Our diversity, equity and inclusion strategy

Withers' ambition is to attract and retain the best people, regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, disability, age, socio-economic background and without other form of unlawful or unfair discrimination. 

We aim to provide an inclusive environment that is fair and equitable to all, in which people from all groups, including underrepresented groups, thrive and prosper financially, professionally and personally. Having a diverse workforce can help drive innovation, creativity and enhance engagement. Enhancing diversity enables us to serve the needs of our clients and the diverse communities in which we operate better and ultimately supports the firm's profitable growth.

Diversity

We aim to enhance the diversity of our people by increasing the number of lawyers and business services professionals from underrepresented groups. We aim to do this in the UK and the US by committing to considering at least 30% of underrepresented candidates for all of our open roles and in our promotion processes and adhering to the process required to achieve Mansfield certification (see Footnote 1) , and to following similar processes in our other locations, even though certification is not currently available there.

In particular, we will ensure there are more women on recruitment shortlists for traditionally male dominated roles and vice versa. We aim to publish our progression processes to encourage a continuing pipeline of diverse candidates for our leadership roles, including appointments to our various management roles and role descriptions for partnership leadership roles.

Equity

We value a culture where equity and fairness are at our core. To support this we aim to:

• Use external advisors to review our pay structures and make recommendations that can feed into our partner and employee pay review processes. This will enable us to ensure decisions around recruitment, performance appraisal, promotion, pay and bonuses are equal, fair and objective, and free from any bias. Over time we aim to reduce traditional legal industry occupational segregation, where in business services teams the majority of lower paid administrative roles are performed by women and the majority of director-level roles are performed by men, and there are more male senior equity partners than female.
• Facilitate greater understanding of our partnership compensation processes and criteria.

We aim to reduce our UK gender and ethnicity pay gaps as defined in UK legislation. To achieve this, we aim to produce analysis and modelling using new tools and resources to provide deeper insights into the key drivers of our pay gaps, so these can be assessed, and actions identified to determine next steps for changes to our policies and processes.

Inclusion 

We aim to create a culture that is inclusive and free from bias. To support this we aim to:

• Continue to develop our DEI networks, expanding these to be global where possible, and to include LGBTQ+, women, working families, neurodiversity, disability and religion. The aim of our DEI networks is to facilitate groups interested in these areas to come together, raise awareness and to work with the firm's management to develop and progress our DEI agenda.
• Continue to develop and communicate our global calendar of DEI observances.
• Continue to develop DEI policies to support our communities to include pregnancy loss, enhanced parental leave, sabbaticals, support for those who are transitioning/change to gender expression, pronouns guidance, support for those experiencing infertility or undergoing IVF, menopause, domestic abuse and separation.

Engagement

We aim to seek feedback from our people at least once a year to understand how inclusive our culture is felt to be and any areas where we could make improvements. 

Training

We continue to find opportunities to raise awareness, to educate and to train on a wide range of DEI topics. Our priorities, in addition to rolling out our existing DEI training offering, are to develop and deliver:

• A firm-wide DEI training program
• Information sessions on the importance of DEI as part of the firm's overall business strategy – intended to raise levels of support and engagement
• Transition and change to gender expression, including use of pronouns training
• Neurodiversity education sessions
• Appropriate e-learning that provides guidance and support for individuals and their supervisors on a range of topics to include: pregnancy loss, infant bereavement, infertility and IVF, and the menopause
• Awareness of different aspects of unconscious bias – each session exploring a different aspect e.g. ageism, generational difference, ethnicity