Journey to diversity: How HSF will meet its global diversity targets
Mark Rigotti discusses how Herbert Smith Freehills is going to increase its current proportion of female partners by 50 per cent by 2019
Key takeaway points:
For me, business success is integrally connected with having an inclusive culture. We are then best positioned to attract, retain and motivate diverse people who can add a fresh perspective on how we innovate and find solutions to increasingly-complex issues.
In order to be a world-class business that is best positioned to embrace the emerging opportunities in our clients' markets, we need to leverage the diversity of experience we have within our network. It is for this reason that I have never considered diversity and inclusion as a standalone strategy. Rather, it is intimately connected with the achievement of our core business goals, such that our diversity and inclusion priorities help to drive our profits.
In September 2015, the results of our first global people engagement survey after the 2012 merger of Herbert Smith and Freehills were released. We were thrilled to see that our sustainable engagement scores are well above those of other law firms and professional services firms, and only one percentage point outside the world's top-20 organisations. I believe that our work around creating an inclusive culture is a key contributor to such high engagement.
Our journey
Our journey to improve diversity and inclusion goes back a number of years and has been punctuated by some clear events and insights.
I am originally from the legacy Freehills side of the firm, and one of the key moments which particularly stands out for me was our 2004 partners' conference in Sydney, where one of our senior women partners showed us a graph. It depicted the percentage of women we recruit compared to the percentage of women in our partnership.
This stark graph became known as the
"St Andrew's cross spider web" because of the similarity of its shape to the web created by the Australian spider of the same name (see Figure 1).
For many, including me, it was a lightbulb moment highlighting the lack of gender diversity at senior levels as a critical business issue - we were not retaining large parts of our talented lawyers as they progressed through the business. So began the Australian firm's original diversity and inclusion strategy, which at the time was solely focussed on the retention and promotion of women through to the partnership. In hindsight, that was narrow - but it was a start.
Similarly, in 2010, the legacy firm Herbert Smith asked a group of partners to consider how to increase the number of women in the partnership. The resulting Gender Report dramatically shifted mindsets and ambitions. It has particularly informed the development of our gender programmes in the UK.
Impact of the merger
The merger which created Herbert Smith Freehills in 2012 presented a unique opportunity to be able to learn from
the diversity initiatives of each of the
legacy firms.
When I arrived in our London office, I had had little exposure to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) initiatives, as this was an area which our Australian firm had not entered. The London office has a thriving LGBT network, which was formed in 2006 under the championship of people like Justin D'Agostino, who is now our global head of disputes and Nigel Farr, who is a senior partner and an elected member of our Global Council.
Herbert Smith had been a first mover in the LGBT space, making our London office a top choice for LGBT graduates. We have been ranked among Stonewall's top 100 firms for LGBT people for the past eight years. For many people, regardless of their sexual identity or orientation, an organisation's approach to LGBT issues and staff is viewed as a general litmus test for how inclusive the organisation is. Activities in this area have moved out more generally into our global network.
Soon after the merger, our Australian firm established its own LGBT network (referred to as the Australian LGBTI Network), drawing on the experiences of the London office. When we saw how rapidly the network gained traction both internally and with clients in Australia, many of us wondered why we hadn't done this earlier. It's a great example of the diversity of thought which can inform and inspire others.
As a merged firm, we have set gender as one of our global diversity and inclusion priorities, along with LGBT and multiculturalism, with the aim of developing strategies across the HSF network to improve diversity and inclusion across
these three areas.
Each of our priorities is supported on the ground by active and engaged diversity committees and networks (which are our employee resource groups). For all our diversity networks, we ensure that there is at least one 'aligned' champion or ally sponsoring the network in order to demonstrate that the network is viewed as important and is supported by senior individuals not falling within the group around which it is built.
Value of targets
Gender diversity has become front of mind for our entire leadership team. True to the old adage of what gets measured gets done, some years ago we set ourselves a target of 20 per cent women in our Australian partnership by 2011 - a target which we met in 2008.
In March 2014, we set gender targets for the global business. Our headline
target is that we aim to have women comprising at least 30 per cent of our partnership by 2019, with an interim target of 25 per cent by 2017. We also have a proportional target for women partners in leadership roles.
In addition, we have a gender-neutral target - for me, setting this target was particularly important in bringing all of our people along with us on our journey to improve gender diversity. Our gender-neutral target is to have reasonably gender-balanced partner promotions in 2014-17.
The gender targets provide focus and accountability. They have shone a light on the composition of the partner pipeline (those lawyers who are under consideration for future promotion to the partnership). They are also requiring us to consider the partner pipeline over a much longer and earlier period.
When we set the targets in March 2014, our global percentage of women
in the partnership was 19 per cent. It is
now 20 per cent - hardly a stellar jump, but then it is facile to think that we would immediately see big improvements in the gender balance of our partnership. Our focus needs to be much earlier in the partnership pipeline and sustained over
a decent period.
It is only by scrutinising and improving what I like to refer to as the 'micro decisions' which we make at key stages
in people's careers that we can start to
get a sense of what is happening, what
we can influence and change, and how
we can improve.
This is where unconscious bias lives and needs addressing. CEB has referred to micro decisions as 'micro challenges' which women face throughout their career lifecycle and which can have a disproportionate impact on their progression to leadership roles.1 For example, informal feedback
and networking typically takes place in a setting which is tailored to men, causing women to miss out on valuable opportunities.
These key decisions (or challenges), when considered cumulatively, can result in significant advantage (or disadvantage) being bestowed on an individual's career progression. We therefore need to scrutinise whether key decisions we are making about the progression (or otherwise) of an individual have been influenced by micro decisions in a way which could
be inequitable.
Figure 2 shows our proportion of
male and female lawyers globally
since 2011.
Unconscious bias
Addressing unconscious bias is a component of our diversity and inclusion efforts which, in turn, enables us to
pursue our strategies and help to drive
our financial success.
Unconscious bias is the hidden beliefs and attitudes towards ourselves and others which can affect a great deal of our patterns of behaviour, including our micro decisions. Once systems are put in place to counteract the impact of bias, particularly at an organisational level, the quality of decision-making processes improves,
which, in turn, can positively affect
business performance.
We have run a number of unconscious bias programmes for partners and senior business services leaders within the firm. It is clear to me that, for the most part, these were reasonably effective in raising people's awareness. However, awareness raising can remain at the academic level unless it is combined with key practical strategies for addressing unconscious bias.
We therefore briefed our training providers to supplement the raised levels of awareness of unconscious bias within particular pivotal decision-making points - for example, talent reviews, remuneration and bonus decisions or key work allocation decisions. This made the training very 'real', particularly given the focus of the impact of bias at a group level. I knew that we had broken some new territory when I started hearing stories of partners pointing out examples of potential unconscious bias at internal talent review meetings.
The awareness raising also gave us a shared language around unconscious bias. Its application to key business decision points is helping to identify and promote behavioural change. We are not perfect and have some way to go - but I feel
that progress is being made.
Inclusive leadership
One of the key step changes we have made as a global firm in terms of diversity and inclusion is shifting our focus from unconscious bias to inclusive leadership. I like this as it is more positive and motivational.
An inclusive leader is someone who encourages and builds on the talents, ideas and experiences of diverse individuals and teams to boost growth and performance. We think that inclusive leadership behaviours are essential for building teams which are capable of dealing with business challenges such as shifts in markets.2
This means creating an environment where key decision-making processes are fully examined for bias (whether unconscious or otherwise) to enable more effective talent management (attraction and retention) and team performance (engagement and performance). These efforts will contribute to building a high-performance organisation, which drives financial success.
Establishing our policies to promote diversity (such as flexible work, paid parental leave and the like) was the easy part; shifting our culture to one where inclusion lies at its heart has taken longer, because it goes to the very core of our individual and team behaviours.
We are currently delivering inclusive leadership development programmes across our regions. We see this as critical to our strategy - without being able to access the full diversity of thought of our people, we might as well be trying to drive forward with the handbrake on.
The shift to talking about inclusive leadership rather than unconscious bias is an important one, because it has an inherently forward looking, positive focus.
In this context, unconscious bias is positioned as something which we all hold and which, unless we develop techniques to counteract it when making decisions, can significantly reduce the options available to us and detract from our ability to draw on the benefits of having a diverse workforce.
By contrast, our inclusive leadership training concentrates on collaboration across our network and the techniques
for creating an inclusive environment. These include how to embed a psychologically-safe culture and how
to adopt a more conscious approach
to better decision making.
Global accountability
Accountability for the implementation of our diversity and inclusion strategy needs to sit at the most senior level in the organisation. I chair our Global Diversity & Inclusion Group (GDIG), which meets quarterly to formulate and oversee our diversity and inclusion strategy.
Our global practice group heads (who hold P&L accountability) are important in leading our diversity and inclusion efforts.
A global head of practice attends each of our meetings to discuss their progress against the gender targets and other diversity issues within the context of
their particular practice group.
I have tried to create an atmosphere at our GDIG which is highly collaborative, with a culture of supported accountability. In other words, we seek to model inclusion by encouraging genuine diversity of thought and discussion rather than seeing the meetings as simply a forum for reporting, while driving effective improvement in the business and not
just being a 'talking shop'.
For me, multiculturalism has to be front of mind in our diversity and inclusion strategy, and it's something which I'm driving in my role as chair of our GDIG. This certainly doesn't mean that this focus is at the expense of other diversity strands - I have an abundance mentality where a focus on one aspect of diversity doesn't necessarily mean a detraction from another. Multiculturalism
will be a key focus for us in coming years -
I believe there are huge business advantages for us in improving in this area.
Regional managing partners and their regional executives have a pivotal role to play in championing improvements in diversity and inclusion. People will be very quick to see a diversity strategy which is not 'owned' by the leadership. It's vital that the regional leadership team is a vocal champion for diversity and role models the type of inclusive behaviours which we are seeking to embed across the firm.
Our experience is that we need to involve regional leadership in our diversity and inclusion activities. For example, each member of the UK and Australian executives has at least one diversity and inclusion KPI. This exercise was led by our regional managing partner in each region.
Regulatory requirements
We have progressed the various diversity strands at different paces in different places.
I am sometimes asked why the Australian market has made further advances with respect to gender than other regions in which we operate, while the UK legal market has had a stronger focus on multiculturalism, social mobility and access to the professions. I think one of the answers to this question lies in the impact of the different regulatory requirements in each of these regions (although there are other factors also at play).
In Australia, we have been required to report our gender statistics (including any gender pay gap) to the Australian government's Workplace Gender Equality Agency for a number of years. Again, tracking and reporting on diversity data provided focus and accountability.
In the UK, there is less of a regulatory framework for reporting, but there is strong equality legislation and a requirement from the Solicitors Regulation Authority for us to monitor and publish our diversity demographics.
The Davies Review3 and the 30% Club (of which we are member) are making great strides in voluntary business action for progress on gender in the UK. We are also members of the government's Think, Act, Report initiative for greater transparency
on gender demographics.
Whatever the approach, it is clear that the exercise of investigating our data and reporting on diversity is a discipline which results in a greater level of scrutiny and hence accountability, provokes discussion and activities, and ensures a sustained focus over time.
While there are no regulatory requirements for reporting on LGBT inclusion, we have engaged in voluntary benchmarking in the UK, Australia and, most recently, Hong Kong. Voluntary benchmarking has been powerful in helping us to create meaningful goals around LGBT inclusion, and I am proud that we are listed in Stonewall's Top Global Employers for 2015.
In March 2015, my co-CEO and I introduced our first Global Diversity Week, which showcased various diversity events and panel discussions in each of our regions. In our videoed introduction to the firm, we said: "Diversity is … more than an ideal. It makes our business stronger. Diversity can offer a wider perspective in virtually any situation. It can make us more adaptable to change, more innovative [and] more ready to embrace new ideas and ways of doing things."
Vision for the firm
I think it is fair to say that our diversity and inclusion work will never be finished - there will always be more which we could do, and I acknowledge that we have really only scratched the surface of improving multiculturalism.
If I think about what I would like our business to look like in 10 years' time, I see a partnership and a business comprising a diverse range of people from varying backgrounds. The number of women at partnership level will more closely reflect the numbers graduating from law schools. There will be a range of backgrounds, preferences and thinking styles represented and active at all levels of the business. Our leaders will harness the diversity of thought and perspective of people at all levels of the organisation, such that we are known for
our culture of inclusion and respect.
Although our journey to that level of diversity has some way to go, we continue to push ahead on several fronts, learning and adjusting as we implement our strategies.
Mark Rigotti is co-CEO at global
law firm Herbert Smith Freehills
(www.herbertsmithfreehills.com).
He gratefully acknowledges the contributions of Danielle Kelly, head of diversity and inclusion for Australia and Asia, and David Shields, head of diversity and inclusion for the UK/US and EMEA, to this article.
References
- See Four Imperatives to Increase the Representation of Women in Leadership Positions,CEB, November 2014
- See Fast Forward: Leading in a Brave New World of Diversity,Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand and Deloitte, 2015
- See Women on Boards: Davies Review Annual Report 2015,UK Department for Business, Innovation & Skills, March 2015