Fletchers Solicitors > Manchester, England > Firm Profile

Diversity

Our People

Fletchers Group is committed to creating an inclusive environment where all colleagues thrive and reach their full potential, whatever their identity or background. This is fundamental to our success as a business!
Our culture is open, collaborative, and inclusive, enabling us to recruit, retain and motivate the highest calibre of people. It is important to us that all our people feel that they can be themselves at work.

Our plan

To help us achieve this, we’re building on our solid foundations and have outlined bold ambitions for us to accelerate this great work.
We undertook a 3-month audit of our Group, working with external consultants to establish where we are and where we would like to go.
This helped us set long-term targets to 2028 as part of our Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion plan – Accelerate 2028.

The plan includes a focus on leadership accountability, investing in our recruitment, talent progression and training, and celebrating our colleagues’ differences.

Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion have always been important to us but we’re moving to the next level and bringing them to the centre of everything we do.
We’re excited to accelerate our journey towards a more diverse and inclusive culture, workforce, and overall business!

Our Priorities

Improving gender diversity in senior roles

We are particularly focused on the development and progression of our female lawyers and non-legal professionals into more senior roles. We have made great strides in this area since 2021, however there is more we can and will do. We have launched an Executive Coaching programme – coaching our high potential female leaders on a 1-2-1 basis with our Chief Commercial Officer, Zoe Holland MBE.

We have also taken action to tackle potential blockers for females to progress such as expanding out our maternity policy, implemented a menopause policy and introduced more flexibility to our ‘Keeping in touch’ days.

Improving ethnic diversity across the firm

We are committed to increasing ethnic diversity across the firm, especially into leadership roles, recognising the importance of cultural awareness, and reaching out to different sections of the community.

We are reviewing all areas of the business (and already taking action) to ensure that we’re as inclusive for people from minoritised ethnic diversities as we can be. We also take allyship very seriously and provide colleagues opportunities to educate themselves on issues affecting minoritised ethnicities.

We will work with external experts and partners to support us in this goal.

Improving social mobility and widening access to the profession
We are committed to improving social inclusion and access to the legal profession.

We’re founding signatories of This Is Purpose’s ‘Breaking Down Barriers to Law’ initiative, led by Rt Hon Justine Greening.

We have made significant changes to our recruitment process and channels, ensuring that we’re widening the access to Fletchers.

Changes have included:

• More outreach opportunities in schools and colleges in areas of high deprivation.
• Equalling the weight of education vs potential when reviewing CVs.
• Signing Sefton Council’s ‘Caring Business Charter’, guaranteeing interviews for entry level roles for care leavers in Sefton.
• We have also created Fletchers Academy, which is an alternative route into law, providing wider access for more young people.

Where are we now? (End of 2023)

What about the other areas of Diversity and Inclusion?

Although we’re not setting headline targets for other areas of diversity and inclusion, that doesn’t mean they are not important to us, our colleagues, and stakeholders.

We have a variety of initiatives already in place to support other minorities and we will go further as well, developing our knowledge and understanding to ensure we’re inclusive for all.

Supporting, celebrating, and developing our LGBT community

We use guidance from Stonewall, LGBT Great and other LGBT+ organisations as a tool for continuous improvement and to enhance our inclusion of LGBT+ colleagues.

In 2023, Fletchers Group attended its first ever Pride event, with 50 colleagues marching in Manchester Pride. Two of our Executive Leadership Team attended with their children and said at our annual conference that it was their standout moment at work in 2023.

We will be returning to Manchester Pride in 2024, bigger and better due to the demand from colleagues.

Also in 2023, we were the headline sponsor for Sefton’s first ever Pride, held in the town where Fletchers Group first started, Southport.

Improving inclusivity for those with disabilities and/or neurodiversity

As a Disability Confident employer, we are very keen to use our voice and play an active role in building understanding around disability, neurodiversity and accommodating people’s different needs.

In 2023, we have announced our first ‘Neurodiversity Champion’ in Emma Hamnett, who is using her experience to support us being as inclusive and accessible as possible.

Emma has toured our offices and provided feedback on structural changes such as sound boards, the addition of quiet areas and, for colleagues who need them, noise cancelling headphones. We have already started to deliver these improvements, to ensure our neurodiverse colleagues can thrive in our offices.

Supporting our colleagues of faith

In our recent colleague survey, 25% of colleagues said they regarded themselves as belonging to a religion.
To support those colleagues, we have added a multi-faith prayer room in our Southport office, with one coming to Manchester very shortly.
No colleague should have to choose between their faith and their work, which is why we’re committed to supporting colleagues with both, enabling them to express themselves freely and truly.

Employee-Led Networks

We currently support our colleagues with several internal and employee-led diversity networks, that focus on:

• LGBTQ+ colleagues
• Neurodiverse colleagues
• Colleagues going through the menopause.

We are keen to support more employee-led networks and are encouraging colleagues to propose and set up more.

Holding Ourselves Accountable

We commit to holding ourselves accountable to our values and to do this we will commit to 5 pillars:

1. Undertake regular, transparent reporting of our diversity data.
2. Ensure all our recruitment and people policies are regularly reviewed to ensure they are inclusive, encourage diversity and equity.
3. Everything we do will be to hit our targets set above and continuously improve life at Fletchers for all areas of diversity.
4. Commit to giving an equitable voice to all and ensuring whistleblowing and reporting structures are robust and protected.
5. Commit to ongoing education and learning about diversity and inclusion in all its forms.