Measuring diversity

To ensure equal opportunities for all we have started to monitor diversity more closely by tracking internal movements, retention and leavers based on gender, ethnicity and, to a limited extent, disability.

We are addressing our recruitment policies, pay reviews and equal pay monitoring, and we are gathering metrics to track our progress on ethnicity, gender, and age. We appreciate we have more work to do in this respect, and will use the improved data to help us identify trends and take action where necessary.

Details of the ethnic composition of the UK workforce and the age and gender profile of the whole Group are shown in the charts below.

The O2 plc Board comprises the Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, one further Executive Director and six independent Non-executive Directors. We have one female Non-executive member of the Board, representing 10 per cent of the total.

Our business is generally well balanced in terms of gender with some 43 per cent of our total workforce being female. The number of women holding senior management positions in March 2005 stood at 25 per cent.

The Company offers flexible and home working arrangements. About 90 per cent of those women who are on maternity leave return to the business, many of them in part-time roles. We have 1,259 women and 657 men working part-time in O2 UK, representing 20.2 per cent of the workforce. The majority of our part-timers are in customer and retail jobs, but there are also several examples of more senior part-time workers.

Pay audits, which include analysis of gender-related issues where appropriate, are conducted in our business operations. These processes allow us to ensure that any gender-related concerns are addressed and enable us to implement a pay strategy that is firmly focused on improving levels of performance across O2.