Future Firm Group: Putting diversity
front and centre
Future Firm Group: Putting diversity
front and centre
Building a diverse workforce and fostering an inclusive working environment to enable diversity of thought and drive commercial outcomes that deliver for our clients are at the heart of our Firm strategy. To provide management oversight on this key aspect of our culture, our Advisory Council has formed the Future Firm Group (FFG), co-chaired by Senior Partner Bart Peerless and Managing Partner Simon Ridpath. This group is responsible for ensuring the Firm delivers on its intentions and that we have a talent pipeline that will sustain the Firm long into the future.
The FFG includes Chief People Officer Karen Stages, Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Alice Hill, Partner for Responsible Business Kerry Stares, along with senior representatives from each of our internal DEI networks.
FFG has five key areas of focus:
- Gender
- LGBTQ+
- Disability & neurodiversity and mental health & wellbeing
- Race, ethnicity, religion and belief, and
- Social mobility.
In focusing on each area, we take a collaborative approach to ensure that our strategy is informed and considers intersectionality. We are confident that progress and plans that relate to each strand benefit others and the Firm more widely and demonstrate our commitment to inclusion in the broadest sense.
These five areas of focus also reflect the focuses of our five DEI Networks which offer mutual support and ways to come together with colleagues from across the Firm to raise awareness, learn and celebrate diversity.
In 2023, we marked International Women’s Day with a simultaneous event across all our offices. In Dubai, it was teatime, and in London, it was breakfast, but we all came together to watch our International Women’s Day video featuring our colleagues from across the world.
Other network event highlights in 2023 included:
- our UK Diwali celebration, complete with Henna and a feast of sweets;
- speaker events for LGBT History Month, Mental Health Awareness Week and East and South East Asian Heritage Month
- film nights for Pride and Black History Month
- our annual Pre-Pride party.
The FFG holds regular meetings, and in developing our DEI strategy, we are led by representative voices, data and external benchmarking, which ensures a tailored and authentic approach to how we engender representation and inclusion across our Firm. Like many other law firms, we recognise there is more work to do to increase diversity in the profession and we have established action plans to ensure we make progress.
Under the guidance of our Head of DEI, Alice Hill, who joined the Firm just over a year ago in a newly formed role, we look forward to launching our DEI Strategy later this year, which recognises our work to date and our commitment to the progress we still need to make.
In 2023, we marked International Women’s Day with a simultaneous event across all our offices. In Dubai, it was teatime, and in London, it was breakfast, but we all came together to watch our International Women’s Day video featuring our colleagues from across the world.
Other network event highlights in 2023 included:
- our UK Diwali celebration, complete with Henna and a feast of sweets;
- speaker events for LGBT History Month, Mental Health Awareness Week and South East Asian Heritage Month
- film nights for Pride and Black History Month
- our annual Pre-Pride party.
The FFG holds regular meetings, and in developing our DEI strategy, we are led by representative voices, data and external benchmarking, which ensures a tailored and authentic approach to how we engender representation and inclusion across our Firm. Like many other law firms, we recognise there is more work to do to increase diversity in the profession and we have established action plans to ensure we make progress.
Under the guidance of our Head of DEI, Alice Hill, who joined the Firm just over a year ago in a newly formed role, we look forward to launching our DEI Strategy later this year, which recognises our work to date and our commitment to the progress we still need to make.
During 2023, we finalised action plans and actively engaged with external initiatives to improve DEI across the profession and inform our own strategy through best practice.
For example we signed up for the Law Society’s Women in Law Pledge as part of our commitment to increase female representation in our leadership. The Women in Law Pledge, launched in partnership with the Bar Council of England and Wales and the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (CILEx) in 2019, was created to help tackle the issue of gender equality within the legal profession.
We also became signatories of the Rare Race Fairness Commitment, based on Rare’s research, data analysis, and experience working to make professions, including law, more diverse. The stated aim of the commitment is to achieve “fairness at work for people of all ethnic backgrounds so everyone has an equal chance to succeed”, helping signatories to identify actions which will improve retention and progression, as well as recruitment, over time.
This commitment to retain and develop talent builds on our work with Rare in early talent, using their contextual recruitment tool to allow us to see the context of a candidate’s achievements and recognise exceptional talent.
During 2023, we finalised action plans and actively engaged with external initiatives to improve DEI across the profession and inform our own strategy through best practice.
For example we signed up for the Law Society’s Women in Law Pledge as part of our commitment to increase female representation in our leadership. The Women in Law Pledge, launched in partnership with the Bar Council of England and Wales and the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (CILEx) in 2019, was created to help tackle the issue of gender equality within the legal profession.
We also became signatories of the Rare Race Fairness Commitment, based on Rare’s research, data analysis, and experience working to make professions, including law, more diverse. The stated aim of the commitment is to achieve “fairness at work for people of all ethnic backgrounds so everyone has an equal chance to succeed”, helping signatories to identify actions which will improve retention and progression, as well as recruitment, over time.
This commitment to retain and develop talent builds on our work with Rare in early talent, using their contextual recruitment tool to allow us to see the context of a candidate’s achievements and recognise exceptional talent.
“We’re focused on making diversity central to everything we do,” explains Karen Stages. “It’s not something we look at in isolation. As we deliver the Firm’s strategy, DEI, along with our values, behaviours and policies, forms part of our culture and that’s where we’ve made great inroads this year. Diversity, equity, and inclusion is the job of everybody at the Firm.”
Karen Stages
Chief People Officer
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