Law Firm Celebrates National Inclusion Week

The individuality and diversity of our people is one of Irwin Mitchell’s biggest assets and our latest Diversity and Inclusion report not only celebrates this, but outlines our plans going forward to ensure we are seen as a leader in this important area.

Seeing as it’s National Inclusion Week (25 Sep – 1 Oct) we thought it was a great time to share five things you may not know about diversity and inclusivity at the national law firm..

1) In this year’s Great Place To Work (GPTW) survey Diversity was our highest scoring area (87%) for the third year running.

We are proud that a large majority of Irwin Mitchell’s employees feel that the Group is an inclusive and diverse place to work. Our Diversity Board are working on ways to be even better moving forward. Part of this work includes reviewing our HR policies to ensure they are up to date and promote an inclusive working environment. We’re also looking at ways to improve our communications in the area so our people have a better understanding of support available.

2.) Our diversity schemes are award winning. 

We’re proud to be seen as leaders for diversity in the legal profession. We won the Excellence in Diversity category at this year’s Signature Awards for our BME (Black & Minority Ethnic) mentoring scheme in Birmingham. We were given the silver award in the Best Employer BME Women category at the 2017 Citywealth Powerwomen Awards. We were named Top Law Firm at this year’s Job Crowd awards for our apprenticeship scheme, which offers an alternative route into law outside of university and links into our work around social mobility. We’ve also ranked 14th in the Stonewall Legal Top 20 2016, a position we are continuously looking to improve. 

3) Our diversity networking and support groups offer something for everyone.

We’re committed to constantly improving our diversity internally and have a number of networking and support groups around the country to help our people feel free to be themselves. The groups, (IM Able - health, IM Equal – LGBT+, IM Respect – race/religion, IM Aspiring – social mobility and IM Powered - gender) aim to support those who need a stronger voice and raise awareness of the challenges they face in society. Whether it’s IM Equal supporting raising awareness of trans equality and attending Pride events, IM Powered organising self-defence and confidence building classes for employees, or high quality work experience placements on offer for pupils receiving free school meals through IM Aspiring, the groups have something on offer for everyone.  

4) Diversity helps us offer a better service to our clients

While inclusion helps our employees thrive, our diversity allows us to demonstrate our ‘expert hand, human touch’ by harnessing creativity and productivity and, as a result, delivering a better service to our clients. Having a more diverse team means we have a wider variety of perspectives, ideas and experience to draw upon to give our clients the best advice and support possible.  

5) We’re helping to make a more tolerant society for future generations.  

Promoting our diversity agenda is vital to making positive changes in society as a whole. It’s imperative that businesses like Irwin Mitchell act as role models and champion diversity to ensure that prejudice, intolerance, and discrimination become issues of the past that we hope future generations will not have to battle against. 

Chairman of our Diversity and Social Responsibility Boards, Stuart Henderson, said: 

Expert Opinion

“The information in our new report is testament to the progress we’ve made as we continue on our journey of ensuring that a progressive approach to inclusion and diversity are ingrained throughout the Group, as we know this is good for us as a business and important for our employees and clients.

“It’s important to celebrate, and I am immensely proud of what the Group has achieved and grateful for the enthusiastic commitment of so many people to achieving our diversity goals so far, but it’s vital to remember that we can be even better and the report outlines how we will achieve this in our developing diversity strategy for the next three years.” Stuart Henderson - Partner