Our recruitment strategy is entirely driven by our need to attract and retain the best people. We believe this is achieved by recruiting people from many different backgrounds, irrespective of their gender, ethnicity, age, religious belief, sexual orientation or physical ability.
The initiatives and the organisations we work with reflect this aim, reaching people from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, people with disabilities, and people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
We also work hard to create a culture in which individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds can fulfil their potential and help people around them do the same.
For that reason we established our Inclusivity Group in 2003. It is made up of partners and senior support staff and aims to embed diversity and inclusivity into the infrastructure of the firm. It also promotes initiatives to address the issues of groups who are under-represented across the firm. Herbert Smith was the first firm in the City to hire a full-time dedicated diversity manager to develop and implement our inclusion strategy.
The group has a number of key objectives. It aims to:
- heighten awareness of diversity and inclusion within the firm, and embed it into the culture and infrastructure
- research and review all areas of diversity and inclusion in the firm
- recommend appropriate actions to be taken as a consequence of this research and to oversee the implementation of any agreed action plans
- promote initiatives designed to address issues facing particular groups who are under represented across the firm, or at certain levels within it
- monitor our compliance with the relevant regulations
Diversity takes many forms when viewed from a global perspective. For an international firm such as Herbert Smith, this means going beyond the legal requirements of employment and discrimination laws in each country where we have a presence, and taking into consideration a country's culture, customs and history.
In 2006 we established a diversity training programme, which includes classroom-based, interactive diversity awareness training.
We also have a number of successful focus groups and staff networks. These include our women's network, Herbert Smith Women in Business, in which more than half the women in our London office participate, and our LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) network, which celebrated its first anniversary in March 2008. Our Work/Life Balance network, established in 2008, focuses on work/life balance and family issues, running seminars on topics including children's health, paternity issues and wellbeing. We also have focus groups on ethnicity and multiculturalism, and on disability.
Other initiatives include diversity monitoring, flexible working, and family initiatives, such as family-friendly benefits and maternity coaching.
Externally we partner with a number of organisations, including the Employers' Forums on Age, Belief and Disability, Opportunity Now, Race for Opportunity, Working Families, Stonewall and the Gender Trust. We were listed in The Times/Aurora 2008 Top 50 Places Women Want to Work and in the top 100 places for LGBT people to work in the 2009 Stonewall Workplace Equality Index.
We also work alongside sector-specific organisations such as the Black Solicitors' Network and the Group for Solicitors with Disabilities, the Solicitors' Regulatory Authority's department for Equality and Diversity, and a variety of student groups and societies.
Attracting all top performers
We work to actively encourage applicants from ethnic and disadvantaged minorities through working with groups such as Pure Potential, SEO, Target Legal Chances, and Employ Ability. Herbert Smith regularly sponsors events to promote working in the City to diverse audiences, including an open day for black Afro-Caribbean undergraduates in collaboration with other law firms and the publishers GTI, the Minority Lawyers Conference, and supporting a student award for the Black Solicitors Network.
It’s our goal to be the employer of choice for candidates from every background. This why we take diversity so seriously.
See our London office diversity data. Note – we can only currently produce diversity statistics for our London offices. There are a number of reasons why we are unable to publish them globally at the moment. For example, in France, labour law states you cannot ask employees to provide diversity statistics about themselves. And if we were to use the same metrics in our Asia offices, our declared ethnic minority figures for non-white employees would look a lot more favourable, but wouldn't be a true reflection of diversity in our workforce.
Top 100 Employers 2010
Stonewall
Star Performer Network Group 2010
Stonewall
Equality & Diversity Category - Shortlisted
Law Society Excellence Awards 2009
Where Women Want To Work - Top 50
The Times 2009