Leadership & governance

Not only is diversity, equity and inclusion a standing Board agenda item, the firm also has a Shadow Board, which mirrors the current structure of Shoosmiths’ senior management Board. The Shadow Board’s aim is to bring in diverse perspectives from around the firm to create a feedback loop that makes recommendations to the senior management.

Policies & processes

We have a robust policy suite in place that includes Equal Opportunities and Bullying and Harassment policies, which ensure we take a zero-tolerance approach. We believe our polices also go above and beyond to support our people including: family friendly support covering pathways to parenthood; menopause; health and disability; and trans inclusion guidance notes. Learn more on our careers pages about our benefits and policies. 

Data & reporting

We aim to be transparent with our data and share publicly our UK representation data and report the mandatory pay gap report, as well as including voluntary metrics too. Our pay gap reporting suite is available here. We partner with Pirical to provide more sophisticated insights into hiring, retention and progression of underrepresented groups. This informs our strategy and is reviewed by the Board and senior leadership team regularly. 

Career development

Our High Performing Women programme is intended to provide support and challenge, championing women and female contributors at the top of our business, and to provide feedback to enable critical evaluation internally. Our reciprocal mentoring programme (pairing colleagues from across the business with senior leaders) aims to turn traditional mentoring on its head to open up a flow of knowledge and sharing of diverse experiences and perspectives between participants. 

Skills & awareness training

Our Inclusive Leadership workshops equip partners and senior managers with the skills to lead diverse teams; whilst all colleagues benefit from unconscious bias training which is mandatory. Everyone at the firm benefits from membership to WorkLife Central; offering a wealth of resources to support, inform and inspire professionals in their family life, work life and wellbeing.

Internal employee networks

The firm's five inclusion networks – Balance (gender equality), Embrace (culture & heritage), Proud (LGBT+), Mental Health & Wellbeing Champions and Unique (health & disability)  - help us to create connections within our community at the firm, to celebrate each other’s identities and to really bring to life the value of ‘being ourselves’. Each member of Shoosmiths Board is an ally for one of the networks, providing support and sponsorship to their particular identity group. Our networks help us to support colleagues, our communities and clients, whilst shining a light on stories and issues that matter to all of us, recognising that we all have a role to play as allies in making workplaces and society fairer.

External partnerships

We collaborate with many external partners to drive forward our DEI efforts, to benefit from specialist expertise and to connect with new communities. You can see some of our partners listed at the bottom of this page in the ‘recognition & partnerships’ section. 

Client engagement

We know diversity matters to our clients too. In addition to sharing information about our DEI efforts we look for opportunities to partner with our clients to deliver against shared aims, such as these example with the Volkswagen Group (VWG) and Virgin Media O2.