Diversity, equity & inclusion
Hg believes that having a diverse workforce deepens Hg’s talent pool and brings us a wider range of perspectives. It manifests in how we navigate the business world, including the investment decisions we make. As Hg’s founder Nic Humphries said recently: “Diversity is 100% essential and possibly the top thing for our firm” (AICON 2022 Leadership Voices, Tech Investing webinar). Hg won the Diversity and Inclusion Leader of the Year Award GP Upper Mid-Market at the Private Equity Awards 2021.
Recruitment
Recruiting the next generation of exceptional Hg talent is crucial to our success and we recognise that we need to work hard to attract the best talent, and in the past couple of years we have been ensuring we attract a broad range of truly diverse candidates. We have done this in multiple ways. At our junior levels we have continued to form connections with groups who are traditionally underrepresented within our industry via inclusive recruitment events, industry wide mentorship schemes, providing internships with the #10,000BlackInterns scheme and through our trusted partners such as SEO.
At more senior levels, we ensure our recruitment partners extend our reach to a broad range of profiles and we go to great lengths to ensure an engaging, fair and consistent recruitment process for all.
Throughout 2021 we have continued to work with many inspirational partners who have supported us on our journey in attracting and retaining truly exceptional and diverse talent, and we will continue to build on these partnerships in the year ahead as we continue to drive change within Hg and our industry.
At Hg we aim to lay the foundations for a fully inclusive culture and environment, where all diversity is welcomed, encouraged and celebrated. We’re at an interesting point in this journey, with lots achieved, but still lots to do. Where we have most visibility is on gender diversity and we’re really proud to show improvement, increasing from 25% to 35% female execs over last three years. Diversity in recruitment has also been successful, with our Analyst and Associate intake this year over 50% female and over 50% ethnic minorities. As we continue to evolve and grow as a firm, we are increasingly focusing on development and retention to ensure that the hard work done in these early stages translates to diversity across the whole firm, so that we can create a lasting environment where everyone can bring their best and whole selves to work.”
Martina Sanow
Hg Partner and Deputy COO
Nic Humphries
Hg Senior Partner
With diversity you source and analyse deals, ask and answer questions, and manage teams differently. It adds up to better investment and business decisions. The more complex the challenge at hand, the greater the returns”
Development and retention
Developing, supporting and retaining our people is crucial to ensure we maintain talent for the long term. We want individuals from all walks of life to have an equal opportunity to reach their full potential and become leaders of the future.
To ensure Hg is a place where everyone can thrive, we have a comprehensive benefits programme that caters to the individual needs of our employees. For example, our family-friendly policies include 26 weeks of fully paid parental leave (salary and bonus), regardless of gender and we provide emergency backup childcare to support parents when they need it most. See Health and Wellbeing here for our raft of support programmes.
When it comes to career development, we believe a transparent and fair career-management process is fundamental for success and we build our talent development programmes around this. To support our talent as they build their careers with Hg we have an executive mentoring programme and many targeted development opportunities, for example last year we ran a ‘Personal Leadership’ programme for our junior women investors and a two-week onboarding academy for all of our newest junior investors.
Inclusivity
We strongly believe that our inclusive culture, established in the very early days of Hg, has been key to the success of the firm. Inclusivity remains a big part of life at Hg, but that doesn’t mean we can ever afford to stand still.
Each year we host multiple educational and awareness events across a range of topics such as Black history and the challenges marginalised groups within the LGBTQ+ community face. Our employee resource groups also foster relationships between groups of employees based on common interests, backgrounds or demographic factors to ensure a support network for all.
We run regular employee surveys on Great Place to Work to solicit candid feedback to discover where we can make material improvements to our culture, with action plans always taking place once feedback is analysed, then as a further safeguard, we have our annual managing unconscious bias programme for all new joiners which features guidance on how everyone can play a role in ensuring an inclusive culture at Hg.
Our DEI steering group and targets
At the end of 2019 the Hg Board set two gender balance targets, one near- and one medium-term. The first, near term, was to reach more than 30% female executives by March 2021. We achieved 30% female representation within our executive teams in March 2021 and a goal for 35% by March 2022 was set: we are pleased to report that we have achieved this once again.
The medium-term target was to reach more than 20% females at the senior executive level, and we are working hard to ensure progress is made year on year here too. This mirrors the target set by Level 20, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to improving gender diversity in the European private equity industry.
Hg’s DEI Steering Group, which is reporting directly to the Board, has the mission to lay the foundations for a fully inclusive culture and environment at Hg where all diversity is welcomed, encouraged and celebrated, and they have been working hard throughout this year to ensure that progress is made each day.
