As a talent consultancy, we have an unwavering responsibility to represent everyone in our network in a fair and ethical manner. We commit to providing the same high level service to every professional we work with regardless of their age, gender identity, race, sexual orientation, physical or mental ability, and ethnicity.
We recognise and advocate that a diverse workforce contributes positively to a company’s success and growth. It’s not just about the service we provide, true appreciation for diversity, equality, and inclusion needs to be at our core. We pledge to keep embedding these values in our culture, so that as advisors, we feel empowered to afford the same opportunities we receive, to the professionals we represent.
Leading by example
We are proud to have a diverse leadership team at Director level. While this is good, we appreciate there is a lot of work to be done to achieve more diversity across our circa one hundred employees and seven offices in the UK and Ireland.
Achieving and maintaining a truly diverse and inclusive environment is an ongoing challenge for all businesses, we understand this, and we are willing to embrace the challenge.
Meet our leadership teamOur Diversity Committee
The committee is a group of Marks Sattin employees from a variety of teams and locations from across the business who have volunteered to come together once a month to work on key projects to ensure that diversity and inclusion stay front and centre on our agenda.
The pillars of our committee are:
Our internal hiring strategy
Our client strategy
Our external intiatives
Making sure that our internal hiring strategy, employee environment, and culture is diverse and inclusive, so that we attract a variety of talent into our business, and make them feel comfortable and supported.
Continuously improving on our ability to target and engage a wide and diverse talent network on behalf of our clients, so that we can support professionals in minority groups, while also helping our clients to reach their D&I aspirations.
Committing to being brave and not shying away from difficult and important conversations, such as inequality. This involves encouraging our employees, and wider community to talk, learn, listen, be heard, and be part of the movement.
Targeting a Diverse Pool
In targeting a diverse pool of candidates we seek to ensure:
- Inclusive adverts including use of gender bias decoder ALL adverts
- Accessible adverts - e.g., particular font to help dyslexic candidates, promote happy to provide reasonable adjustments, etc.
- Transparent job details – e.g., expectations of recruitment process, deadlines, include salaries
- Expand our recruitment outreach and proactively reach out to candidates from diverse backgrounds such as, approach different communities, post on diverse job boards
Unbiased Recruitment Process
The ways in which we promote an unbiased recruitment process in partnership with our clients includes:
- De-bias the shortlisting process. E.g., anonymised CVs for hiring managers.
- Accessible application & interview process – ease request of reasonable adjustments, avoid hypothetical questions etc.
- Where possible, interview panels to include a 50/50 ratio of men and women. Always at least two people on interview panel.
- Fair & consistent interview process - standardised interview questions, scoring matrix, etc.
- Regularly review diversity data captured to understand blockers & trends within attraction, recruitment, and selection
Áine Connellan | Chair of our Diversity Committee
“As Marketing Director, I feel it’s important for me to be on the Marks Sattin Diversity Committee to ensure that our D&I strategy aligns with our brand values, but also, as a female working in a male dominated corporate environment, I’m excited to be a part of the progress we’re making in this area”.
Bronze Trailblazer status by Race Equality Matters
As part of our celebrations for Black History Month, we are very pleased to announce that we have been awarded Bronze Trailblazer status by Race Equality Matters. Race Equality Matters’ independent panellists were impressed with our commitment to tackling racial inequality.
How we achieved it
A selection of the points in our application that stood out to the judges:
- As part of Race Equality week 2022 we launched the #mynameis initiative. This is a simple but highly impactful solution to ensure everyone pronounces people’s names correctly. The campaign calls to normalise phonetic spelling in your email signature, your phone contacts, database systems and more. All of the judges unanimously agreed that we had successfully run the #mynameis initiative.
- Our awareness webinars and Let’s Talk sessions that have been run throughout the year and we will continue to run.
- Our commitment to recruit and retain diverse talent.
- Our employee blogs around celebrating different religious holidays, such as Eid and Ramadan.
- Our dedicated D&I Committee who look to address any issues that may occur within the organisation.