Leeds Building Society: Opening Doors to a More Inclusive Workforce

Leeds Building Society, a UK member-owned building society offering savings and mortgage services, is committed to creating an inclusive workplace that reflects the diverse communities it serves. Unlocking diverse perspectives to inform its thinking enables Leeds Building Society to deliver better service to its members.

Leeds Building Society signed up to Business in the Community’s (BITC) Opening Doors campaign in February 2023 and has highlighted three actions from the Five Keys to Inclusive Recruitment framework as part of its focus on fostering an inclusive workplace that celebrates diversity in all its forms.

Actions Leeds Building Society has committed to as part of the Opening Doors campaign:

Make sure the application process is mobile friendly

In 2025, Leeds Building Society initiated a rebrand of its careers site to embed its colleague value proposition and optimise the candidate journey, in recognition of the increasing use of mobile devices by jobseekers.

“We set out not simply to refresh our careers site, but to reimagine it – creating an experience that felt modern, inclusive and unmistakably reflective of who we are as a Society” – Leeds Building Society colleague

Through UX testing, card sorting and journey mapping, the recruitment team built a detailed understanding of jobseekers’ needs, expectations and behaviours. These insights shaped a redesigned platform where content is structured the way users naturally think, navigation is streamlined, and the entire site adapts seamlessly across mobile and desktop.

Accessibility is a core principle for Leeds Building Society. By committing to AA Accessibility (WCAG 2.1) standards, they have ensured its digital presence is perceivable, operable, understandable and robust for every user. The introduction of a fully customisable Accessibility Toolbar further removed barriers by giving candidates control over their browsing experience, strengthening the commitment to inclusive hiring.

Mobile engagement increased from 62.49% between January and March 2025 to 65.41% over the same period in 2026. This suggests that efforts to create a seamless, mobile-friendly experience are resonating with candidates.

Engage your suppliers, including recruitment agencies, on inclusive recruitment – ensure that they adhere to your inclusive recruitment ambitions 

Leeds Building Society understands meaningful progress requires partnership, not just within the Society, but across agencies that it works with. To remove barriers for candidates, external partners needed to share the same commitment to fairness, transparency and diversity that guides the organisation’s own hiring practices.

The organisation requires all partner agencies to submit candidates through its recruitment portal, enabling consistent EDI data capture and diversity monitoring across its talent pipelines. For roles supported by Executive Search firms, where candidates do not enter the portal directly, these firms must provide anonymised EDI data for every role, showing candidate diversity across age, race, gender, and socio-economic background. This helps identify patterns, address potential bias, and intervene early where representation gaps emerge.

Leeds Building Society is also developing its terms of engagement for all agencies. These will set clearer expectations on promoting diversity, widening candidate pools and ensuring every selection process is fair, transparent and inclusive. Crucially, agencies will also be required to submit diverse longlists, reinforcing the shared responsibility to create equitable opportunities for all candidates.

Collect diversity data at application stage to ensure that you can measure and audit any potential barriers for diverse candidates 

Leeds Building Society careers site captures key demographic information, including gender, race, date of birth and disability. Over the last four months, it has expanded this to include optional socioeconomic indicators, such as caring responsibilities and the occupation of the main household earner when the candidate was fourteen years old.

This year, the People team took a significant step to develop anonymised Power BI diversity dashboards. These dashboards track the diversity of candidate slates at every stage of the recruitment funnel from application through to longlisting and offer. For each live vacancy, TA Specialists and People Business Partners can now see data on representation, enabling earlier, more targeted intervention where imbalances or barriers appear.

The data is reviewed quarterly, helping the organisation identify patterns, themes and long-term trends.

“Collecting meaningful diversity data wasn’t just a compliance exercise; it was the foundation for identifying barriers, improving representation and ensuring that every candidate, regardless of background, had a fair opportunity to succeed.” – Leeds Building Society colleague

How has Opening Doors helped Leeds Building Society?

“Being an Opening Doors Employer has strengthened our approach to inclusive recruitment. Through initiatives such as the Opening Doors Forum and the inclusive recruitment framework, we’ve gained practical insights, shared learning and access to resources that help us attract and support a more diverse range of talent.” – Leeds Building Society Talent Acquisition team.

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