Careers at Burberry

Embedding D&I through our internal networks

We have a number of Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), led by members of our teams in collaboration with senior sponsors from across the business. Our growing ERGs create spaces for colleagues to come together and share knowledge, experiences, learnings and mark cultural moments within these groups and the wider Burberry community.

Some of our networks established in the US include Asians in America, Black Heritage and Culture Cooperative, Latinxs of Burberry, LGBT+, Sustainability, Women Empowered at Burberry and the Working Parents Group. We are expanding our ERGs globally in 2021. 

Supporting LGBTQ+ inclusion

We have a longstanding commitment to supporting the LGBTQ+ community, from partnering with organisations making an impact to championing the community in our collections.

Burberry was one of the earliest adopters of the UN Standards of Conduct for Business, becoming a signatory ahead of its launch in Europe in 2017. The standards were designed to eliminate LGBTI discrimination in the workplace and beyond. Since then, we have become a signatory of the Stonewall Diversity Champions Programme, giving us access to Stonewall’s expertise and resources to guide us.

We also partner with the Albert Kennedy Trust, UK Black Pride and Stonewall in driving awareness, providing community support and increasing advocacy. In 2021, all our partners have contributed to internal events and hosted workshops focused on intersectionality, being a better ally and ensuring workplace inclusivity.

Supporting disability inclusion

We partner with two organisations to help make our sites, policies and processes more inclusive of those with both visible and invisible disabilities.

We are a member of the Business Disability Forum, a non-profit organisation bringing together businesses, those with disabilities and policymakers to help make a difference. We are also part of The Valuable 500, the largest network of global CEOs committed to disability inclusion in business, encompassing 55 different sectors and more than 12 million employees.

We are expanding our internal global disability audit framework to identify where we can take the most impactful action on accessibility. Our Health and Safety team works in close partnership with HR and line managers to support our colleagues with occupational health reviews, identifying where we may need to make workplace adjustments or adaptations to help remove the barriers disabled colleagues may face.

Our commitment to gender equality

We are firmly committed to achieving gender equality across our organisation globally. We have reviewed and implemented policies, programmes and practices to support this ambition. Burberry maintained a leading position in the FTSE 100 for women in leadership for a third consecutive year, according to the latest Hampton-Alexander Review and was included in the Bloomberg 2021 Gender-Equality Index for the first time, scoring 10 percentage points more than the company average. The index is a global benchmark for measuring companies’ progress across five pillars: female leadership and talent pipeline, equal pay and gender pay parity, inclusive culture, sexual harassment policies and pro-women brand.

Reinforcing our commitment to building an inclusive future where everyone can succeed, we have adopted the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles. Spanning corporate leadership, wellbeing, training, community efforts and transparency of disclosure, the framework builds on the actions we are taking as part of our overall global D&I Strategy.

We are designing more inclusive policies to help achieve our ambitions. Many of our people at Burberry balance professional responsibilities with being caregivers, parents and family members. We are committed to supporting all colleagues in developing flexible working arrangements so they feel equipped to create the balance that is most beneficial to them.

In April 2020, we launched an industry-leading Global Parental Leave Policy, designed to help all new parents feel supported as they take care of their families and when they return to work. The policy offers all colleagues who become parents 18 weeks of parental leave at full pay and the opportunity to work 80% of their normal hours at full pay for a further four weeks on their return.

Our commitment to equitable pay

We believe that having a simple and transparent reward strategy will drive fairness and parity in all reward decisions across our organisation, ensuring we provide the right level of salary and benefits for all roles. Our reward philosophy is to provide competitive remuneration packages to all our colleagues in line with their level and expertise. This is closely aligned to our performance management processes, focusing on recognising and rewarding our colleagues for high performance.

Since 2017, we have published a gender pay gap report in the UK, where a third of our colleagues are based. Distinct from equal pay, it measures the differences between the average earnings and bonus pay of men and women. Our ambition is to close our gender pay gap, significantly narrowing it in the UK by 2025. Read our latest gender pay gap report here.

Supporting our communities

We believe it is important to champion our communities and help build a society where everyone is respected and valued. We continue to amplify and advocate for the changemakers, organisations and initiatives that are having a meaningful impact on our communities.  

Last year’s acts of violence against members of the Black/African American and BAME communities in the US and UK were a painful reminder of how much progress still needs to be made to eliminate racism and prejudice. We publicly condemned the attacks, and united in solidarity with those standing up against hate, we accelerated our efforts to foster an inclusive culture. We held open forums to encourage dialogue, shared educational resources for continued learning and provided additional counselling and support for our colleagues. We also introduced training to reinforce the importance of meaningful allyship. As allies, we continue to speak up and take action against all forms of discrimination, most recently providing our support to the Asian community.   

We believe that nurturing the next generation of diverse creative voices is vital to creating a better, more inclusive future. Last year, we expanded Burberry Inspire internationally. Funded by the Burberry Foundation, Burberry Inspire is the first in-school arts and culture programme of its scope and scale designed to understand how exposure to the arts can have a positive effect on young people’s lives. The programme has helped more than 5,500 students across Yorkshire, UK and New York, USA since 2018.  

Building on our support for young people, in November 2020 we made a substantial donation to youth-related causes, partnering with Marcus Rashford MBE, youth centres and global charities to fund education programmes, support young creatives and help emerging entrepreneurs tackle some of the world’s biggest challenges. In 2021, the Burberry Foundation entered a new partnership with London Youth, providing young people in some of London’s most deprived communities with the resources and support to build resilience against the short and long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Burberry also works with The Prince’s Trust Women Supporting Women initiative, a longstanding charity partner, enabling hundreds of women to access virtual speed interviews with employers, online courses to develop employability skills and education support through the Change a Girl’s Life campaign.  

We partner with Investing in Ethnicity on increasing representation in business and engage with the wider industry on furthering diversity and inclusion in the British luxury and fashion sector, as one of the founding members of the British Fashion Council’s Diversity and Inclusion steering group.