Diversity, equity and inclusion
International Women’s Day is an opportunity to recognise and celebrate the achievements of women and girls around the world, but to also consider how we accelerate the further change needed to build a better, more equitable future.
Macquarie Group Managing Director and CEO Shemara Wikramanayake and the United States Ambassador to Australia, Caroline Kennedy, held an event to mark International Women’s Day 2023.
Their discussion focused on gender equity and the systems and structures needed to support it, and the role of education in ensuring women are represented in future-focused areas.
Everyone at Macquarie is responsible for ensuring our culture is inclusive and equitable. Given the importance of DEI, our EMEA Management Committee is also our diversity committee, meeting to discuss proactive initiatives quarterly and working closely with the EMEA DEI team to enact our global and regional strategy and drive change.
We encourage our people to self-identify across a broad range of diversity dimensions including cultural and racial diversity, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, and parenting and caring roles. This data enables internal and external benchmarking, as well as measurement of progress and equity in our people processes.
Our focus continues to be on developing the internal and external pipeline of women and people from under-represented groups at all levels and enhancing our recruitment and talent practices to help facilitate this.
We have a range of programmes to drive gender equity and support women to succeed. Equity focuses on structures and is about levelling the playing field by removing barriers and valuing and accommodating for differences so more people are included and can reach their full potential. The focus is about fixing processes, not fixing people.
Our purpose is to innovate and invest for a better future and investing in our people so that they can build great careers within Macquarie is a key part of that. We have multiple development offerings including:
It’s important that all women feel that they are understood and supported to succeed. As women we often have multiple identities, for example, your ethnicity, whether you have a child, or whether you’re LGBTQ+. At Macquarie, we strive to make sure that everyone feels included and able to thrive as their whole selves.”
Sarah Fennell
EMEA Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Investing in our current and future talent is a key priority at Macquarie. We provide a range of Early Careers Programmes:
Hiring more diverse talent into Macquarie is a key focus across our Early Careers programmes as well as our experienced hiring. DEI is an important part of the Macquarie culture, and so, it’s integral in all our recruiting efforts.”
Simon Calfe
EMEA Resourcing Lead
As a father to a little girl and boy, I certainly understand the need to juggle being an active parent and/or carer and managing work commitments. As a Co-Chair of our Families & Carers ENG, we leverage our partnerships with other ENGs to explore topics such as, supporting our children and youth to come out as LGBTQ+, life in neurodivergent families and how to talk about race. Taking this intersectional approach has proven valuable to our families and carers.”
Peter Durante
Co-Chair of Parents and Carers Employee Network Group
Having benefitted from mentoring in the past, I now mentor people myself and volunteer as a wellbeing ambassador – making myself available to talk to other employees about experiencing IVF and miscarriage. Caring for people’s wellbeing and mental health means that we are all better employees together, and personally, I find being able to help others at work very rewarding.”
Cath Bolton
Wellbeing Ambassador
We met our Women in Finance Charter target to improve gender balance 18 months ahead of schedule in January 2022 and set a new target that 35 per cent of our UK director population (our most senior 3 career levels) will be women by July 2026.
Number 1 on the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index, celebrating LGBTQ+ inclusive employers and best employer for LGBT+ people: Stonewall Awards 2022.
Our LGBTQ+ network Pride was awarded Highly Commended Network Group in the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index 2022.
Awarded a top 10 Employer by the British LGBT Awards 2022.
We were awarded a top 10 Employer at the Investing in Ethnicity Awards 2023.
Our regional CEO, Paul Plewman, was awarded Champion (Ally) of the Year at the Investing in Ethnicity Awards 2022.
Our Women In Tech network was awarded the Best Mentorship Programme at the UK Women in Tech Employer Awards 2022.
Our Employee Network Groups (ENGs) work closely with our DEI team to deliver intersectional events and initiatives so that everyone can embrace their full identity. Everyone at Macquarie has mandatory DEI objectives yearly and beyond what we can each do individually, the ENGs are one of our biggest change makers, connecting employees from across the business to share knowledge and insights on gender, ethnicity, race, culture and religion, parents and carers, LGBTQ+ and neurodiversity.
They provide development, networking, and mentoring opportunities to enable employees to be engaged, empowered, and encouraged to succeed – regardless of background. This includes:
platforms for small circuit networking and broader industry networking (i.e., for people working in or alongside the technology, infrastructure, commodities, and energy markets)
including growth mindset training, profile building and senior leader mentorship
providing circles and events on parenting and carer challenges
The Macquarie Group Foundation drives social impact work for Macquarie Group, supporting our people, businesses, and communities to build a better future. Recognising that many people around the world face systemic barriers to employment, our funding is focused on breaking down these barriers and building effective pathways to economic security.
We acknowledge inequities in the philanthropic and community sector and are taking steps to strengthen the diversity, equity, and inclusivity of our grant making processes and practices globally.
Pay gaps are not the same as unequal pay. Equal pay considers work of equal value. A gender pay gap is the difference between the average earnings of all men and women across an entity or organisation. Our gender pay gap is driven by not having enough women in senior roles, which we are working hard to address through the initiatives and actions highlighted on this page. For more information on how we’re making progress on reducing our pay gap, please see our latest UK Gender Pay Gap Report.
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