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Equality, diversity and inclusion at Hill Dickinson

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Equality, diversity and inclusion

Having a clear diversity and inclusion agenda helps us empower our people, who in turn drive the culture we have worked over many years to achieve.

Our culture is a people thing, based on trust, respect and mutual support. We want everyone who works at Hill Dickinson to be themselves, to feel comfortable within an environment that celebrates their individuality, knowing their voice is heard and confident that we support their aspirations and goals no matter what their background or identity.

Our ED&I policies are embedded across the firm, with clear board-level commitment. In practice, we’re a firm that promotes our values in everything we do and where we encounter unacceptable behaviours we actively challenge them in order to shape a fully inclusive culture.

Our diversity framework

We believe the makeup of our people should reflect the diversity of the world we live in. It makes for better business and a better, fairer world.

Our diversity framework is designed to help us achieve that, addressing and breaking down barriers to recruitment, progression and retention to ensure everyone at Hill Dickinson benefits from the same opportunities. 

To implement a diverse and inclusive culture in our firm we have developed a diversity framework, which covers six pillars:

Accessibility, health and wellbeing
Family and life stages | Hill Dickinson
Gender
LGBTQ+
Race and ethnicity
Social mobility

How we empower our people

Hill Dickinson chief executive Peter Jackson leads our ED&I agenda and ensures that our diversity and inclusion values are implemented across the firm:

Carolyn Morgan, our director of HR, is responsible for attraction, retention and development of talent, with a focus on engagement, wellbeing and diversity and inclusion:

How we implement our strategy

We have a number of approaches to ensure that we fulfil our aims and empower our people. Some examples of how we implement our ED&I strategy are:
 

  • Equality leads

    Nominated equality leads across the firm provide our people with a confidential channel to discuss concerns, seek advice and have direct input and influence into the firm’s practices and decisions that may affect them.

    Fiona Parry, Partner and Head of Commercial Litigation, Restructuring, Regulatory and Family (Liverpool)

    “I have always been a keen advocate of our diversity strategy. I strive to support people of all backgrounds to thrive and progress at Hill Dickinson, not least to ensure we are truly a ‘people business’.

    At our core is ensuring we attract, retain and develop our best talent for the future from whatever background and whatever their circumstances. I recognise that the more each of us can do to contribute to our business and the more diverse it is, the better Hill Dickinson will be for us all.

    As a woman and a mother, I’ve progressed through the business from a relatively humble background. Due to this I’m particularly keen to support our talented women through the business and to ensure we support those from socially mobile backgrounds. I am a strong believer in our agile working policy and I am keen to ensure we develop and extend this to ensure we support all of our talented people to contribute in a way that enables them to give their best.

    I’m proud to see the talent across the firm and want to ensure we develop each and every one of us.”

    Fiona is a partner based in Liverpool and heads up the Commercial Litigation, Restructuring, Regulatory and Family team. She works part time and is a member of the LLP Board.

    Mark Fitzgibbon, Partner and Head of Commercial, TMT and IP (Manchester)

    “Coming into the law and moving to work in London during a huge expansion in the legal profession in the1990s was an exciting opportunity for me.

    Being a gay northerner in the city was something of a shock to the system on many fronts – my northern accent was the first sign that I was different to the majority of people I worked with and was something which, over time, became softer and slower to fit in. My sexuality on the other hand was something which, being less visible, was something I felt I had to work hard to hide, as a means to avoid any form of prejudice or negativity (personally or professionally).

    I had few, if any, role models who were like me to look up to and to have as genuine professional reference points or mentors. This forced me to alter elements of my behaviour (and myself) to fit in.

    Times have moved on, social attitudes have evolved, and the legal profession has finally begun to openly embrace the idea of diversity and inclusion in terms of adding real value to the feel, culture and reputation of its offering.

    This is why I want to be an equality lead and a role model to all. I want to work for a firm that wants to have a workforce that is capable of mirroring as broad a spectrum of one’s own lived cultural experiences as possible, thereby attracting a much broader talent pool.

    I’m passionate about ensuring that Hill Dickinson is the best firm it can possibly be, attracting and retaining talent from as broad a pool as possible, and for its workforce to feel safe, supported and able to develop to the best of their own abilities.”

    Mark is a partner and head of the Commercial, TMT and IP team

    Paula Warnock, Partner in the Pensions team (Manchester)

    “Wouldn’t it be great if, as a firm, we could say that all our roles and promotions were  awarded on the basis of merit alone, that all our people feel empowered to strive to achieve their working goals and that we fully reflect all of society? 

    I know this is what Hill Dickinson supports and it’s why I chose to become an equality lead. 

    I’ve lost count of the number of times I looked around the room in a meeting or at an event and realised that I’m the only woman in attendance or in a small minority, and yet I’m still surprised and disheartened when this happens. Earlier in my career, this lack of gender diversity did not seem as obvious because the split between men and women in associate and senior associate roles tends to be more even. Now in my 40’s, I look around at my peers and wonder where those talented and ambitious 20-year old women have gone?

    Together we can make Hill Dickinson a safe haven to attract, retain and nurture diversity in its widest sense and ensure our diversity is what makes us belong.”

    Paula is a partner in the Pensions team.

    Esther Venning, Partner in the Health Commercial, Regulatory, and Real Estate Team and Head of Leeds

    “My mum was a highly regarded head teacher and the main earner in our family. Working full-time with three children, the impact she had as a role model to me, my sister and my brother was huge.

    Female role models in my legal career have been tougher to find. As an associate solicitor at a previous firm, I remember feeling pressure not to take too long a maternity leave after I had my first child. It was accepted that if you had maternity leave you couldn’t expect to progress as quickly as your male colleagues. Requests to work less than four days per week or any ‘off the wall’ flexible arrangements involving anything other than nine-to-five signalled you weren’t ‘career-minded’.

    However, at Hill Dickinson we are definitely taking positive steps to change this narrative for working parents. My husband and I both work part-time so that we can each balance our work and childcare responsibilities. Hill Dickinson offers unparalleled flexible working opportunities and understands the importance of a healthy work-life balance. Although we are making the right changes we still have much further to go.

    Equality and diversity matters. It must be reflected in everything we do at Hill Dickinson, so that everyone has an equal opportunity to play their part and achieve their goals. Together, people with different backgrounds bring different perspectives to problem solving and drive innovation. With this, we strongly reflect the diverse communities we work in and the diversity of our clients.

    I recognise that I am a role model for others and that’s why I have chosen to become an equality lead.”

    Esther is a partner in the Health Commercial, Regulatory & Real Estate team. She works part-time and is head of the Leeds office.

    Kiran Bhogal, Partner and Head of Healthcare (London)

    “While my immediate family promoted equality and diversity, my first eye-opener to the lack of equality was from extended family challenging my parents about their decision to send me to law school. There was positive dissent to such a radical step, which my parents were told was a mistake.

    I have been lucky to have parents who were open-minded and saw the value of education, but I am acutely aware that there are many out there – male and female – who are not so lucky.

    Being born and brought up in Kenya before moving to the UK also showed me that it is possible for anyone, regardless of race and gender, to progress in whatever line they choose to, with the right support and encouragement.

    I was very lucky to be articled to a firm with vision when I moved to the UK and I see that vision at Hill Dickinson.

    I would like to do whatever I can to ensure that others have the opportunities that I have been fortunate enough to experience. I see being an equality lead as one of the avenues to achieve this.”

    Kiran is head of the Healthcare team in London and head of the London office. 

    Panos Pourgourides, Partner in the Yachts team (London)

    “Equality is a subject close to my heart. Why? Because as someone born outside the UK who came here at a young age and in the most difficult of circumstances, I feel I understand the importance of affording people an equal opportunity and judging others only as we find them.

    Nowadays we see and hear so much in the news about issues like immigration, discrimination and inequality in all their forms, which makes it easy to detach ourselves and dehumanise the problem. We forget that behind the statistics are real people, each with their own story to tell but each just looking for a chance to make the best of themselves.

    While we might all immediately think today of the gender pay gap in our workplace, or the Black Lives Matter campaign in the world at large, how do we make sense of all of these issues, how do they really apply to us, and how can we hope to address them at Hill Dickinson? I believe that it’s precisely by ensuring a level playing field for everyone in an environment such as ours that we can help ensure over time that all people, no matter their background, have a fair opportunity to realise their full potential. I also passionately believe that our working environment will be better by giving all of our people that same, equal opportunity. How? By becoming more diverse, more inclusive and more supportive for all of us.

    Hill Dickinson is a fantastic place to work, but together we can make it even better.”

    Panos is a partner in the Yachts team.

  • Networking groups

    Our people are wonderfully unique, but they’re part of the bigger picture – our picture. Our internal networking groups create a strong sense of community and encourage togetherness, while celebrating individuality.

    We’ve created networking groups dedicated to each area of our diversity and inclusion strategy. They provide an opportunity for discussion, knowledge sharing, activity planning and communication. Working alongside our equality leads and HR team, the networking groups are a key component of our ED&I framework, helping us to reinforce key messages, share knowledge and ideas and take an active role in the planning and deliver of our calendar of events.

  • ED&I awareness calendar

    We acknowledge and celebrate a wide range of dates, key religious, social and cultural events that are important to our people of all backgrounds. 

  • Flexible and agile working

    Hill Dickinson‘s flexible working policies are already winning awards including 

    We offer unparalleled flexible working opportunities because we recognise the importance of a healthy work-life balance and believe that, provided our clients’ needs are met, the working pattern that suits you is the right one for us.

  • Recruitment

    Our recruitment partners are fully briefed on our ED&I strategy and work with us to ensure we are recruiting the best talent and our opportunities are reaching a wide and diverse pool of talent.

    All hiring managers are trained in unconscious bias and encourage diverse panels. 

    We use anonymous applications and contextualised recruitment for graduates.

Partnerships, commitments and accreditations

We work closely with organisations and have pledged our commitment to a number of initiatives designed to help improve equality, diversity and inclusion in the legal sector.

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