Interview with Uzma Hamid-Dizier, Head of Inclusion and Corporate Responsibility at Slaughter and May.

Why is having a diverse workforce important?

Firstly, it’s important to recognise that developing a diverse workforce and creating a culture where people feel able to be themselves is the right thing to do. However, it is much more than that; there is also a strong business case for firms like ours to be prioritising our work in this area. Our people are central to the service we provide and we need to draw upon diverse perspectives and viewpoints in order to provide the very best advice to our clients. Having diverse teams of lawyers from different backgrounds and with different experiences brings different ways of looking at problems and means that we can provide our clients with innovative solutions. As such, we see diversity and inclusion as not just a ‘nice to do’ but a business imperative.

What initiatives does Slaughter and May have in place to ensure it recruits a diverse workforce?

Our focus recently has been to challenge the perception that City law firms are not inclusive places to work. One of the ways we do this is by inviting students to the firm to give them the opportunity to experience our inclusive culture for themselves.

We run regular recruitment events targeted at undergraduate students from diverse backgrounds. The aim of these events is to provide students with an insight in to working in the firm and the City more broadly. Attendees hear about the career journeys and experiences of a diverse range of our partners and lawyers and have the opportunity to meet people throughout the firm over the course of the day. These events have proved very popular. The students who attended have told us that they are now seriously considering applying to the firm when they previously felt like it wasn’t an option.

We partner with a number of external organisations to reach out to diverse talent. These include My Plus Students’ Club, an organisation which provides advice and support to disabled graduates as they pursue their chosen career path, and Women in the City Afro Caribbean Network (WCAN). We’re also involved in sector-wide initiatives such as DiversCity, an annual event and mentoring scheme for LGBT students interested in a career in law.

We have also been working hard to ensure our recruitment processes are inclusive. We were the first law firm to engage Rare Recruitment, who specialise in sourcing exceptional people from diverse backgrounds into some of the world’s top organisations.

We also contributed to the development of the Rare Contextual Recruitment system and use it across all our trainee recruitment activity. The system helps us identify candidates with the greatest potential by putting candidates’ grades and achievements in the context of their social and educational background.

How has Slaughter and May been working to improve diversity in senior/leadership positions?

We want to retain and develop a diverse pipeline of talent through to the partnership. To do this we have introduced a range of target development programmes for diverse groups.

We know that mentoring is a highly personalised form of career development and, if it is offered equally, can be one of the most effective ways to improve diversity at all levels of an organisation. We have been participating in the high-profile 30% Club cross-company mentoring scheme for five years, which matches our high-potential women with a senior leader mentor from a FTSE 100 company. We also provide similar cross-company mentoring opportunities to our LGBT employees through our membership with OUTstanding and were the first firm to develop a bespoke cross-company mentoring scheme for our BME employees.

Having a mentor outside of the firm brings with it many benefits. It provides a confidential space to discuss your career with an experienced professional, learn from new perspectives and develop external networks. These schemes are also a great way for our people to meet diverse role models with similar backgrounds and experiences. In addition to the external mentoring, we also offer an internal mentoring scheme which provides our associates with the opportunity to be mentored by a partner outside of their legal group. Our associates can request a mentor from a particular background if they wish.

We’re also celebrating the fifth anniversary of our Female Leadership Development programme for mid to senior level female associates, which we host in partnership with our European Best Friend firms. The six-day programme is run across three European cities and focusses on building leadership skills within the legal sector and relationships across the firms.

How does Slaughter and May avoid diversity becoming a box-ticking exercise?

We approach our work in this area from an inclusion perspective and our definition of diversity goes beyond the protected characteristic under the law. Our aim is to ensure everyone feels valued, included and supported.

Our eight diversity networks are central to this. They play an important role in increasing the visibility of diversity and fostering a spirit of inclusion within the firm and work together as a ‘Network of Networks’.

A key part of the success of our networks is that they genuinely involve people throughout the firm in the discussion. All of our network’s activities are open to everyone in the firm, regardless of whether they identify with a particular group. Everybody is encouraged to attend a network event to learn from different perspectives and meet new people from across the firm.

What assurances would you give to individuals who want to apply for a training contract but feel hesitant to do so because of their gender/sexual orientation/ethnicity/background/disability/any other diversity-related reason?

I would encourage anyone who feels hesitant applying to a firm, whether it be to Slaughter and May or others, to experience the culture for themselves. A firm’s website and brochure can provide useful information, but it can be difficult making a decision on where to begin your career based on this alone, so meeting people at the firm in person is crucial. Make the time to attend open days, law fairs or other firm events and ask partners and lawyers questions about the things that matter to you most. Events are also a great way to meet a diverse range of people working at the firm and hear directly about their experiences. Finding out more about the culture and day-to-day life at the firm first-hand should help make your decision a little easier.

As a law graduate, your degree opens the doors to a wider career that offers the flexibility to move between public, corporate or not-for-profit sectors. We find out just how transferable the skills of a company secretary really are and how a career in governance can get the most out of your law degree.

Organisations of all types are governed by regulation and standards of practice that are in place to ensure that they operate legally, appropriately, ethically and fairly. Good governance is critical to enable management and the board to deal more effectively with the challenges of running an organisation. ICSA qualified company secretaries and governance professionals offer the board advice about legal, regulatory and ethical matters, to ensure that organisations have appropriate decision-making processes and controls in place so the interests of all stakeholders are balanced.

Are you sports mad? Passionate about the NHS? Want to make a difference at a charity or to someone’s education? A degree in law is your passport to a governance career that opens you up to myriad of industries.

The role of a company secretary is broad, multifaceted and can be crucial in preventing companies from hitting the headlines for the wrong reasons. While corporate governance is a term that many people are familiar with, governance is not just relevant to the corporate world. Governance professionals are in demand in organisations of all kinds – from charities and academy schools to the National Health Service to sport.

“I genuinely think that corporate governance is governance. You apply your skills and experience to the environment you find yourself in”, Laura Latham, Associate Director Corporate Governance, NHS Stockport CCG.

Take the charity sector, for example: governance professionals act as the legal, moral and social conscience of a charity, ensuring that the organisation is run in accordance with its charitable objects and public benefits requirements. But how much do the daily tasks and responsibilities vary from those of a governance professional working in, say, a corporate organisation?

The daily routine of Allison Howe, Head of Governance at NSPCC, would suggest not very much. “Day to day it’s really varied. I do all the board and committee work. I do an awful lot of compliance work, but I also get pulled across the organisation for governance advice and how best to handle things. It’s really interesting.”

It’s a busy job too. On any given day Howe can expect to be pulled in several different directions: “if there’s anything I dislike, and it’s a minor grumble, it’s the number of meetings that I have to manage at any one time. I can have a board and two committee meetings in the space of three days, so it’s constant agenda management and producing the necessary papers. And then my day job on top!”

But the role transcends administrative tasks; seasoned people skills are also paramount in ensuring the successful running of an organisation, charitable or otherwise, as Jo Cooke, Deputy Secretary at the National Trust explains. “We sit between our Director General and our Board of Trustees. We have the job of being essentially a relationship manager between the Executive and Non-Executive.” (Executive directors are members of the board who have management responsibilities whilst non-executive directors are board members who have no responsibilities relating to the day-to-day management of the organisation). “So that means that we handle communications and we make sure our board is informed of what’s happening in the charity”.

Another sector in which the skills of governance professionals are highly sought after is the NHS. One marked difference of working in the health sector, however, is that the board operates in public. “Having the public in the board meetings brings a whole different set of complexities around how you manage difficult conversations, how you present a unified front, how you enable debate and constructive challenging questioning and how you build that engagement element with the public in board meetings”, says Latham.

Being party to important, high-level decisions is also big driver for Latham: “I really like being at the heart of an organisation. I like the sense that you can make things happen, you can unblock problems, you can develop strategy, and actually, if governance is effective it can make an organisation really, really efficient”.

A career in governance can also allow ambitious individuals to rise up the ranks more quickly than they might do elsewhere. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the NHS: “I genuinely do get a sense of pride. There aren’t many jobs that take quite junior staff (in some cases) to the top table of an organisation” adds Latham.

Rob Findlay, Integrity & Compliance Director at British Cycling, is well aware of the similarities between sport and other industries when it comes to governance. “Yes I have to file at Companies House, yes I do the agendas and the minutes for the board meetings and the general meetings, which every company secretary has to do. And we still have the same issues and the same governance challenges”.

The sport industry is also subject to the same level of scrutiny currently facing other sectors, and Findlay has to continually take this into account. “I think the importance of the growing focus on governance within sport and the growing recognition that we need proper governance professionals will change the nature of the organisation”, he says. “The challenge is you have to make sure you’ve got the experience from outside the game, but if you don’t have representatives from the game on your board, you’ve obviously got to make sure that you have all the channels for making sure that you take those issues into account”.

But having proper mechanisms in place is just the beginning. Karen Moorhouse, Director of Operations and Legal at Rugby Football League, elaborates: “so much now is to do with not just having good governance, but demonstrating you’ve got good governance”. For example, “you’ve got to make sure your website’s right in terms of what’s on there and that you’re communicating to all your stakeholders on governance. And then we need to communicate to Sport England, who are a major funder, that we’re fulfilling their requirements and that we can demonstrate that. So really [good governance] ends up in every bit of the organisation”.

But despite the obvious similarities, each industry still has its own nuances, and sport is no exception. Being a sports fan can make working in the industry all the more delicate. “Because everyone is so passionate about sport, which is why it’s a really fantastic industry to work in, it also means it’s an incredibly challenging industry because you’re not just dealing with people on an arm’s length basis. You’re dealing with people’s passion, their lives, their emotions”, says Joy Johnston, Governance Manager, Sport England.

Passion for the subject matter also plays a big role for governance professionals in the education sector. For Anna Machin, Governance & Compliance Manager at Ark, “it’s a really exciting sector to be part of. It’s the chance to literally change the future for young people”.

A successful academy school relies heavily on governance and Tomas Thurogood-Hyde, Head of Governance and Legal for Astrea Academy Trust is entrusted with this weighty responsibility. “I provide legal support to our schools, I look after admissions across the network, and I make sure that our schools’ governance arrangements are being delivered throughout the year”. He describes himself as “a kind of linchpin for governance at the centre [of the organisation] where you’ve got a necessarily dispersed and part-time body of people supporting it at the regional school level”.

So what are the challenges for those overseeing governance in the education sector? The variety of work, which can be both a good and a bad thing, says Machin. “You’re always keeping a million plates spinning to keep things running. I think the expectations in governance are evolving more quickly than they were, which is a good thing because there’s a lot more guidance out there, but then you’re having to continually adapt and evolve your support and your general governance model against that” says Machin.

Regardless of sector, there’s no doubt that the responsibilities, challenges and motivations of company secretaries and governance professionals are readily interchangeable. Equipped with a universally and internationally applicable set of qualifications, they have the ability to work in an industry which interests them. Who wouldn’t want a job like that?

ICSA offer many ways for you to try the role for yourself. You can attend an open evening where you can meet recruiters and practicing company secretaries. Or join an Insight Day where you get to go behind the scenes of an organisation and observe a company secretary’s day-to-day work. These are just some of the ways to discover more about this versatile profession, to get started visit icsa.org.uk/gradhub.