Category: Interviews

Our strategy is really driven by both internal and external pressures. The big focus is obviously on the fact that we want to retain the best people out there. I think it is paying off as we are ranked the most sought-after FMCG [fast-moving consumer goods] employer in the world and the third most sought-after employer across all sectors for the second year running, according to a survey by LinkedIn. I think our focus on inclusivity is actually key in retaining hires.

Continue reading “Interview: Ritva Sotamaa, chief legal officer, Unilever”

GC: Are there any diversity and inclusion initiatives specific to the legal team at Shell in the UK and globally?

Alan Buchanan (AB): We have a corporate top-down philosophy which starts with our CEO through our organisational construct. A lot is driven centrally, and the translation and application occurs in the businesses and functions. In terms of energy and commitment to D&I, we do a very strong job. The tone from the top, because of people like Donny Ching (the global legal director), and the whole leadership team, through their commitment, helps make sure we have diverse panels, diverse candidates on shortlists, support for employee networks and for external and internal events.

Michael Coates (MC): It’s up to us as legal managers to advance the agenda. In legal, we do the best in this area over the whole Shell organisation – nearly 40% of our management-level employees are female. We are leading across the business functions. We look to be a group to emulate.

GC: Why is the legal department leading in this area?

MC: We have great staff, male and female, and a talent pipeline over the years, represented at every level. We really work on attraction and retention because there’s no point attracting great people only to lose them because you can’t offer a good balance of life and work. We are represented in over 70 countries, which requires a diverse workforce. In legal, you need to be qualified in the jurisdiction you are working on, so that further drives diversity. The top lawyer in Shell is Malaysian and this shows that the company is walking the talk.

GC: I heard anecdotally that increasing gender diversity can improve the overall safety rates within construction and mining companies – do you have any examples of similar things?

AB: On the Pearl GTL (gas-to-liquids) project, where a large proportion of the workforce were local, they were told to speak out if anything was deemed unsafe. You only create that culture if you respect the views and values of your team. You need to create an environment where employees feel comfortable, or you won’t improve your safety or business performance. People have to connect with their environment, and we make sure we hire a localised footprint. Legal has an advantage in that we directly hire lawyers out of law firms, not graduates, because they have a different proposition to offer and it’s about targeting a richer supply.

GC: Is there a business case for D&I? From a Shell legal point of view, what are the strategic benefits?

MC: Recruitment is one of them. In regards to our future talent base, we have to get up to speed with what they are after. You don’t want everyone from the same background because then you don’t get the breadth of thought and decision making. I haven’t heard an argument against diversity; it’s almost accepted wisdom.

AB: Shell is a collaborative organisation across many geographies and we’ve built an environment where you feel you can share ideas and translate that in the local environment. What is our competitive advantage? The quality of our people, their ideas and contributions. It’s about who we can attract, from which varied backgrounds, and how we can retain them.

MC: The legal issues Shell is up against are cutting edge. They cut across different legal systems and jurisdictions, so we need people to understand how these systems operate over multiple countries. Having diversity is very important. It is a clear business driver. Overall, our number of employees as a group is relatively small compared with our asset base. We need to make sure the people we attract are right over the countries in which we operate.

GC: How important is it to have role models within the company to promote diversity?

MC: You need your leaders to stand up and say ‘I believe in this’. I am about to deliver a diversity pledge, and that process is about getting someone leading to say that it is important.

AB: We all look to role models and look to relating to the individual. If you don’t feel your authentic self can be at work, you won’t stay. But you need the tone from the top, role models, and networks to create the right environment, to share ideas and best practice, to enable you to talk about your own experiences.

MC: We had a flexible working policy before the law came in. People work flexibly in legal, some work at home, which reduces commuting time. I am all about delivery, and we know very quickly if they aren’t delivering – we get complaints from clients. We trust them to deliver. It’s not about facetime in the office. We have very good retention rates, so people are voting with their feet.

AB: We are trying to create a brand, a reputation; lots of our people come to us by word of mouth.

GC: What role does the legal team have in promoting diversity and what could it do better?

MC: I am on the board at Shell UK, as a director as well as a lawyer, and the legal team is asked by HR to stand up as leaders, not just as lawyers. On the Country Coordination team, as functional business leaders, we all have to stand up and say ‘here is what we believe as leaders’, not just reverting to our job role. There is that call upon us when we reach a management position, speaking as a leader of a community. I have the responsibility to promote what legal has been doing back into the business, and there is an interest in what we have done. The picture is complex; engineering fields have a lower representation of females and we are trying to get more females into STEM [science, technology, engineering and maths] subjects during their education. We try to be realistic, knowing it takes time, but building the ladder.

AB: Over a ten-year period, targets are one method, but it’s not about quotas; it’s more about making sure we create an environment where people perform to the best of their ability. Because we fill the pipeline, we have the talent and the choice to always select the strongest performer, irrespective of gender, etc.

MC: We want to bring everyone on the journey. We don’t want to alienate anyone because of D&I. It is still a meritocracy, or you lose people.

AB: The tone from the top, the culture, our policies – all these can change behaviour and mindsets. We have D&I ‘lunch and learns’ which help in building awareness of being respectful of difference, understanding of issues, allowing everyone to flourish. We have lots of different tactics and avenues.

MC: We will have a woman’s network lunch where I will talk about my career background. My mother wanted to be a doctor and certainly had the required grades, but scholarships weren’t offered to women at that time. Now I have a daughter – I look to that, and think it should never be an issue again. I will hear their experiences at the lunch as well. It’s important to get feedback, and always ask ‘what could we be doing better?’ Shell has a women’s network, a cross-function network. We also have an LGBT group and other different diverse groups.

GC: What are some common challenges for D&I initiatives?

AB: You need to create the environment that allows people to establish their own networks, so they feel comfortable to speak up. It’s about reframing and changing belief systems and behaviours, although you have to be careful: targets are good for measuring, but shouldn’t drive decisions and skew other groups so that they feel misrepresented. Don’t be slavish to KPIs; develop the environment instead.

MC: Most companies know they have to do something on this; they have to act and implement this at all levels rather than just saying the right thing. Even the most junior managers should be encouraged, and it could be a performance issue for them to make sure it happens and to ensure that they pick up inappropriate practices. None of this is an immediate fix; it’s a series of steps. Focusing only on management positions isn’t the whole picture. You need to make sure people are comfortable and have bought in at every level.

GC: What’s next for Shell on the D&I front?

AB: We will continue our progression, work on our networks, tools, processes and policies and flexible working. We’ll start to offer choices such as virtual homeworking. Employing new staff is always a challenge. What is the best environment for new people so they feel a part of things? Also, we will look at different generational needs.

MC: Shell is organic, it changes, so you have to keep abreast and look externally. We should be focused not just on our own data, but on what other companies are doing. We are well staffed and well resourced, so we can create teams to help us as managers. We have invested time and money into this.

AB: We are externally recognised as being good in this area. The Times named us one of the top 50 employers for women. To be an employer of choice for women is a great achievement.

The future of work is something we have to wrestle with. I have children, and they might have jobs that haven’t even been invented yet. We should be abreast of technology, how people are deployed. How work gets done in the future might be very different.

MC: Everything will change with disruptive technologies so we have to be flexible and adaptive.

GC: How important have role models been for you in your career?

Lesley Wan (LW): Role models are very important to have in your life to help you progress and develop, both personally and professionally. They provide a baseline from which you can observe their traits and characteristics, and decide which of those traits and characteristics you may want to embed and adapt to suit your needs and personality. It’s like a form of informal mentoring without necessarily being mentored, and you get to pick and choose what you want to take away with you.

Without role models it can be difficult to know what to aim for in your career – the saying ‘you cannot be what you cannot see’ is important here as strong role models provide guidance and inspiration, as well as an indication of what can be possible with hard work and drive.

It’s important to inspire and motivate all colleagues throughout the organisation and encourage them to progress their careers and continue to learn and grow professionally as well as personally – having diverse role models can really help to achieve this.

GC: Why it is imperative for businesses to truly embrace diversity?

LW: We need to reflect society in the UK, which is becoming increasingly diverse, and we need to be flexible to respond to the changing needs of our clients. Business leaders should always offer their clients a first class service and it can really help if they showcase people that clients can feel comfortable with and relate to, and therefore want to do business with. Allowing different values, experiences and perspectives of colleagues to be shared and accepted internally and form part of the fabric of company culture can give businesses the competitive edge over competitors and a happier workforce. To be a successful business leader, you must get the buy-in and the respect of your wider team and, in part, business leaders should ensure that they take an inclusive approach to the make-up of their team. However, any appointments must be based on merit and if diverse colleagues are not making it through the ranks, then business leaders should reflect on why this is happening and provide training to upskill those colleagues so that they can progress on an equal footing.

In the City, large corporate organisations are demonstrating that they do value diversity and inclusion, with many firms now asking recruiters to provide a good mix of diverse candidates for interview each time. We take pride in being an organisation that champions diversity and inclusion and our expectation is that our suppliers will do the same and not just pay lip service to what is a hugely important issue.

GC: Your ‘Through the Looking Glass’ initiative has been very successful in promoting social mobility in the City. How did it come about?

LW: Our chief economist for Lloyds Commercial Bank, Professor Trevor Williams, and I, observed that there was a lack of diversity in the City. We felt that we had a responsibility as senior bankers to take positive action to help address this issue, and it seemed logical to us both that we needed to target talented young people from less privileged backgrounds in the first instance and help them see what they could achieve with their lives if they had the opportunity to experience City professions and City life. We wanted to tackle the issue from the ground up and educate our young people about potential opportunities. The programme has been incredibly successful and is currently held in London, Manchester and Edinburgh, with some fantastic law firms and corporate organisations supporting us. Most of the committee comprises lawyers from all over the City who have previously worked for me on secondment and were inspired to continue to support this initiative on a voluntary basis. We are launching in Leeds later this year.

GC: Can you talk me through the practical steps you undertook in taking Through the Looking Glass from an idea to an actuality?

LW: In a nutshell:

• • Step 1: You must decide if you have the time, drive, energy and commitment to making your concept a reality. You must be agile in your thinking and flexible as to how you structure your project. You need to spend a significant amount of time developing and growing your idea in the first instance and covering off any issues that you are likely to encounter. I spent six months developing my concept.
  • Step 2: Do you have the right sponsorship for your project? Can you secure support internally (including funding if required)? Do you need external support? Make a target list of any potential sponsors. Do you have other contacts in your network that can help you make introductions to other sponsors?
  • Step 3: How are you going to pitch your idea to your sponsors? What are the likely barriers you will face and questions you are likely to be asked when presenting to sponsors and how will you address them before your pitch? Preparation is everything.
  • Step 4: Who is going to help you deliver your project? Can you get a good team together who will be committed to following through with the project and deliver their tasks in good time?
  • Step 5: Once you have all your sponsors in place, you need to invite candidates to participate in your programme. In our case, this involved relentlessly phoning schools to invite them to participate on the programme and selling the programme to those schools. You need to also think about the extra elements required – we needed to be ensure we obtained parent and teacher consent to allow the students to spend a week on our programme, consider health and safety issues, etc.
  • Step 6: On our first programme, we needed to make sure that all the corporate sponsors were organised and aware of what they needed to do, the numbers of students attending their programme and ensure that the sessions were relevant and appropriate.
  • Step 7: We got feedback from the students and shared this with the corporate sponsors. After all, they are keen to learn about how well they performed and how they can improve their programme for the next time.

GC: What were the biggest learning points or challenges you came across in undertaking this?

LW: The biggest challenge was having to learn what you don’t know, and usually this only happens as you go along. It’s not always obvious what you need to look out for, particularly when dealing with minors. The most important thing was to be flexible, keep an open mind and be ready for any surprises – and to be able to deal with any issues quickly and in a pragmatic way.

GC: Do you have any advice for people looking to do more with diversity and inclusion?

LW: It is daunting taking on the task of creating a programme or developing an idea but take it one step at a time, allow yourself breathing space for your idea to embed and develop. You will find that you may keep changing your mind about next steps and retract certain ideas in some cases but that is part of the joy of the learning experience in bringing a project like this to life.

GC: What do you think is the biggest diversity and inclusion challenges that businesses and the legal profession face?

LW: The legal profession still has a long way to go in progressing female lawyers to partnership – statistics are improving but not by very much. Firm culture, working practices and unconscious bias continue to have an impact in this area.

However, I think that women in private practice generally need to take greater ownership for their career progression and be proactive. Women still tend to hesitate before putting themselves forward for promotion and almost talk themselves out of progressing by analysing whether they have the right skillset to undertake the role (if they can’t fulfil 100% of the criteria, many decline to continue with the process); or considering that they may want to get married or start a family soon so don’t think it’s the right time to make any changes. Another issue for female lawyers is having the confidence to be able to negotiate effectively with the boss and talk about that pay rise or bonus that is so richly deserved! Men are better equipped to ‘talk the talk’, as they have been conditioned by social norms. Women’s networks are really important initiatives as they can provide support to female lawyers and encourage them to progress, help with the partnership track, assist with networking and provide role models.

Firm culture and social norms are also a hindrance for male lawyers who are expected to continue to do the long hours while their wives undertake all the childcare – notwithstanding that they may be married to a female lawyer in another law firm. If male lawyers are not encouraged to share the childcare and to take time out of their careers to help bring up their children and enable their wives to return to work, this is another barrier for women progressing in the law.

We do, however, see positive signs from certain law firms making great strides in supporting D&I. Food for thought: how many LGBT, female, ethnic minorities or lawyers with disabilities are actually making it through to law firm partnership or senior leadership positions in business?

We are making progress, which is heartening, but there is still a long way to go.

By diversity I mean all characteristics of identity including age, sex, race, gender and ability. It is strategically beneficial to have a diverse workforce, because people have different life stories and experience, and this broadens the perspective of the entity for which they work. This is especially important where we interface in a global market both within and outside of the UK. The benefit of diversity can become evident when an organisation learns from these experiences – what people like and don’t like, the differences and similarities between people – and allow them to influence how its members work with each other and with persons outside.

Another aspect of diversity is that clients and stakeholders often like interacting with people who have similar life experiences – people with whom they can identify. This often lubricates the business discussions; it is easier for people to be at ease where there is that initial recognition of familiarity.

Role models play a vital part of driving diversity and inclusion forward. Unlike mentoring, which is traditionally one-on-one, because role models have somewhat of a platform, whether that be a stage or the media, their stories have a greater reach and impact on a wider range of people. Organisations like the Prince’s Trust, the Black Solicitors’ Network, and Powerful Media provide a platform for these role models. They show that there are several role models in our midst. Their stories are real and authentic.

There is a problem when people don’t see those role models and know that there are people just like them who wish to achieve and are achieving. This could contribute to a perception that attainment is not possible and for them to question why one should try to achieve. In sports, there are several examples of racially diverse role models, but when it comes to the professions, not much is heard about diversity across the board. Mentoring is also important in that there is direct guidance.

There are still restrictions on getting people into the talent pipeline early. I really think that restrictions on the need to have training contracts and pupillage before one can qualify to become solicitor or barrister respectively should be removed. These restrictions were removed in Jamaica in the 1970s, because only people of privilege got those opportunities. The question then becomes, how one regulates people who do not have training contracts and pupillage. Lessons can be learned from successes in other countries such as the US where these restrictions do not exist.

As for affirmative action and mechanisms to fill quotas, I do not believe in one being mandated to choose someone for a role solely because of their identity. Such a requirement doesn’t do much for diversity and may in fact be detrimental to the cause. By appointing someone with a wholly inappropriate skillset, they are likely to fail at the job and as a likely consequence, perpetuate stereotypes and prejudices. Embracing diversity is simply about embracing humanity – recognising that talent comes in different forms and from different people. People have diff erent talents, experiences and have overcome different barriers to get to where they are. They bring these multiplicity of characteristics when they apply for a job and as such it’s important to bear all these issues in mind. However, race or whatever the characteristic is should not be the only factor to the exclusionof others on which a decision is made.

Diversity can be inherent within an organisation’s DNA. For this to happen and to make real progress, the impetus needs to come from the top. Meaningful engagement with the beauty of diversity can’t simply be a tick-the-box exercise. Leaders need genuinely to encourage and facilitate it. We need to strive for genuine engagement that treats, values and encourages people as individuals with diverse talents, not as stereotypes.

There is a perception in legal circles in the City that to get a job one needs an Oxbridge/red-brick background or well-to-do parents. This is somewhat true when one considers the partnerships within firms.

There need to be success stories that are not based on this paradigm. Further, it’s easier to talk about diversity at the entry level, but when one looks at the partner and senior management levels, they’re not diverse.

Business plays a significant role in leading society forward and in advancing the idea that we are all people and individuals, who have different experiences and talents who can contribute to the greater benefit of the organisation and to wider society. We’re not quite the Star Trek generation yet with infinite diversity in infinite combinations! We have come a long way, but we have a long way to go.

As a small legal team, it is easier to implement initiatives. Yes there are processes in the organisation, but there are fewer layers between the idea and the implementation of the idea. Because we are a small team, we see eachother every day (and have formal meetings too), and so we’re able to understand how things affect us in real time. There’s an immediacy to our decisions. It’s also very visible to the rest of the organisation as well, as we’re in one place. There are fewer barriers to success if you are small, I think.

It’s also a case of mindset. The Guardian is an organisation that is genuinely innovative, as digital businesses often are. This leads to a real sense in which you’re expected to try things, which are neither perfect nor finished, but you expect the process to be iterative. This can be quite challenging for lawyers, but that’s what’s required to innovate. Diversity and inclusion can seem like a leap of faith. You don’t have the complete information if you’re working with someone whose cues aren’t the ones you recognise but identifying potential is what any appointment is about.

When implementing an in-house training contract, you should really use your relationships with external firms. We couldn’t deliver all of the training seats in-house, and were greatly assisted by our law firms’ offers to provide external seats. That was a real mutual benefit. Our trainee Cara had been at The Guardian for so long before she became a trainee [she was formerly PA to Davis]; she is a sophisticated trainee, equivalent to a one-to-two year PQE in experience in her law firm placements, and can operate at a really high level. That’s a clear benefit from her having been in-house and firms were interested in that.

Legal training is a real issue and, although we’re not yet necessarily seeing tuition fees acting as a barrier to going to university, for mature students it is perhaps becoming an issue. I’m not sure what millennials or Generation Y are thinking about entering into the profession but university itself has a potentially prohibitive cost attached to it; then to enter into the profession is like scaling a mountain in terms of getting onto a scheme or training contract. So if your choices are taken at significant personal expense, in a very insecure economic environment and where there’s already an oversupply of lawyers, perhaps it’s now too big a risk for those without a safety net.

The legal profession needs to genuinely challenge itself on its own sustainability – not just fee structures and lack of diversity entering into the profession, but actual access to law by the public.

I believe there was a disappointing lack of City law firms adding their voices to the challenges to access to justice and cuts to legal aid. Maybe that is relevant to diversity and inclusion.

Put simply, if you’re someone who is not affected by changes in or cuts to legal aid, you won’t see that and it won’t occur to you that there is a problem. But what does that mean for the future of the profession if the law becomes even more rarified and beyond the reach of most? Justice should be a utility.

Role models are really key because addressing diversity is about taking action. Where there is a cognitive block and one can’t imagine themselves achieving a position, role models can be really important, because being able to see that this is achievable is so powerful. Role modelling can be quite subtle, and useful at all levels of a career – it doesn’t have to be the same five super successful people who everyone knows about. I think there has to be some resonance between the person and the role model.

I have mixed feelings about non-identity group champions of diversity. Of course diversity and inclusion needs to be mainstream, but what does it say if the way we achieve this is to rely on the endorsement of the establishment voice because that has all the authority and all the respect, order for this issue to be taken seriously? I know that isn’t necessarily what is happening, and maybe this sounds too divisive, because of course it is essential to have support from wherever, but who you require to lend legitimacy to these issues can contradict what you’re trying to achieve.

I think lawyers should have a special relationship to diversity and inclusion, with the understanding that we are all deeply flawed and need to understand our own prejudices in order to address them. My driver for wanting D&I is about fairness, removing the advantage from attributes you did nothing to achieve. That’s not envy or jealousy-driven politics, it’s just not fair. I want to support all capable people being able to have the same opportunities.

There’s no way we’ve won the battles. You can go to many City law firms and see that they are not very representative of anything, let alone their clients, but I know some firms working really hard and making bold decisions about this, and that’s progress. But it’s ultimately about who is making the decisions. In times of uncertainty, the comfort of going with what you know becomes another factor. My imperfect answer to this is to make the recruitment process harder on the employer: by this I mean taking a longer look at applicants drawn from wider pools. Even in blind application processes it’s much more subtle than the grades, the universities and the hobbies.

GC: Within Arcadis, how important is diversity and what value does it bring to the organisation?

Margot Day: From an organisational perspective Arcadis has a global strategy to continue to improve diversity and inclusion (D&I). We refreshed and re-launched our D&I programme two years ago, trying to encourage a diverse workplace that is equal for everyone regardless of sexual orientation, gender, race, ethnicity, age or disability; and one that reflects the culture we want as an organisation and the culture that our clients want as well.

The question often posed is ‘why have a D&I agenda?’. I think that having a diverse workforce assists in our design for a globalised world; it broadens the breadth of knowledge we have as an organisation and increases the skills we can offer our clients, while improving our ability to innovate. I have heard it said that ‘strength lies in differences, not in similarities’; and I believe this to be true – a team that has experiences from diverse perspectives, cultures, ages, gender and race is more likely to come up with innovative solutions than those where there is only one ‘type’ of high ability problem solvers.

GC: The initiatives that you’re running in-house at Arcadis – how did they come about and where did the directive to really get involved with D&I come from?

MD: At a regional level in the UK, I sit as part of our UK leadership team and all people in leadership positions have taken up the helm to develop and invest in the D&I programme. For me, I am involved in the race and gender equality agenda, looking at these from both a legal perspective and as an organisation, asking what do we want to be as an organisation and how should we present ourselves in the market. Most importantly we look at how we attract and retain staff, and how we can ensure that we continue to encourage a diverse workforce.

In most in-house environments, the legal team tends to be quite diverse in terms of gender – perhaps more so than workforces generally. Arcadis as a global consultancy, design and engineering firm, is aligned to industry sectors which are not typically so diverse. There is an international legal counsel group consisting of the GCs in each region within Arcadis and while improving the way we work legally, we also seek to drive through initiatives like the D&I agenda. This approach ensures we can take account of cultural differences and feed the international perspective into the D&I agenda.

GC: Something we’ve heard from other GCs as part of this exercise, was that it can be difficult at times to separate genuine D&I initiatives from merely a box ticking exercise – how do you make sure that through diversity you find a way to impart meaningful change within your organization?

MD: In the UK, we have looked at supplier contracts for employment agencies that we use to try to make sure that such agencies tie in with our goals and put forward candidates that reflect a diverse range of people, so we can try and interview a diverse range of candidates.

Our global executive board is based in the Netherlands. The D&I agenda has been taken up worldwide among our senior management committee which represents our leaders across the globe. The D&I initiative was re-launched because there was a real need to not just show we have a D&I agenda but to actively try to address D&I issues within the organisation.

I think, if you look at the last five to ten years, every big company has said ‘we are behind the D&I agenda’. But it is important that an organisation actually reflects this, especially for new recruits and graduates, because they want an organisation to embody the right kind of values. You need to have initiatives and agendas that are actually followed through and implemented into the company as opposed to bland strategy comments made and posted around the organisation with no oomph behind them. We have seen a need to benchmark where you are now to where you want to go.

GC: From your perspective, how important are role models in driving diversity forward?

MD: If you look at anyone coming into the organisation, they will be asking ‘what is the real opportunity for me? Does this company model what they say? Do they reflect this?’. If people cannot see people like themselves in leadership positions, then it is just empty words. There has been a step-change at the leadership level of gender representation and this has been encouraged through mentoring and promoting participation in leadership-type programmes, and this allows people to see they can get to higher levels within the organisation. There is a need to ensure this mentoring continues to takes place across all D&I strands and that is the focus of many of the streams in the UK now. In addition to mentoring there is a need to focus on school children from the 11-16 range to show them the possibilities of what can be achieved as we regard this as a key stage to capture minority groupings.

Traditionally, support and enabling functions are more diverse than other areas of any business in the construction industry. Arcadis is trying to ensure diversity is reflected across all areas of the business and we are fortunate that this is an issue taken seriously by the CEO and the leadership team.

GC: What are the challenges you see moving forward, both from an Arcadis perspective and in the broader legal sector?

MD: Where next? Everyone talks about D&I, it has been a buzzword for the last five years, but you need to actually see a step-change from the top down: not just words, but something properly reflected. Over the last few years we have seen the appointment of women to board positions within FTSE 100 companies and while I am not convinced myself whether this alone drives the behaviour in terms of inclusion, it is a good start.

Now there has to be a wider agenda. In a way, gender was the easier one to kick off all of the D&I strands. But there has to be a constant reminder to people that it isn’t that gender was important and now we have addressed it and we can move on: instead, it is something that needs to be continually addressed.

On the race agenda, I think it was very much a box-ticking exercise in the ’80-’90s. There was a feeling that if organisations monitored their race relations they were satisfactorily discharging their obligations. I believe more has to be done to encourage people from ethnic minorities into our profession both from a legal point of view and a consultancy, design and engineering stance.

Encouraging people means taking actual steps towards inclusion. I have heard it said that if you do not intentionally include then you unintentionally exclude and that is why more credence has to be paid to inclusivity. You have to constantly reference back – for us as an organisation and for our clients – in terms of measuring improvements or where there has been ‘success’ in the company.

There is no one target that shows you have achieved D&I, you have to constantly feed back to the workforce what successes there have been, but still continue to strive to improve in all areas. I am excited to be involved in seeing the development of these initiatives over the next few years.

Ingeus principally provides employability, skills and training, youth and justice services for the governments, with its largest market being in the UK. People come to Ingeus because they have barriers to employment for all sorts of reasons, many of which are protected characteristics under the Equality Act. We also run probation services through our Community Rehabilitation Companies in the Midlands, and many of our service users are ex-offenders so, again, there’s quite a big diversity angle. We need to consider race, age, disability, LGBT issues, and all sorts of other factors when designing programmes for our clients.

We have an equality and diversity committee that meets two or three times a year. It does two things: it reviews our performance outcomes for diverse classes of service users under our contracts,, and it sets a diversity strategy for the wider organisation. I’m involved and lead that Committee because of my background in doing lots of diversity-related work at my former company, Balfour Beatty, and leading external LGBT networks.

We set ourselves targets related to parity of outcomes for groups of service users from different backgrounds. The government wants to see up-to-date policies and procedures about how we deal with diverse groups, so this year we’ve created a handbook for all of our frontline staff to help them understand barriers faced by people with protected characteristics under the Equality Act.. We also became a ‘B Corp’ last year [a for-profit business that has a social purpose], and so are assessed against a number of criteria, many of which touch on diversity.

The business case

An understanding of different diverse classes of people can only help in our service delivery. Overcoming barriers faced by clients can lead to better results, which leads to better results in our contracts, which means that we win more contracts. It’s blindingly obvious that an understanding of diversity is going to be a real benefit for us as an organisation. I also certainly believe that engaging with diversity and inclusiveness is one great way to improve staff engagement, if you do it in the right way. A diverse organisation, one that reflects our end users, is likely to make Ingeus a better place to work for everyone.

When I was at Balfour Beatty I spent a lot of time generating a business case for diversity, and we approached quantification of the benefits in two ways. The first was a ‘negative’ way of looking at it, which was focusing on the cost of getting it wrong. Every time you have a discrimination claim, you’re highly likely to lose several days of staff time, due to stress and grievance. There are legal costs, a lot of management time invested in investigating complaints, and so on. A lot of discrimination claims could have been avoided with some diversity training. Taking a negative lens and quantifying the cost was a way of justifying the training.

On the ‘positive’ side, there’s lots of work now being done by external organisations where you can look at how well companies with diverse boards are doing compared to those without. By and large, diverse companies tend to outperform others, so all that evidence is mounting up in terms of a business case for diversity.

When I was at BP, SABMiller and Balfour Beatty, they were all fairly masculine industries − oil and gas, beer, construction − and certainly the legal team in each of those organisations was pretty much the most diverse team. I’ve always found that when you have a diverse legal team, people from other parts of the business tend to want to come and talk to you, because it’s a bit different from the rest of their day job. And one of the biggest roles of in-house lawyers is to be the glue that connects various parts of the business together. In some organisations, people don’t talk to others in different departments, but at some point in time most departments have to come and talk to us. If you have a diverse team that people want to come and talk to, it can make that part of your job easier.

Obviously a lot of in-house counsel tend to get involved in ethics and compliance and we’re often required to uphold the Code of Conduct of the organisation, implement it, and investigate whether there are breaches of it. We’re often called upon to investigate things like discrimination and harassment, and therefore we need to be seen to be perfect at diversity really. It is not good enough to just be impartial, when you are investigating, you need to understand the root causes of issues and not bring your unconscious biases to bear in presuming any outcomes.

Being a role model

When you are at GC level you’re viewed as a very senior person in the organisation. I found that as soon as I started engaging with, and talking about, diversity, people listened because it was coming from me. And it didn’t matter that it wasn’t really purely legal subject matter. If you are from a diverse group (I’m LGBT), then the more senior you are, the longer your shadow is. You get to a certain point where it’s not acceptable to hide away: you need to be seen to be a role model.

When I created the LBGT network at Balfour Beatty, there was a man who saw the ad and came to the programme. He mentioned to me that he was interested in transgender issues, we had a separate meeting and by the second event he had come for the first time dressed as herself. By the third time we had a plan in place to go through her transition at work, and now she works as Christina and is fabulous. She took over the running of the network when I left. Balfour Beatty now has a fully engaged employee, who is very loyal to the organisation, and who is delivering so much more than just the day job she was delivering when she was Chris and not Christina.

You can add to your role modelling with mentoring role as well, identifying smart people within your networks who have some potential and then offering them development opportunities. I’ve spotted some really sharp talent as a result of that network that otherwise might have gone under the radar. There is also reverse mentoring. In terms of my leadership skills, it has made me more empathic, a better listener and it’s actually helped me do my legal day job as well.

Learning together

One of the critiques that often gets levied at you when you’re setting up a network is: ‘If we do this, everyone else will start complaining that they’re not getting all this support or this attention, so therefore we should do nothing’. I think that’s a cop-out approach. Actually, if you set up programmes where people see that they would be supported if they created such a network, then it inspires people to do more than just their day job − something really beneficial for the organisation.

I worked very closely with my head of HR at Balfour Beatty Services, who was running the women’s network. It was immensely helpful for both of us to have each other focusing on these two separate strands of diversity, but to then come together as part of a wider diversity committee. We talked about the concept of diversity and overarching programmes that we could put in place where your diverse characteristics are almost irrelevant: it’s more around measurements and the business case for diversity and things that apply right across all diverse characteristics. I learnt a hell of a lot about all sorts of diversity as a result of being engaged in my particular strand. Obviously there is gender, race, disability and age all intersecting with LGBT issues, and you need to understand about all those things to be fully effective.

I think it’s important in companies to have role models who look like you, but it works even better when you have allies who don’t look like you. The problem with diversity sometimes is that it makes people who don’t fit into that category feel uncomfortable. What’s being exposed is people’s unconscious biases. But when you’ve got someone up there who isn’t from that group saying ‘this is the right thing to do, and how awesome, look at all this amazing challenging stuff going on’, then it gives a bit of credence and support to the people who are trying to make the changes and be the role models.

One of the things I did when I left Balfour Beatty, is to help found a network called ‘Off Site’, which is a network for LGBT people in the infrastructure sector. We’ve had three meetings now and we have between 70-100 people show up, from SMEs up to bigger organisations. I’m a firm believer that it shouldn’t just be the big organisations that get the benefit of these events, but the only way that smaller organisations are going to get the benefit is if they join up across sectoral initiatives like Off Site. You can come in your own time, there’s none of that work pressure around it. Smaller companies can identify those networks and point employees in the right direction to get those connections, and they might bring back good ideas for the company.

Alison Gaskins (AG): As Chair of the Legal Diversity and Inclusion Council, I am ultimately responsible for fostering a culture in legal in which we can share and appreciate our perspectives and differences, and where colleagues can properly express who they are. My predecessors, Judith Shepherd and Erica Handling, did an outstanding job running D&I in the past and so it makes me think that there is something in the lawyer role that shares kinship with this effort, possibly because in the classic sense, lawyers have to operate without prejudice, taking a big picture view in all we do.

 

Bob Hoyt, Barclays Group General Counsel, is very passionate about collaboration. He sees legal as being uniquely placed to work across all boundaries and siloes within an organisation, and diversity is a great place to see this in practice.

GC: Is your diversity and inclusion strategy primarily driven by internal factors, external pressures or both?

AG: Definitely both. We want people to feel very comfortable working at Barclays. The same is true within legal – we want people to thrive, whoever they are and whatever they feel.

We have the aspiration and objective to be the employer of choice for D&I. It is not an HR-driven agenda; instead it comes right from the Barclays Executive Committee and is prevalent through our culture, activities, communities and as part of our day-to-day narrative.

Internally, we have five global agendas covering Gender, Disability, Multigenerational, Multicultural and LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) and we have internal employee networks assigned to these five agendas. These are each sponsored by a member of the Executive Committee, so we have very senior sponsorship and leadership, which gives them a profile.

Externally, ultimately we are a customer-facing organisation, and one key thing you want to present back to your customer is a mirror image of local communities and themselves. Is there connectivity, sameness, a rapport… and is it felt? Even with our products and client services we try to bring in D&I. We think about vulnerable customers with innovations like talking ATMs and Skype-based banking using sign language. Our UK branch network is very innovative from a D&I perspective. We also launched a Barclays card mobile capability at Gay Pride in London.

GC: What is the impact of diversity on perceptions of the company?

AG: We try and engage with external organisations such as Stonewall and Working Mother. Where there are opportunities to actually seek recognition from them, we actively pursue this.

We offer a lot of in-house training and we take opportunities to get that externally referenced as well because it is important to validate our progress without it becoming a numerical exercise. External affirmations help endorse what we are already doing.

GC: What is the role of the in-house Legal team in creating diversity and inclusion initiatives? Can the Legal team have an effect on the identity of the organisation?

AG: My predecessors Judith Shepherd and Erica Handling were hugely influential in this space, and created a connection in the mind of the organisation regarding the effectiveness of legal in this whole agenda, primarily (but not exclusively) from a gender perspective. If you think about the role lawyers play as custodians of managing risk, there is a sense that what legal takes seriously is a mark of what Barclays takes seriously – a connection of influence there.

We think about our functional role in two ways: one is ensuring that lawyers feel part of the central agenda of the organisation and are not working in isolation. That goes back to there being a natural affinity of value here – legal working without boundaries across Barclays.

The other is our commitment in Barclays and in legal to dynamic working. Dynamic working can be defined as a method of making sure that all colleagues can structure and balance their work and life successfully. Flexible working often constitutes a change in your working hours, while dynamic working may be just doing the same hours from a different place. It becomes about the value of outputs, not where and how. People associate flexible working with the working mothers agenda, so dynamic working pushes it to a broader meaning and audience.

With our dynamic working and multigenerational working (responsibility for elderly parents can be a big factor), we try to acknowledge that people are both parents and carers. These discussions can start with our well-funded employee networks, which are driving that agenda for change.

GC: Multigenerational working sounds interesting. What are the specific challenges involved in introducing a commitment to this?

AG: Our multigenerational agenda has been part of Barclays’ diversity strategy for years. The core of the agenda is to support colleagues through each stage of their lives and careers. We do this in many different ways. Through our employee network groups; for instance, the Working Family network (which supports working parents and caregivers), the Emerge network (colleagues who are in the early stages of their careers, primarily Generations X and Y) and our Military network (colleagues who are typically entering banking as a second or third career). Or through the dynamic working campaign, which is about helping people manage their working lives.

And then also through various other programmes and initiatives, like our ‘Be Well’ campaign, which supports good health and wellbeing, and Barclays’ ‘Bolder Apprenticeships’ programme, which aims to address the increasing rate of older – generation unemployment.

We’re soon going to have five generations working together in the workplace and so I think you will see a keener focus on how we foster more intergenerational understanding. This will certainly be one of our focus areas at Barclays.

GC: What are the key challenges you face around getting buy-in across departments?

AG: One challenge we face at Barclays is trying to remain impactful within a very complex, global organisation and operating structure. We have colleagues with multifaceted roles in Barclays and it is, at times, challenging for global diversity campaigns to touch different individuals in a real and authentic way.

However, the biggest challenge is not the buy-in, it’s getting people to figure out what to do. We don’t have an army of people behind the employee networks – it is astonishingly small in terms of people driving the agenda. But it needs to be led from the top down and embedded in every part, irrespective of how big or small you are. It is about whether people feel accountable at all levels and all areas. It is not about the job title – everyone needs to feel responsible. That’s where employee networks step in, because people are deciding for themselves what works. It becomes an inclusive approach.

A really big part of all this is that anyone can be a part of the network group. You just need to be sympathetic.

GC: What are the future challenges for Barclays in regards to D&I?

AG: D&I takes time to permeate, and part of it is not knowing what’s on the horizon: you can’t always anticipate huge societal changes. Our multigenerational programme is a really good example of that − increased retirement age and longer working lives were there far earlier than anyone actually started thinking about them as an employer. It is about seeing those societal shifts happening, and ideally pre-empting them. In our Emerge network (with millennials), we talk a lot about what it means to be a millennial, and then a large, 325-year-old organisation like Barclays looks at that and thinks ‘What do we do? We aren’t geared up for that type of employee!’ But the reality is that they are coming, they are here. We are trying to plan for the unexpected.

The other question is how you keep momentum going. You have to keep your nerve. You need someone at the helm who is senior enough to carry clout and credibility, but if that figurehead leaves, you have to keep on. It needs to be about more than one person.

The first thing to say about the LGBT dimension of diversity is that it is the one ‘strand’ that can choose to be invisible. The importance of role models is probably therefore even more pronounced because people can come into work and choose to be ‘invisible’ in a way you cannot if you are a woman, or if you are from a particular ethnic background, or if you are disabled. Some types of disability are not visible, of course, but it seems to me that role models become even more important in these contexts, especially high profile and successful role models who address that issue of invisibility.

People may recall what that meant for J. P. Morgan; in 2002 we addressed the issue very tangibly with a cross campus poster campaign which subsequently got wide coverage in the legal press: ‘The Only Gay In The City?’ and ‘Let’s Get One Thing Straight’ and it was enormously impactful. We put it everywhere, across the trading floors, etc (taking it a step further from the usual internal communication areas), and things snowballed from there.

Back in mid-2000, we, along with a number of the other investment banks, were involved in ‘Out In The City’, which was an annual evening event involving panels of employees from various functional groups with a Q&A and presentations. We collectively put money into a pot and brought together a cadre of 60/70 high calibre students, who just happened to be LGBT. We held the event at a neutral venue and gave an opportunity for each of the graduate recruitment teams to have a stand, as well as formal and informal networking with staff. I would often chair the Q&A panels. I can remember talking to students who said ‘I never thought I would meet a gay MD at an investment bank’. Time has moved on, of course, but I believe experiences like this could be invaluable for some aspiring lawyers.

Although there is an element of truth in the statement that you have to be ‘counted in order to count’, I am generally quite skeptical of statistics. I know it is a component of many RFPs, but I have always said that statistics are only one element of the toolkit you could use to assess progress on inclusive workplace environments. I am a greater advocate of ‘soft cultural indicia’ – the messaging you are sending out in your corporate DNA – which are somewhat subjective relative to hard numbers. Clear signals of these are employee networking groups and other support structures including workplace benefits. I can remember a conversation at the establishment of the Joint Associations Committee on Retail Structured Products (which I chair): ‘Well, we are going to comply with the law and regulation so why do we need industry principles or best practices?’ Law firms have made leaps and bounds on this and there has been some very creative thinking in firms about leveraging diverse networks of lawyers across the spectrum of business relationships with clients – for example the annual Art Exhibition that Clifford Chance organises for LGBT clients and counsel.

Fundamentally though, I think it all comes down to professional credibility – to competence, commitment and character. I am keen to be the managing director of J.P. Morgan who is gay – not a gay MD at J.P. Morgan. And one ambition is to be the first Lord Mayor of the City of London who is openly gay – not The Gay Lord Mayor. Professional credibility and achievement comes first (being really good at your job), not diversity as some sort of predefining label – because that is just the wrong way around. That then makes the diversity conversation resonate more effectively and more strategically within an organisation, otherwise it can rapidly generate the perception of a clique with its own set of terms, which is rather ironic when it is supposed to be about inclusion not exclusiveness. If there is a credible business outcome on talent, on organisational effectiveness and performance, then that gets more traction with decision-makers than someone who is perceived (rightly or wrongly) as only advancing a self-interested agenda, however ‘worthy’ it might be at face value.

I am also keen to ensure that we focus on the fact that we firmly contextualise this in work, about the success of the bank, to help people fully contribute and succeed in their jobs, and attracting talent. It is not about being especially ‘nice’ to gay people or supporting worthy causes that have little to do with the day job. There are many things out there that people can support in their own time, but where this has a material impact for J.P. Morgan is in the context of the business.

J.P. Morgan is rightly proud to have been a front runner in LBGT initiatives, but it has been an iterative process. There was an element of nervousness at first: partly people were unfamiliar with the issues, and also there was just a degree of ignorance. I genuinely don’t mean that at all pejoratively. I think there was perhaps a bit of hesitation about asking the questions, but a great deal of goodwill. I can remember we had a successful networking event at the V&A which leveraged an exhibition of Kylie Minogue’s costumes. We threw an event there off the back of this and I wrote a briefing paper to Bill Winters, our former CEO, and other senior colleagues. It was an aide memoir of the different vocabulary used in the LGBT community (such as ‘Why is Stonewall important?’ and ‘What’s the “T” in LGBT?), trying to answer some of the questions not asked before that point. There was an element of a learning curve but there was no resistance or hostility at all. In a sense we were pushing at an open door – it just had to be articulated. This was in 2003/2004, and I would be very surprised if that was necessary in most organisations now. Society has moved on, but the private sector’s paradigm has definitely shifted too, certainly in professional and financial services. I suppose it is valid to ask whether you are actually affecting change or harnessing the undercurrent of change that is already flowing under the surface? I think there has been a bit of the ‘right place, right time’ here, but someone had to edge it constructively forward.

We are confident that LGBT candidates have applied to J.P. Morgan in part because they see the legal department as a welcoming and inclusive place. I have people in my own group who are LGBT and if you asked them whether that was relevant in their deciding to come to us, I think they would say yes. There has also been academic research that demonstrates that places that are welcoming to LGBT are also generally welcoming to women, and that women were looking at that material and basing judgments on where they wanted to work based on that information. Visible role models communicate powerfully that you can be successful, and that being who you are is a non-issue.

What are the strategic imperatives and benefits for J.P. Morgan? Well, I think a balance of different perspectives and the way in which that informs an individual’s approach to an issue, from who they are and what their life experiences have been, can only be of benefit to a franchise which is fundamentally about people and service. The classic example is law firms. You assume a basic technical competence in the law, so beyond that, what are the differentiators? How creatively do they think? Who sees the different angle to the obvious? This is also true for financial services to an extent. If are homogeneous in your recruiting, you do yourself, your clients and your shareholders a disservice, because the creative energy comes from difference. This is an incredibly vibrant and healthy thing and it ultimately contributes to the bottom line.

I think the ‘buzzwords’ that get knocked around are ‘talent’, ‘people development’, etc, but the plain fact of the matter is that the best people come in all shapes, sizes, colours, sexualities and so forth, and any firm premised on people capital that fails to get that fundamental fact won’t succeed in the face of the competition that does. So do I think I personally approach things in a way that is informed by my own professional and personal experiences, that it is different than the way, for example, a heterosexual man or a woman might approach things? Yes, I do – though it doesn’t make me anymore right or wrong with the answers!

I think lawyers are in a unique position on this topic, being potentially powerful advocates and respected and trusted advisers. However, one of the differences between a lawyer in a bank and a lawyer in a law firm is that in a law firm you are the ‘front office’ – the revenue generators – and when you go in-house you reverse that and become a cost (!). What both law firm and in-house counsel have in common is an inherent sense of equity, fairness and justice, as well as the intellectual rigour of the discipline. Most lawyers I know have a basic instinct to do the right thing irrespective of their practice area. It is fundamental to the DNA of a lawyer, even when it isn’t necessarily popular or what people want to hear on a particular issue. There is just an inherent dislike of injustice, discrimination, unfairness, that speaks very powerfully to equality of opportunity and fair treatment of all people.