EDI matters to Sovereign
Equality, diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) matters to us. We offer a range of services, and invest in communities, to help people and their neighbourhoods be the best they can be. We are committed fully to taking meaningful action on EDI to achieve this ambition.
We acknowledge that the world has changed in recent years, in many ways. It’s now more important than ever that we do not take a ‘tick box’ approach to this work. We know that by having meaningful EDI engagement, we’ll have a better understanding of our customers. We also know that engaging with EDI will help us build diverse teams and encourage greater innovation and creativity within Sovereign. We’re on a journey to success in EDI.
Our EDI vision
Our EDI vision is simple. We want Sovereign to be a leader in diversity and inclusion, build a diverse workforce that reflects our communities, and to be recognised as a fair and inclusive employer and landlord.
We aim to play our part in delivering sector change by being bold in the actions we take on EDI, sharing our work and using our influence to drive inclusive behaviours.
We want a workforce that is representative of the areas we operate in. We know that by having teams of mixed gender, ethnicity, physical ability, age and sexual orientation, we’ll have teams that can provide us with a variety of viewpoints and a wider range of experience.
We want to ensure that we continue to put our customers’ needs first. We know that their needs are varied and different. We want to meet those needs by considering the various ways in which our work impacts on them and allowing them to feed back to us. Doing so will also allow our customers to understand that we care and that we are here to help.
Our approach to EDI
Our approach is driven by the belief that success in EDI lies with our people. We promote the idea that delivery of our EDI vision is not the responsibility of one individual or one team but by all of us at Sovereign. We’ve asked everyone who works for us to consider the parts they will play in delivering our EDI ambitions and to identify the actions they need to take to help us get there.
Our work in this area is supported by our EDI strategy and the four themes which we feel are fundamental to meeting our EDI priorities:
- Leadership – we want to show leadership in equality, diversity and inclusion to our people, our communities and to the wider housing sector.
- Representation - We want to create a diverse workforce which reflects our customer base and our ambitions for the future.
- Employee inclusion and engagement – we want our people to feel that they truly belong at Sovereign and are included as part of our journey
- Customer inclusion and engagement - we want to help improve the wellbeing and quality of life of our residents individually and collectively.
Supporting the delivery of these priorities is our EDI Policy 
and an ambitious 3-year EDI action plan which will ensure that we’re accountable and that we are making progress.
You'll also find Gender Pay Gap reports from previous years on our publications page .
