Our mission is clear. It is to foster and promote a culture of inclusion which celebrates all forms of diversity, enables our people to maximise their potential, and encourages innovation and creativity. This enables us to become an employer of choice, support our wider responsibility aims and deliver the best holistic returns for our clients.
We recognise that a diverse and inclusive workplace provides real benefits to employees and supports stronger long-term business performance. Although Hermes has a long-standing commitment to these agendas, we acknowledge that we need to make further progress and in response to this our Executive Committee and Board have endorsed the below diversity and inclusion (D&I) strategy and a three year implementation plan to help us achieve our mission.
In alignment with our mission, the objectives and actions of our Inclusion Strategy are focused on three key themes: leadership, practices, and people and the environment. These themes encompass all areas of our business, enabling greater diversity and inclusion integration throughout the firm. Activities will include:
Looking beyond our own D&I practices, we will also advocate for D&I throughout the asset-management industry and more broadly. We are already members of a number of networks and forums – including the Diversity Project, the 30% Club, InterInvest, and the Employers Network for Equality & Inclusion – and will continue to look for more opportunities to collaborate and share best practices so that working in asset management is attractive and accessible for all.
Our Strategy and actions are more than simply being aligned to our core values and the right thing to do – they are business critical. Diverse perspectives and an inclusive environment promote creativity and innovation, better decision making, adaptability, and problem solving, all of which enhance our client service and relationships, help us to reflect the communities we serve, and make Hermes a great place to work.
This work will take time, but we are committed to ensuring it is seen as a priority – every step of the way.
Hermes is fully committed to supporting the Women in Finance Charter and its objective of attaining gender balance across all levels of financial services. Having achieved our original 2018 targets which we set in 2016, we are now aiming for new 2021 targets as detailed below. We are delighted to have already made progress against these targets and are therefore currently on track to achieve them by 2021. For more information on the work we’re doing to achieve these targets, please click here.
Gender diversity across our business:
|
2021 Target |
Sept 2019 |
Sept 2018 |
Sept 2017 |
Sept 2016 |
|
| Firm-wide |
45% |
42% |
40% |
39% |
34% |
| Board |
35% |
31% |
31% |
29% |
37% |
| Senior management |
35% |
31% |
28% |
23% |
24% |
We welcome the attention that the gender pay gap reporting regulations have given to the gender and wider D&I agendas, and we will continue to report annually on our mean and median pay and bonus gaps. In doing so, we will keep interrogating the data to understand what is causing our pay gap as well as what needs to be done to close it. For more information, including this year's Gender Pay Report, please click here.
We believe in equal opportunities for all and aim to ensure that no current or prospective employee is treated less favourably on the basis of their gender, race, ethnicity, religion or belief, gender identity or expression, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, age, sexual orientation, or disability.
