Diversity Norton Rose Fulbright
Diversity on a Worldwide Scale
Five years ago, Norton Rose Fulbright had 2,500 people in offices across Europe, Middle East and Asia. Today it has over 7,400 people based in over 50 cities across Europe, the United States, Canada, Latin America, Asia, Australia, Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Diversity and inclusion has always been a priority for the legal practice and as the practice has grown it has taken a globally integrated approach. Sacha de Klerk, Diversity and Inclusion Manager, Norton Rose Fulbright explains how this strategy has been implemented across the world…
Diversity needs to be led
For example, South Africa has Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) legislation; Italy and France have disability quotas; and in Japan there is a lot of political focus on the issue of working mothers. The challenge has been to develop and implement a single global vision and strategy which works across borders, whilst respecting regional priorities and cultures.
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from the top, which is why in 2012 we established our global diversity and inclusion advisory council.
To implement a consistent global diversity strategy, it is essential to engage with the right people. Diversity needs to be led from the top, which is why in 2012
we established our global diversity and inclusion advisory council. The council comprises the chairman or managing partner from EMEA, Australia, Canada, South Africa and the US, supported by a local lead diversity partner in each region. The council is accountable to global management and ensures consistency of effort, purpose and execution in diversity and inclusion initiatives around the world, while sharing best practice across all offices. To date, inclusive leadership training and ‘unconscious bias’ education have been delivered to partners in Australia and the US, and will shortly be rolled out to partners globally.
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ifferent countries have different social and legislative priorities when it comes to diversity.
The council has a worldwide vision, with gender diversity and flexible working among its key global initiatives. One initiative which has been particularly successful is our Career Strategies Programme, a modular development programme which provides women with the necessary skills and support for promotion and for challenging barriers to effective flexible working. It aims to identify female talent early through a robust talent management process and then to nurture, develop and retain those individuals on their way to senior positions. The programme, which currently runs across Europe, Middle East, Asia, Australia and Canada, has resulted in a significant increase in female representation at senior levels within the practice. Female partners accounted for over 40% of all global promotions in the last two promotion rounds. 30% of our global executive committee is now female and our overall percentage of female partners has increased by 3.5% globally in the past five years.
Consistent branding and internal communication are also crucial to a successful global diversity strategy. At Norton Rose Fulbright, all internal communications on regional diversity content are linked to our global diversity and inclusion page on our intranet so that information about initiatives in different regions can be easily accessed. Our LGBT and Allies network senior
sponsors also have regular calls to discuss the global strategy and to raise the profile of LGBT work place equality across all our offices. In addition, our employee networks have consistent branding. For example, when launching our London Flex-ability network, aimed at supporting individuals who work flexibly, we adopted the branding from our existing Flex-ability network in Australia. Having a consistent identity motivates networks in different locations to share best practice.
Our global approach recognises that, despite cultural differences, we share common values, and these have formed the basis of our seven focus areas which are applicable to every region – gender; people from diverse cultural, racial and ethnic backgrounds; people with disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds; people with carer responsibilities; lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people; people with a disability; and people who work flexibly. At the heart of our strategy is inclusivity and this was the second highest scoring category in our most recent global employee engagement survey. n
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