Garanti BBVA has built a thoroughly measured inclusion track record in Central and Eastern Europe. Anchored in the wider BBVA group framework but run through its own dedicated team, the bank treats diversity as a performance system rather than a set of campaigns – an approach that makes it the region’s best for diversity and inclusion.
With women making up 56% of its workforce and 40% of senior and middle management, the bank also publishes its gender pay gap each year – a mean ratio of 0.94 and a median of 1.06 between female and male pay – alongside bonus gap figures and reports an employee engagement score of 4.30 out of five from independent group-wide surveys. Return to work after maternity leave has risen to 98% and performance is externally benchmarked through the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index, where the bank scored 89.06.
Its TalentAccess programme offers a year-long disability internship combining classroom, digital and webinar training across technical and behavioural skills
Gender equality is the longest running strand. Garanti BBVA was the first bank in Turkey to sign the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles and has run a women’s leadership programme for five years to strengthen its female pipeline. A partnership with the YenidenBiz Association helps women returning from career breaks back into work, while mandatory training under its EşitBiz (let’s be equal) project has reached more than 20,000 employees.
Disability inclusion and a safer workplace
Garanti BBVA is also very active in disability inclusion. Its TalentAccess programme, launched in 2024, offers a year-long disability internship combining classroom, digital and webinar training across technical and behavioural skills, and has been used to redesign recruitment, orientation and career journeys to be accessible by default. Awareness is built experientially: Dialogue in the Dark, Dialogue in Silence and VR modules for visually and hearing-impaired colleagues give staff direct insight into accessibility, while trained volunteers provide live audio description at company events. Its Accessibility Community Gatherings have convened more than 500 young disabled talents and specialists.
The bank pairs this with a firm line on workplace safety. A zero-tolerance sexual harassment, assault and discrimination policy, backed by a confidential Ethics Reporting Line with anti-retaliation protection, sits alongside a domestic violence platform that supports employees facing violence outside work. Anti-violence training has been completed by more than 20,000 staff.
Underpinning all of this is a structural choice: a standalone D&I team of three full-time specialists, rare in a sector where inclusion is usually bolted onto HR or communications. Working directly with executives, business lines and recruitment, the team has turned scattered initiatives into a governed architecture with clear targets and leadership accountability, extended through a network of internal champions.
The result is an inclusion model that mirrors BBVA’s group emphasis on data, governance and measurable outcomes, but it is delivered with a distinctly local focus – on gender representation, disability access and freedom from violence – that reflects the realities of its own market.
