Nicola Frampton Introduces International Women's Day 2020

Hello everyone and welcome to today's fantastic International Women's Day event. We're live here in Leeds for International Women's Day to celebrate it, to recognize it, and we're joined remotely by our colleagues in London, our colleagues in Krakow, in Malta, and in Stockholm. And I think we've also got some people who might be dialing in. So welcome everyone, including the guys that are remote. So this is our third International Women's Day event and I think one of our best achievements actually was last year when we had Paul host the event? Actually we had a man hosting the International Women's Day event. What an amazing achievement. And that's when you sort of know just how far we've started to come and just how much equality is starting to become embedded into the way that we do things around here in William Hill. And if you want some proof points, I've got a couple that I'd like to share with you actually.

Because I joined William Hill ten years ago on the 12th of April, so another three or four weeks before I hit my 10-year anniversary. And I cannot believe just how much we've changed. So all the boys in the room please stand up for me. Go and do it for me. Welcome to my world ten years ago. Thank you very much. Because ten years ago there were no women on the board of William Hill, there were no women in the group executive team, there were very few in the senior leadership team, and yet in the group overall we were about 50/50. Curious. Ten years on, we are now. We've got a board and a group exec team that is 38% female. My retail exec team officially is 57% female. We're the change that you want to see, ladies. But also our SLT has gone up from being 22% to 29% and that's in the last 12 months. And that's an amazing achievement. And we are just 1% off that 30% target that we set for ourselves. But what a great amount of progress we have made. And I'm really, really proud to see all that. Our gender pay gap has continued to shrink. It's not about the overall balance but it's about equal pay for equal roles. And we're making massive inroads into that as well. And we've also got all these initiatives we never used to have in William Hill. So 10 years ago there was nothing. We've now got Women of William Hill, we've now got Women in Tech, we've now got the 30% Club that we're still involved in and that's absolutely flying. And of course we've got our Mentor Me and that's something that our very own Sarah started a couple of years ago.

And for me, mentoring is something that is incredibly important. I don't know if I've spoken to some of you in the past at various events. I left school at 16 and I've worked my way up and I've been helped along the way by lots of people. And interestingly enough, male managers who've given me a chance, given me an opportunity. But one of them in particular looked at me one day. We were talking about just coming back from maternity leave actually, and he was talking about my career development and getting back on the ladder and starting to move things forward again. And I just said, 'Oh, you know, I'm not sure.' He said, 'A lot, Nicola, you've done well for me, you've performed really well for me. I want to help you. And when you get to where you want to be, you need to do the same thing. Turn around when you've crawled your way up that career pole and you've got where you want to be, you need to turn around and you need to help the people that have helped you get there and help them be successful.' And that is a massive part I think of what mentoring is about. And that's something that is really, really close to my heart.

The other thing I'd like to say about this year's event is I think we should go man, woman, man, woman for hosting it. And I noticed that our product and tech gender diversity is 17% female. What do you have to say about that? Excellent. So Sati found out this morning when he walked in the door that I volunteered him to host next year's event. Thank you very much. That's what kind of... You know, look, it's really important that we stay focused on it. And it's not just about gender equality, but it's also about diversity and it's about inclusion. And why is it important? Well, for me, there's lots of research out there that has shown that diverse, inclusive teams make better decisions 87% of the time, and that diverse and inclusive teams achieve better results at least 60% of the time. So when we've got a chief executive who's out there talking about just how important customer is, but also execution and team, I think those stats actually speak for themselves in terms of why this is important, because these are things that are going to really help us deliver on team and on execution.

I think that's one of the reasons 2019 was such a successful year for William Hill. And I say successful carefully, because it was actually a pretty shitty year, certainly for retail. We went through a massive amount of disruption in the business and yet we came out of it the other side. And in week nine of our 2020 trading week, we absolutely had the best week we have ever had in a long time, hitting all of our targets on staking, on gross win, on the stake, and on SSBTs. Everything just seems to be coming together. And that for me is the result of a lot of teamwork from a very diverse team. So diversity of leaders, diversity in teams, diversity of perspectives and experiences helped us make better decisions and ultimately do better things for the company as well as ourselves. We've also seen quite a lot of diversity in the US team. And over there we've seen some significant growth again. They're achieving and it's because we've got lots of ideas, lots of experiences, all coming together into one big melting pot, some real collaboration going on, some great results.

Now there's still more for us to do. You know, I think it's very fragile. And it only takes one person further up the organizational structure to make a big difference. I mean, you all know that Ruth's leaving and replacing her with a male CFO will significantly impact our gender diversity around the board and exec. But we'll get that back on track. And they do say that you should always measure what matters, because what you measure gets done. And that's why events like this are so, so important. We do have targets and they're there for a reason. They keep us focused. We do have these events just to remind us to keep this in the front of mind, to stay focused on having really, really balanced teams. So as leaders in this room, look at your own teams. And if they're not diverse, ask yourself why. And ask yourself if there's something more that we should be doing. All that you and deed could be doing as leaders. You need to role model and be the change that you want to see. And I think you know, I hope I've exemplified that because I've got a fantastically diverse team. And I think that's one of the reasons we're so successful. But it starts with everyone in this event today.

And if you don't actually know where to start or you're not feeling confident, you've definitely come to the right place today. Because this session is all about confidence and impact. And that's where Haley comes in. And she's going to give us some really useful hints, tips, and coaching on how to really improve our confidence. She's an experienced coach, she's done lots of this working and supporting women who want to achieve and developing leadership roles. So that's it for me. As Sarah already said, we've got slider hashtag Wow 2020. Hopefully next year might be Powell 2022? The people of William Hill will be 50/50 all the way through. But after you hear her talk, as we said, we'll say goodbye to some of our offices and then we'll have a bit of a Q&A and some lunch. So Haley, could I invite you up please?