Culture and people

Culture, health and wellbeing

BBC Studios’ commercial success is underpinned by happy and motivated teams: putting people first is our primary priority, and four in five employees say they would recommend the BBC as a place to work. With HR Director Jabbar Sardar at the helm, we are working actively to build a diverse and inclusive culture that supports and encourages its people to thrive, be their authentic selves and do their very best work, spotting and nurturing talent inside and outside the organisation. Support ranges from dedicated training for all, initiatives to improve leadership, career coaching and the opportunity to manage individual working journeys through to access to wellbeing support.

Being our authentic selves 

Here’s a sample of videos from some of our staff telling us more about themselves in a series of video interviews we’ve called This is Me.

Valuing difference

It matters to us that we reflect and are informed by the audiences we serve, with stories that appeal to audiences around the world. To do this we must have a truly diverse and inclusive workforce with the very best talent at all levels. Our targets align with those of the wider BBC, which is to achieve 50% female representation, 20% BAME and 12% for disability and LGBTQ+ respectively as a proportion of the workforce at all levels by 2023 and we are making progress towards these, as reported in the Group Annual Report.

In our production teams, we have also been working actively to improve access for diverse voices. Since 2020, all of our productions have had a minimum threshold of 20% for those coming from a Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic (BAME) background, having a lived experience of a disability, or being from a low-income background.  To achieve this, we run a series of mentoring, training and access programmes for under-represented talent.