DE&I in our work

Mentoring & Networking

One of the most important – and unique – ways that we can make a difference as executive search professionals is with our convening power. Across Odgers Berndtson, Berwick Partners and Odgers Interim business, we are utilising our broad networks in support of diversifying our society’s leaders, making the paths to leadership more inclusive, and levelling the professional playing field. Many of our consultants are themselves mentors, or directly support mentoring and networking initiatives with our time, expertise, and investment.

Some of our practices have even created their own mentoring networks; Rebus, set up by our Technology Practice, has connected more than 200 mentees with leaders committed to correcting the sector’s gender imbalance at the board and C-Suite levels. The Board and CRL practices are heavily involved in the Accelerate Mentoring Programme, organised by Odgers Berndtson, Grant Thornton, and the FDF and designed to promote and improve the gender balance at board level across the food and drink industry by supporting the accelerated development of female and non-binary talent. Our Financial Services Practice is working to set up a programme in their sector supporting parents returning to work after maternity or paternity leave. Our Healthcare Practice has set up the Brightlight programme, supporting candidates with a diversity of underrepresented identities access board leadership. Many of our practices have recurring breakfasts, lunches, and dinners to connect their sectors’ and functions’ underrepresented talent to longstanding leaders. This includes two-way mentoring initiatives, with reverse-mentoring to ensure senior leaders are attuned both to the barriers to leadership as well as how to remove them.

Other mentoring and networking initiatives we are supporting include:

City Women Network
Group for Autism, Insurance, Investment & Neurodiversity
European Women Payments Network
Insurance Supper Club
Progress Together
Women in Banking & Finance
Women in Finance
WiHTL (Women in Hospitality, Travel, & Leisure)
Women in Social Housing

Whether it is through sponsorship, speaking event exchanges, or other forms of collaboration, we have a wide array of close partnerships with organisations working towards more inclusive leadership in specific sectors and functions. Some of our most significant partnerships include:

African Gifted Foundation, harnessing the potential of girls from across the African continent to pursue careers in STEM

Cardiff Business Club, which runs events working to support the next generation of leaders

Change the Race Ratio

General Counsel for Diversity & Inclusion

Habinteg, a specialist accessible housing association

Scope, an advocacy organisation campaigning for disability equality and a fairer society

Scottish Financial Enterprise, with whom we run ScotlandLeaderx1Day

University of Salford, where we are speaking and advising on the relationship between wellbeing and recruitment processes across DE&I networks

Partnerships

Events

Events are a natural extension of service delivery. We host our own diversity events, in and across our markets, and even within our practices. We aim to contribute to greater education on how we can collectively achieve more diverse leadership. This includes:

Our Unlimited Festival, a dedicated programme where experts in different forms of diversity, equity, and inclusion from all over the world come to speak to our business
Bringing in sector and function experts to give tailored presentations to specific practices
Convening, mobilising, and appointing leaders in our fields who work to continue and advance work towards diverse, equitable, and inclusive leadership across society
Setting up speaker and panel events for leaders and leadership-seekers, within our practices and cross-practice, particularly for candidates whose identities have historically been excluded
Working with our Leadership Assessments teams to offer psychometric assessments for up-and-coming leaders, to help them develop and close their blind spots
Hosting webinars on how to strengthen critical leadership attributes, such as strategic leadership and resilience
Creating dedicated practice working groups which regularly present back to their teams, specifically to ensure we are doing everything in our powers to deliver diverse shortlists and continuously reviewing how to make our processes most inclusive
Undertaking mandatory, firm-wide DE&I training and workshops, tailored uniquely to Odgers and Berwick across permanent and interim search
Ensuring our practices have dedicated time to connect with each other and feel included in the work of their entire teams
Speaking at events and forums throughout our various sector and function specialties, where we can be active advocates and educators on how to keep pathways to leadership genuinely open
Convening events which specifically challenge conventional assumptions about leadership, in particular along the lines of latent sexism, racism, and ableism
ScotlandLeaderx1Day, an annual programme in partnership with Scottish Financial Enterprise and various Scottish universities, which offers students a chance to shadow leaders from many different sectors
Internal involvement in a wide array of different Allies Groups within Odgers Berndtson, Odgers Interim and Berwick Partners

Part of what we do every day, with clients and with others, is condense our DE&I activity into the advice we provide as consultants. From identifying early talent to introduce into processes, to removing barriers to leadership in the design of both roles and appointment processes, we are strengthening our ability to challenge and collaborate with our clients for more inclusive leadership.

Our I&D Practice specifically focuses on advising in these areas, having developed tools such as our Inclusive Recruitment Diagnostic and the role of unconscious bias in leadership recruitment processes. Our Leadership Assessment Practice also equips our search consultants and clients alike with the information necessary to test candidate potential, learning, and self-awareness, to better evidence their ability to step up into untested leadership roles.

Advisory

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