Shoosmiths is one of the fastest growing national law firms in the UK with 106 partners and seven offices.
Why is diversity important to Shoosmiths?
Diversity is taken very seriously at Shoosmiths and the firm has won a string of acknowledgements for its efforts in creating an inclusive workplace.
Shoosmiths’ commitment to the diversity of its workforce was affirmed by the first survey of its kind undertaken by the Black Solicitors Network (BSN) which measured diversity in the top 100 law firms; Shoosmiths topped this league table. The following is the press statement by BSN:
“Taking all diversity classifications into account; ethnic minority (Asian, Black, Mixed and Chinese) and gender, across four different categories (partners, associates, trainees and paralegals), Shoosmiths emerged as the top ranking firm within the UK 100. They out-performed the competition in relation to their employment of female staff, ranking in first position for female paralegals and third position for the number of female partners and associates.â€
Louise Hadland, Shoosmiths’ Director of HR commented; "This survey completely endorses what we already knew, that Shoosmiths is different and better because of the superb mix of people who work here.''
The firm has grown rapidly in the last three years, increasing in size by a third and posting some impressive financial results..
Rita Tappia, the firm’s Professional Recruitment Manager, is not surprised by the firm’s recent success. She says: “We are successful because diversity underpins our firm, it is not an add on. Like our competitors we need to find, attract, and retain talent and we need to get there before our competitors and in this war for talent why would we want to diminish its talent pool?
Secondly society is complex and diverse. Organisations and our clients are not all the same, they too are diverse and we need to reflect thisâ€
How has Shoosmiths supported it commitment to diversity?
Shoosmiths has been involved in various initiatives to make the workplace one where diversity is welcomed and reflected. One recent initiative has involved looking more closely at the interview process. This has included providing comprehensive interview training skills to all partners and associates involved in the interview process. The training has taken a discussion based approach and has given the diverse staff within the firm the opportunity to share their experiences of interviews both internal and external. This enabled Shoosmiths to get an idea of what a good interview looks like. For example the process has helped Shoosmiths to identify the importance of having more than one interviewer. One person can miss things or misunderstand and having more than one interviewer ensures that this is less likely to happen. It has also supported the firm in identifying and discarding criteria that is not essential to the role. Feedback from existing staff has also been used to support the interviewers in giving useful feedback confidently to interviewees and in making the interview process as comfortable and fair as possible.
Staff involved in interviewing and recruitment are encouraged to see the interview process as one where the interviewee is also interviewing the firm, making it doubly important that the interview process is effective for all concerned.
Shoosmiths developed an objective, competency based interview structure based on the firm’s values. Thinking about our values we hope to take the focus away from who the person is, which in turns moves away from the more dangerous “fit†style interview where firms continuously recruit clones of themselves.
This new approach also means looking more flexibly in terms of minimum criteria. For example for the post of solicitor, the firm still has minimum academic requirements but will not dismiss those who have not followed a traditional career path or those who are not from redbrick universities. Increasingly Shoosmiths acknowledges that people go to a particular university for different reasons and that successful people will be successful wherever they are from.
Finally, to measure the effectiveness of this new approach, the firm now monitors the applicants coming through to interview and the information gleaned is used to assess whether the firm is affectively reaching the widest applicant pool possible. The information is used to look at trends, to identify where the firm is underrepresented and where we need to proactively promote more.
What have been the benefits?
A major benefit of this new approach has been the ability to recruit from a bigger talent pool because interviewers have broadened their thinking. What this actually means for Shoosmiths is that the recruitment market has become less competitive because recruitment is easier.
This new approach has two fold benefits; both for the firm, because it has a wider pool to recruit from, and to the local community as applicants benefit when more people can apply and have a greater chance of being successful. In the long term we expect this evidence of real commitment to help us reap the benefits of greater retention. |