Delivering on gender equity

Our colleagues share their experiences of working at Macquarie. We understand that women can have overlapping social identities outside of and within the workplace and have a range of programmes to support women to succeed as their whole selves.

International Women's Day 2023

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.

Achieving gender equity at all levels across our organisation remains a key priority. Whilst we are making progress, there is always more we can do. The responsibility to maintain a culture where everyone can thrive rests with us all.”

Shemara Wikramanayake
Chief Executive Officer

Improving gender equity

We recognise that the diversity of our people is one of our greatest strengths. An inclusive, equitable workplace enables us to embrace diversity to deliver more innovative and sustainable solutions for our people, clients, shareholders, and communities.

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.

To build a future where all genders have equitable opportunity to succeed, we need to prioritise inclusivity and equity.”

Paul Plewman
CEO, EMEA

Driving gender equity

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:

Regional Sponsorship Programme: that supports talent from groups that are under-represented at our senior leadership level – Black, Asian & Minority Ethnic, disabled, female, LGBTQ+ and neurodiverse employees, ensuring that they receive equitable feedback and opportunities alongside senior sponsorship.
Our Career Development Partnership for Black employees: that matches colleagues with a senior career partner to help them achieve their career goals.
Development and mobility opportunities: offering a wide range of opportunities to work across the globe.
Buddy Programme: that pairs all new joiners with a buddy from their team and offers an additional buddy, chosen by the employee, to help give people a sense of belonging from the very beginning.
Director Masterclasses: that support our leaders to actively create inclusive environments for all our colleagues.
We also provide a wide variety of role and business specific training, including our management and director leadership programmes.

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:

The Junior Associate Programme is delivered in conjunction with several Macquarie Group Foundation partners to provide careers access to university students from under-represented socio-economic backgrounds. Through the programme, students gain valuable work experience by working with Macquarie two days per week whilst they complete their degree.
Our Rise to It Programme gives Year 12 students from low socio-economic backgrounds and under-represented communities financial assistance, covering their full university maintenance and tuition fees as well as offering hands-on work experience at Macquarie.
Our Diversity Academy offers upskilling sessions to support candidates from under-represented demographics through our recruitment process.
We are continuously improving our recruitment process to remove bias. We focus on creating shortlists of diverse candidates, in turn, building a more diversified workforce.

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

We believe achieving gender equity means supporting all parents, so we offer up to six months of paid leave, regardless of gender. Secondary Carer Leave is available to all parents with secondary childcare responsibility for a new baby, including through adoption.
We offer one-to-one parental leave coaching. Provided before, during and after taking time off from work, this coaching is designed to support both new and existing working parents transition from, and back to, their professional lives.
Coaching is also provided to managers of those going on leave to ensure that they are equipped to provide support.
We offer a phased return to support transitions back to work after Primary Carer Leave with up to 12 paid transition days in the first 12 weeks of returning to work.
We provide all our employees with emergency access to childcare support, nurseries, childminders, holiday clubs or elder-care specialists when required.
We recognise the value that returner candidates can bring and welcome applications from those looking to return to the workforce after an extended period of leave, and we offer support to help with the transition back to work.

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

We are committed to hybrid working for the long term. That means most of our people balance time spent working in the office and remotely. Everyone is empowered to work together flexibly in a way that works for their team, also taking advantage of the benefits of coming together in person.
In addition, across our Group, we provide one wellbeing day for all staff annually – in addition to traditional annual leave.
The wellbeing of our people is a priority, providing a comprehensive range of initiatives and benefits, designed to equip our people with the tools and resources they need to own their health and wellbeing.

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

Our successes

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.

Employee voice

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:

Networking opportunities

platforms for small circuit networking and broader industry networking (i.e., for people working in or alongside the technology, infrastructure, commodities, and energy markets)

Career development initiatives

including growth mindset training, profile building and senior leader mentorship

Parent and carer support

providing circles and events on parenting and carer challenges

Learn more about our commitment to create an inclusive and equitable workplace

Working with the community

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.

UK Gender Pay Gap Report

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.