DEI Commitments
At SyncD and Futureheads, we’ve always believed in treating people fairly, equally, and with respect.
We’re now striving to be better and to drive positive change. We firmly believe that everyone is welcome at Futureheads, and we aim to demonstrate that in everything we do.
We believe that diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace make us a better business in every way – as individuals, as colleagues, as an employer, as a partner or supplier, and as a customer. We’re committed to creating a culture of authentic inclusion, which itself builds and nurtures diversity, and to actively helping our clients do the same. We celebrate the innovation and rich experience that diversity brings, and we commit to ensuring that everyone we interact with, both within and outside our business, is valued, respected, and treated equally, regardless of their background, identity or circumstances. We aim to understand every individual’s capabilities, and to give them what they need to succeed to their fullest potential.
We aim to be brave. We won’t get it right all the time, but we believe it’s better to say and do something rather than nothing, and to learn from our mistakes.
Our Approach and Goals
Every member of our staff at Futureheads has contributed to and informed our DEI goals and ambitions through a staff survey and a series of workshops. We have formed teams across the business to work with the findings of that survey, to assess where we are and where we want to be in each of the following aspects of our DEI strategy.
Our Internal Culture
– We have partnered with Versiti who have audited our DEI credentials and led a workshop for our leadership team, helping us to identify where we are, where we want to be, and how we may get there.
– We have engaged Liz Johnson of The Ability People to talk to our staff and our clients about her story and how we can achieve authentic inclusion in our business.
– A leading DEI Coach, has started training our staff and will have all staff trained in understanding DEI by the end of 2022.
– We have set up a staff communication channel where we can share insights about DEI
– We have provided a DEI training course to all staff to improve our knowledge and awareness.
We have committed to including DEI as a fixed item on our board meeting agenda, with executive-level accountability to deliver on OKRs against our DEI goals.
– We will communicate our goals and progress to our staff every quarter and continue to invite our staff to contribute to our journey at every level.
– We commit to ensuring our staff events are inclusive and that we celebrate the diverse cultural events that are meaningful to our people.
– We re-commit to our management pledge that ensures every member of Futureheads has a voice and is listened to.
– We commit to creating psychological safety within our culture that enables every member of staff to discuss DEI in any capacity through a range of touchpoints and to provide safe, confidential opportunities for staff to raise concerns.
Our goals:
– For our staff to be knowledgeable about DEI and able to discuss DEI within a psychologically safe environment.
– For our people to experience our culture as inclusive and for every individual to be allowed to fulfil their greatest potential.
– For our staff to feel informed about and a part of the business’ DEI strategy.
– We will measure our progress on these goals through a staff survey once per quarter and aim to see an improved score every time.
Our People
– We have assessed our internal diversity profile, initially focusing on race and gender. We intend to address other protected characteristics in a further phase of our DEI strategy.
– In 9 months (Sep 2021 to June 2022), we have increased from 43% to 46% female staff across the business. We aim to build to and maintain a 50% female/50% male balance in our business.
– Whilst our business is 75% female-owned, we identified in Sep 2021 that our management and leadership team (SMT) in particular would benefit from greater gender diversity. By June 2022 we achieved our goal of a 50% female / 50% male ratio within that team and aim to maintain that balance.
– BAME groups are currently under-represented in our business at 23% of staff. We aim to build a more diverse workforce that reflects London’s ethnicity profile of 40% BAME (source: gov.uk)
– Moving forward we aim to share further data about our diversity profile, across all protected characteristics.
We provide opportunities for training, development and progression to all staff and have published clear career progression guides.
– We publish internal vacancies to all staff.
– We commit to fair and consistent pay structures and will continue to monitor our gender pay gap.
– We run a Future leaders programme which identifies and develops our staff into management and leadership roles. This is open to all staff.
– We are addressing our internal recruitment and selection processes to ensure they fully support and reflect our DEI Goals.
– We commit to hiring based on culture add not just culture fit.
Our goals:
For our hiring, selection, onboarding, training and development to ensure a diverse and inclusive workforce that meets the diversity profile goals of the business.
Our Policies & Procedures
– We aim to ensure that processes within our business enable inclusion, and commit to reviewing all relevant – processes to that end.
– We are auditing and updating all of our policies that relate to our DEI strategy.
– We have refreshed our staff benefits and rewards to ensure they are inclusive and offer as much flexibility as possible. In particular, we have relaunched our Parental – Leave policies which are now non-gendered and inclusive.
– To ensure visibility of and access to those policies we have created an internal website where we will publish our DEI and related policies along with regular updates.
– Our policies and processes will reinforce and enable the culture of psychological safety we aim to create, offering clear guidance on how any comments or concerns can be raised and heard.
– We will audit the DEI commitments of our suppliers and take appropriate action to ensure our supply chain is aligned with and supportive of our goals.
Our goals:
– To ensure our DEI policies and procedures are not just words on a page, but are lived and breathed every day and are fair, consistent and transparent.
– We hope to be able to evidence this through an accreditation such as B-Corporation within the next 2 years (by 2023) and via the results of our staff surveys.
Our Work With Clients – Best Practice Recruitment
– We pledge to work proactively with our clients to provide an inclusive recruitment process and to positively engage, challenge and educate each other during the process.
– We intend to create a client onboarding and “post project” process map which defines the standard for good DEI.
– We will map the recruitment process, and define when and how diversity is best discussed and managed.
– We will educate our staff on how to talk about DEIfor positive change and to help optimize our clients’ process to ensure authentic inclusion.
– We will proactively seek opportunities to provide ’How to’ advice and consultancy to clients specifically in relation to DEI.
– We would like to help create an equitable industry which no longer needs to rely on DEI data, however, while we and our sector are on that journey, we will invite all of our applicants to provide DEI-related data on a voluntary basis, for the purpose of providing anonymised insights to our community.
Our goals:
– To help the digital industry become more inclusive by taking an active role in optimising the processes and practices of our client partners.
– To share valuable research and content with clients to help them optimise their processes.
Advertising
– We actively invite people with protected characteristics to apply for the roles that we advertise and have updated our website and other communications to make this explicit.
– We commit to advertising our roles in such a way as to reach a diverse audience and are researching job boards which are specifically inclusive of those with protected characteristics.
– We commit to advertising our roles in such a way as to reach a diverse audience and are researching job boards which are specifically inclusive of those with protected characteristics.
– All advertising is screened for non-inclusive language and staff are trained in understanding unconscious bias.
Our goals:
– To help improve the diversity of the digital industry by ensuring we advertise our roles in the most inclusive way possible and by sharing appropriate research on potential diverse talent pools.
– Our CRM will enable us to measure ongoing improvements in the diversity of our advertising sources and subsequent candidate representation.
Our Partnerships
– We have formed a charities and partnerships group internally to assess potential partners who we can support over the coming years.
– In 2021 we partnered with The Ability People and are excited to welcome Liz Johnson to speak at a client event in Summer 2021.
– We have committed a budget to support other charities and partners who champion under-represented groups of our society. We will select partners whose audience can benefit from our professional expertise, and we encourage all of our staff to get involved in this support.
Our goals:
– Through our partnerships, to increase our knowledge and understanding of DEI and to access research and training.
– This will enable us to have a real impact on our internal and external recruitment practices, to be allies to under-represented groups and to be a conduit for positive change.
– Our quarterly staff survey will give us a measure of how confident our staff are in their knowledge of DEI, have a psychologically safe environment to discuss it in, and feel confident to impart their knowledge externally.
Our "Voice"
– Through our social media channels, content and events, we will always try to include content that helps promote and showcase diversity in a positive light.
– We commit to using our marketing channels to increase awareness and celebrate protected characteristics.
– More practically, we will share any knowledge on how to improve DEI practices in How to Guides.
– We commit to sharing our personal DEI journey every 6 months.
(Updated Nov 2022) We will update this statement on a twice-yearly basis to share our progress. If you would like to discuss DEI at SyncD please contact hello@wearesyncd.com