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Chairman of British-based Islamic Charity — in Receipt of Government Cash — Praised Fatwa on Salman Rushdie
NatWest to Pay for Hormone Treatment For Trans Staff
Not to be outdone by the Halifax and it’s policy of encouraging staff to declare their gender pronouns on their name tags, NatWest will pay for transgender staff to get privately-funded hormone treatment from next month as part of an overhaul aimed at making the bank more inclusive. The Telegraph has more.
The bank, which earlier this year said branch staff could display their favoured pronouns and phonetic name spellings on new environmentally friendly bamboo badges, said it was “challenging the status quo” and overhauling its policies to better suit trans customers and staff.
Its package of changes includes adding trans healthcare services to its private healthcare plan from September, which will mean that gender identity support, hormone treatment and counselling will be made available for workers.
It has also reviewed the wording of its employment policies to “ensure language and scenarios are LGBT+ inclusive” and changed its absence and sick leave rules to include time off for people who are transitioning, a spokesman confirmed.
The move comes as the banking sector tries to shake-off its “pale, male and stale” image in an effort to attract a younger and more diverse workforce.
The changes at NatWest come years after Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs told London staff they can have free sex-change surgery and fertility treatments, months after it became the first company in the U.K. to offer to ship working mothers’ breast milk home if they work overseas.
NatWest’s decision earlier this year to introduce pronoun badges for branch staff has caused some of its high street rivals to follow suit.
Halifax, which went on to also add pronoun badges, became embroiled in a row over the matter after it told customers that they can close their accounts if they disagreed with its stance. Responding to critics, Halifax said the badges prevented “accidental misgendering”.
Formerly known as the Royal Bank of Scotland, NatWest almost brought down Britain’s financial system in 2008 when it was bailed out by the government for £45 billion after then-chancellor Alistair Darling was told it was within hours of running out of money.
Worth reading in full.
