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Diversity - multicoloured umbrellas grouped togetherDiversity - multicoloured umbrellas grouped together

Diversity and inclusion

Diversity and inclusion is championed by our senior leadership across all of our offices. We are committed to using D&I to drive change.

Our approach to diversity and inclusion

At the center of our firm’s strategy is our people – they are our greatest asset and so we focus on recruitment, retention and promotion practices that ensure all our people thrive, belong and succeed. Our approach embraces equity, which means we focus on providing fair treatment, access, and opportunity for all of our people, while at the same time striving to identify and eliminate barriers that may have prevented the full participation of some groups.

We recognize that having diverse talent across our business brings many benefits, and so we are committed to accessing a wide range of views, perspectives and thinking in all our teams and building a culture of inclusion, where each person feels able to be their true self at work and reach their full potential.

We know that diverse and inclusive organizations are more productive, more innovative, perform better and have stronger levels of engagement from their people. By embracing diversity we can better partner with our global and diverse client base, and be open and welcoming to all, across the communities we live and work in.

Our global diversity strategy

Diversity and inclusion is championed by our senior leadership across all of our offices, and our people networks and affinity groups have visible partner sponsors who are passionate about their focus and committed to driving change.

There is a certain level of diversity that comes with our global presence, especially as it relates to providing our clients with excellence of client service across jurisdictions. This is a strength. Here at Eversheds Sutherland, we strive to “think globally and act locally” when it comes to our approach to inclusion.

So being intentional about building opportunity for underrepresented talent, as those populations are defined within each country we operate in, requires differing priorities and programming that makes sense by region. However, the guiding principle behind each local effort is the goal of creating an approach that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Given our approach and the challenges that come with managing inclusion efforts across a truly global platform, we evaluate our performance across a combination of our demographics, values, initiatives, and culture.

Diversity and inclusion is fundamental to the firm’s purpose of “helping our clients, our people and our communities to thrive,” and ‘inclusive’ is one of the firm’s five values. Our strategy encompasses a number of diversity dimensions including: race/ethnicity; gender; disability; sexual orientation, gender identity and expression; veteran status; parenting and caring; faith; and social mobility.

Impact of our approach to diversity and inclusion

Through what we do we aim to create a workplace that:

  • fosters an atmosphere of mutual respect
  • builds a culture of inclusiveness in which everyone can thrive
  • promotes equitable treatment when it comes to opportunity for those that fall into historically underrepresented groups
  • attracts, develops, retains, and promotes outstanding diverse lawyers/attorneys and business professionals from all backgrounds
  • reflects the goals we share with our clients of changing the legal landscape when it comes to increasing diversity, building equity, and creating a truly inclusive culture across the industry

Gender Pay Gap Report

In Ireland, under the Gender Pay Gap Information Act 2021, public and private sector employers with more than 250 employees are required to report their gender pay gap between male and female employees.

The legislation defines the hourly gender pay gap as the difference between the mean hourly remuneration of male employees and female employees expressed as a percentage of the mean hourly remuneration of male employees. It is not the same as equal pay, as it focuses on the representation of women and men in roles across all levels in the organisation, not just men and women with the same skillset and experience doing the same job.

The aim of the yearly gender pay gap report is to highlight and encourage equal representation of genders at all levels within an organisation in Ireland. It allows us to see where there is an over or under representation of women across our workforce. We are committed to reducing our gender pay gap in the coming years by increasing the level of diversity across the firm most particularly at senior levels.

Read our 2023 Gender Pay Gap Report.