to have a full and rewarding career, as well as space to care for those they love.
Our people
Our Communities give our people a voice, and have been successfully doing this since we launced the networks in 2017. Our Communities have a global presence and celebrate the diversity of our workforce, educate our people and raise awareness on inclusion-related topics all throughout the year.
Ability network
After undertaking the Business Disability Forum's disability smart audit in 2021, this Community aided Aviva in achieving the Silver Ambassador status. This network also became 'Outstanding Employee Network of the Year' finalists at the Women in Finance awards in 2022. And in 2024, the Ability network will be proposing changes to be made on the Workplace Adjustments Passports in order to be more inclusive, more accessible and more actively used.
Balance network
Balance have continued fighting for equality for all genders in the workplace and in 2023, they were recognised as the 'Most Inclusive Gender Network' at the Women in Insurance awards. They advocate for more colleagues, particularly men, to take their entitled six months of equal parental leave and champion job sharing. In 2024, we will see an increase in discussions around this and a desire to increase the uptake of our parental leave coaching opportunities.
Carers network
Winners of Aviva's Community Champion award at the Values in Action awards in 2023, the Carers Community have grown from strength to strength and heavily contributed to Aviva's achievement of being one of six organisations in the UK to achieve the Level 3 Carers Confident Ambassador status in 2023. They spearheaded the need to update our carers leave policy and resulted in making positive changes with the Irish policy too.
Generations network
Generations used 2023 to set their strategy for a sustainable workforce and set up and lead the first insurance industry Age Diversity Roundtable in the UK. In 2024, they will focus on implementing their strategy, leading more market-specific Age-related discussions and helping Aviva enter the first Age index.
Origins network
Since the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, Origins have been at the forefront of all ethnicity-related conversations, and won the 'highly commended Outstanding Employee Network' award at the British Diversity Awards in 2022 and 'Outstanding Diversity Network' at the Inclusive Awards in 2023. With support from their Executive Sponsors, Origins lobbied for Aviva to pilot a flexible bank holiday policy which will be trialled in 2024.
Pride network
This community celebrated 15 years of existence in 2022 as Aviva's longest-running employee network and marked this milestone with the launch of pronoun stickers for all UK colleagues on their ID badges, and enabled pronouns to be displayed across all Microsoft accounts for consistency. In 2023, Aviva went live with the Gender Neutral Titles project, enabling the Mx title to be used for all customers across multiple products and platforms.
Executive Committee Sponsorship
Our Group Executive Committee each co-sponsor one of the Communities, and advocate for the purpose and growth of these networks. We recognise that our people will identify with various diversity characteristics, therefore our Communities work closely together to acknowledge the importance of intersectionality and allyship.
