Inclusive recruitment

Inclusive recruitment is an essential part of our responsible business work. It has always been a priority area for us and in recognition of its importance, earlier this year Charlotte Hall took on a new role in the business, becoming our first Inclusive Recruitment Lead. We spoke with Charlotte about her work.

What does your new role cover?

My role focuses on ensuring that our candidates experience an inclusive and accessible recruitment process, allowing everyone to perform at their best. This includes the design, implementation and monitoring of initiatives that support our aim of engaging talented people from a diverse range of backgrounds. This is something we have been working on for some time and I was delighted to be recognised as DE&I Champion of the Year - Specialist Law Firm DE&I Role at the Women & Diversity in Law Awards in March 2025.

What have we achieved so far?

In order to ensure inclusivity is at the heart of our recruitment processes, we need to identify barriers to accessibility and then design and implement improvements. Our improvements to date include embedding inclusion into our recruitment language and imagery. We also work with two external, inclusive recruitment organisations who help us find a range of diverse talent. Our focus on accessibility has included looking at possible adjustments at every single stage of our process. We have implemented a range of measures including the "Offer an Interview Scheme" to support disabled candidates which means that all candidates who meet the minimum criteria for the role they've applied for are offered an interview. In addition, our Early Talent Team provide our graduate and apprenticeship candidates with all interview questions and assessment materials in advance.

What’s next for inclusive recruitment?

Over the next few months, our inclusive recruitment plans include enhancing our careers site to provide more information about our processes and accessibility, as well as showcasing diverse stories of our people from across our business. We will also be rolling out enhanced, inclusive recruitment training to our hiring teams to support our goal of continuous improvement in our recruitment processes.