We believe the future workforce is an equal one and have set bold goals to accelerate gender equality.

We achieved our goal of 25% women managing directors by the end of 2020 and set a new goal of 30% by 2025. We are well on our way to our goal to achieve gender parity—for those whose gender is binary— by 2025.

We have a strong pipeline of women talent at all levels, from university graduates to managing directors, and we invest in, support and mentor women through a suite of leadership development programmes, which are complemented by the sense of community our Accent on Gender network provides.

We encourage and support our people to return to work after a career break, provide flexible working arrangements and offer shared parental leave. We’re also working to support those that experience menopause by providing better access to healthcare support and resources, as well raising awareness of the issues and encouraging allyship.

We embed inclusion and diversity in everything we do. We set goals, share them publicly, collect data to continuously improve and hold our leaders accountable.

We are committed to increasing the representation of our Black colleagues to 7% of our workforce by December 2025. We will also double the number of our Black managing directors to 16 or more. We routinely track our performance against these goals and ensure we have the right programmes and policies in place to help us create an inclusive and representative environment for all our people.

In 2022, we expanded our efforts for racial and ethnic inclusion across our organisation. We are continuing to make progress toward our goals by increasing our pool of qualified candidates to reflect the diversity of talent in the marketplace. In addition, we created Engage!, a leadership journey for Black employees, their direct managers and sponsors, focusing on culture change and inclusive behaviours across the employee ecosystem.

We continually innovate to find new ways of creating and building more inclusive career pathways.

We are committed to empowering people with disabilities or mental health concerns by removing any barriers around issues that affect us all.

Our Enablement Project is improving how we support our disabled colleagues. One example is The Enablement Passport, a tool that helps identify what support an employee might need. This is supplemented by our Accommodation Support Tool, which enables any employee to easily ask for adjustments they may need, such as assistive technology, flexible work arrangements, sign language interpreters, screen readers and more.

As part of our well-being initiatives, we created the Mental Health Allies programme, training 19% of our UK workforce to be “go to” resources for support. Our corporate partnership with Thrive Global, a behaviour change platform offering science-based solutions to lower stress and enhance well-being and productivity, has enabled us to deliver customised workshops to help our people achieve a sense of belonging and purpose.