Workplace
We continue to evolve our workplace policies to ensure all our people are supported, engaged and rewarded to be at their best and to work in a connected and agile way. We strive to create a diverse and inclusive culture, while embracing new technology and flexible ways of working.
Some of the highlights from this year include:
Having conducted a firm-wide culture survey in 2022, over the past 12 months we have focused on enhancing connection and collaboration with our people through more celebration of our collective success. Our return to the office, post pandemic, has allowed us to gather more frequently in person, both as a firm and on an individual team basis. In the past year, all our teams have held ‘away day’ sessions to align on business priorities and reinforce connections.
We also continue to improve our feedback culture and to address the work life balance challenges our people experience. In September 2022 we updated our Partner Annual 360 feedback process to ensure we get the right feedback and input from all our people. Over the coming year we want to ensure that we provide the appropriate tools as we enhance our peer-to-peer feedback at all levels across our firm.
Flexibility is key for our people. Our hybrid working survey, completed in 2022, confirmed that the option to periodically work remotely, is really valued. Communication and engagement continue to be an area of focus. We ensure that hybrid meeting capabilities are provided to help teams keep focused and connected.
We also recognise that the traditional working model is evolving in the workplace and to address this in May 2023 we launch a selection of Alternative Working Arrangements as a pilot programme. To date we have 15 ‘early adopters’ and we will report on our progress in this area next year.
Health and Wellness
The health and wellness of our people is a priority. To help everyone in the firm with their physical and mental fitness, we have strategies in place to protect and support our staff, such as providing an Employee Assistance Programme to support our employees with counselling and information services as required.
We were delighted to introduce healthcare cover for all our people in July 2022 as a further commitment to individuals prioritising their health. Our existing partnership with Vhi allowed us to enhance our range of wellness talks and webinars provided throughout the year, sharing tools and techniques that our people can use in their everyday lives.
As part of our Wellness Week in October 2022, mental health first aid training was organised by the firm. We now have a team of 15 mental health ‘first-aiders’ and we continue to ensure we leverage this team to support colleagues across the firm. The importance of mindfulness was reinforced with an event hosted by Dr John Sharry, a leading solution-focused therapist, who shared practical tips on how to implement mindfulness into our everyday activities. The firm celebrated Ibec’s National Workplace Wellbeing Day in April 2023 and we provided onsite massage and reflexology sessions to mark the day.
In terms of physical wellbeing, all employees enjoy the benefits of our onsite gym and a wide variety of fitness classes. Our gym provider works closely with us to assist with our annual fitness programme, Fit4Fun, that encourages our people to get involved in fun fitness events throughout the year while also raising funds for our three chosen charity partners. This year’s three-week team fitness challenge took place in March 2023. It involved many of our people taking part, tracking their daily and weekly fitness, healthy eating and mindfulness activities.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) has been a business imperative for us for a number of years. It is central to the culture and ethos of our firm. We recognise the importance of EDI as we evolve our business and embrace a variety of views and backgrounds - this leads to greater innovation and creativity.
We also recognise the access issues faced by many people from minority and diverse backgrounds. To better reflect the clients we serve and the community in which we do business, we continue to work on action plans that ensure we afford opportunities to people from diverse backgrounds and sections of society that are underrepresented in our employee base. We want to ensure our workforce includes a multitude of different backgrounds and perspectives that support our purpose of delivering all-round excellence to clients and our people.
Over the past 12 months, our EDI Partner Committee has focused on the development of our enhanced EDI strategic plan for the next three years. Using feedback from focus groups and people surveys, we launched our revised EDI strategy paper in March 2023 which outlines our four key pillars:
Each pillar is supported by a Partner from our EDI Committee who is responsible for providing guidance and direction to the sub-committee. Each EDI sub-committee includes representation from our people across all levels in the firm. These sub-committees are key to delivering the action plans for each pillar.
One of the firm’s EDI goals is to increase the diversity of our candidate profiles. We began reporting on EDI demographic data for new candidates on an optional and anonymous basis towards the end of 2022. We wanted to ensure we were making progress on our EDI initiatives and we wanted to identify areas, like our recruitment process, that needed improvement. We continue to review this data as a mechanism to measure the success of our EDI action plans through improved representation.
Once again this year we ran our EDI Trainee Competition. The winning group in 2022 came up with the idea for a new mentoring initiative called Advance which is aimed at second and third-year university students from both legal and non-legal backgrounds. The Advance programme is supported by the firm’s race and ethnicity network, EMBRACE. It offers associates from the firm a unique opportunity to support minority students who may be interested in a career in law. Participating students are assigned a mentor who meets with them informally on a number of occasions, either in-person or virtually.
Gender in the Firm
Our Gender in the Firm initiative aims to improve gender balance and support women’s careers and progression to leadership positions in our firm. We do this through sponsorship and mentoring programmes, maternity coaching, networking events and bespoke training sessions. To ensure the effectiveness of this initiative, we have set out targets to be achieved by 2028. Currently 39% of our partners in the firm are women. We continue to strive to increase our percentage of women Equity Partners in the firm.
39% of our Partners are women
In December 2022 we published our first Gender Pay Gap Report. This highlighted the challenges around representation of women at senior levels in our firm. Our gender pay gap for the firm, excluding Equity Partners, was 1%. We included Equity Partners in the overall calculation to ensure full transparency and this resulted in a wider gap of 52% for the firm. We are focused on closing this gap and our refreshed EDI Strategy, is key to how we will get there. Our Gender Pay Gap Report is available to view here.
Over the past 12 months, our Chief People Officer engaged at both a group and individual level with our Partners to see how we can consistently improve our efforts to specifically support female lawyers and those who wish to progress to equity partnership within the firm.
We continue to collaborate with external partners such as the 30% Club Ireland, which is committed to supporting organisations achieve improved gender balance.
We have also launched additional support programmes throughout the year, including networking lunches, coffee mornings and leadership development training.
Family Leave
We are pleased to have several programmes that support family leave, including our maternity coaching programme. The purpose is to allow expectant mothers to fully understand and explore the maternity transition and to be effective in meeting the challenges it brings. We plan to evolve this into a working parents programme and we hope that it will extend well beyond the maternity leave transition and into advance career planning and subsequent progression within the firm. We also provide extensive support to our fathers through progressive parental and paternity leave policies. This includes a shared parenting leave policy that allows the sharing parent to avail of any untaken maternity leave by the mother. Our paternity leave policy offers 12 weeks' paid leave. The firm’s coffee mornings and working parents’ discussion groups to promote both role modelling and sharing of personal experiences made a welcome return this year following a forced suspension during Covid. We believe these areas of focus are key to supporting the successful progression of our female staff members, facilitating improved sharing of parental responsibilities and leave in what are often dual career families. In the past year, we are pleased to report that 55 of our people have availed of some form of the firm’s family leave.
LGBTQ+
Our firm’s LGBTQ+ network, alliance, was launched in 2017. It aims to foster a culture of inclusivity and openness and since its launch the network has regularly organised networking and social events, as well as providing training for allies and development opportunities for LGBTQ+ employees. Membership of the network is open to everyone in the firm, both those who identify as LGBTQ+ and their allies. The success of the network centres on the engagement of all our colleagues across our firm, regardless of how they identify.
Over the past 12 months alliance has kept LGBTQ+ issues at the forefront and has demonstrated continued commitment to equality and inclusion for LGBTQ+ people. It has done this through training, external speakers, social events, awareness campaigns and support for the LGBTQ+ community and its charity partners.
Other highlights during the year included a panel discussion on LGBTQ+ families and same-sex female marital couples and children’s rights. We were joined by special guests, Prof. Conor O’Mahony, Professor of Law, University College Cork and former Special Rapporteur on Child Protection from 2019-2022, Ranae Von Meding, CEO of Equality for Children, an Irish non-profit that fights for equality for children born to LGBTQ+ families in Ireland and Maeve Delargy, a Senior Associate at Philip Lee LLP and a volunteer for Equality for Children.
We were also pleased to welcome Nick McCarthy from Leinster Rugby for a firmwide event. He spoke to us about his coming out journey, the reaction and support he received from his club and what he feels other teams and organisations can do to help support LGBTQ+ colleagues and friends as they come to accept themselves when coming out.
In 2023 we were proud to celebrate the sixth anniversary of alliance and hosted a firmwide event to remember the many achievements of the committee over the years and to look forward to the plans for the coming year.
Disability and Neurodiversity
This year we introduced a new area of focus as part of our refreshed EDI Strategy for the firm. We want to ensure that the firm is a welcoming and accessible place for individuals who have a disability and/or are neurodivergent. We also recognise that our employees may have a family member who has a disability or is neurodivergent. Our aim is to raise awareness and educate people in relation to this area. We also want to adapt our recruitment processes, to ensure our workplace is accessible to all.
We are members of the disAbility Legal Network and this allows us to support the wider community in the legal industry and learn how we as employers can support those with a disability or who are neurodivergent.
Over the past year we have also continued our partnership with Trinity Centre for People with Intellectual Disabilities (TCPID), which provides students with an intellectual disability with an opportunity to participate in a higher education programme, designed to enhance their capacity to fully participate in society as independent adults. We are very pleased to now have two graduates of the programme working with us permanently, following successful internships in 2020 and 2023. Both individuals are excellent additions to the firm and to the teams they support.
Race and Ethnicity
We are committed to creating a culture in the firm in which everyone, regardless of background, identity, race, status or other circumstances, belongs. In 2021, we launched EMBRACE, our internal network for promoting diversity and inclusion of people across different racial and ethnic backgrounds within the firm and our wider communities. The network provides a supportive community for our employees who relate to, identity with, appreciate or celebrate diverse culture and ethnic backgrounds.
Over the past year our EMBRACE committee has worked closely with our graduate recruitment team to ensure that we as a firm have fair procedures and processes in place for all applicants to the firm. We have focused on reviewing and enhancing our recruitment processes to ensure that they are inclusive for applicants from diverse and ethnic backgrounds. We have also set the following targets in terms of future recruitment: 15% of the participants in our internship programme must be minority candidates and 15% of our annual trainee intake must be minority candidates.
As a firm we do not expect our minority employees to bear the burden of educating the rest of the firm on the challenges they face. Every member of our staff has a responsibility, with the firm’s help, to educate themselves. To assist with this during the year we invested in anti-bias and anti-racism training and our first workshop was delivered to members of our Partner EDI Committee, Management Committee and Trainee Steering Group. This training was provided by Black & Irish, an organisation dedicated to raising awareness and celebrating the lives of black and mixed-race Irish people.
To celebrate Black History Month in October 2022 we were pleased to welcome Amanda Adé and Femi Bankole from Black and Irish for an educational talk on the lived experiences of Black and Irish people when it comes to identity. The speakers also provided advice on best practices for workplaces who want to embrace inclusivity and equality. The talk was moderated by Eric Ehigie, Politics Coordinator of Black and Irish and also a future Arthur Cox trainee.
A critical part of our EDI strategy is retaining, supporting and developing our minority colleagues. To address this, we have introduced a reverse mentoring programme. This programme gives senior leaders in the firm, including our Managing Partner, an opportunity to seek insights and to listen to the experiences and ideas of their mentees. The programme also offers mentees a fresh perspective on the firm’s strategy, culture and support for EDI. In this spirit of togetherness, over the past year we have marked cultural holidays, including Diwali and Eid. Members of our EMBRACE committee have created a cultural society that ensures we celebrate and commemorate holidays of other cultures.
Left to right: Eric Ehigie; Amanda Adé, Grainne Hennessy and Femi Bankole
