We are a respectful employer that welcomes diversity and promotes equality, tolerance and teamwork. Our aim is to create a culture which enables our exceptional and diverse workforce to thrive, have a voice and be their authentic selves. Our belief in ‘diversity of thought’ extends our conception of diversity beyond the traditional facets of gender, ethnicity, age and sexual orientation to include personality, communication and work styles.
We have a very balanced male: female ratio (51% of our employees are female as at 31st December 2024) and our efforts to actively promote the importance of diversity has ensured that our Board and Senior Management Team achieve the targets set by the FTSE 350 Women Leaders Review, the Listing Rules and the Parker Review.
To enable us to achieve our overarching aim of becoming a truly inclusive company, over the last few years we appointed four employees to sit on our Responsible Business Committee and established a Diversity & Inclusion Working Group in 2020. We were proud to achieve the National Equality Standard (NES) accreditation for the second time in 2024 with a score in the top 5% of accredited organisations in the UK.
As part of this journey, we have a suite of activities and initiatives to advance diversity and inclusivity going forward, including working alongside the charity Chickenshed, investing in Inclusive Leadership training, signing up to the 10,000 Black & Able Intern programme, focusing on accessibility for our employees and occupiers, and obtaining memberships including Pathways to Property and the Real Estate Balance to identify how we can support and widen access to our industry by raising awareness about the vast range of careers available.
We strive to attract diverse talent who are experts in their fields, and work closely with recruitment agencies to ensure candidates are balanced in terms of gender and ethnicity, and that there is a fair, thorough and open recruitment process in place. 28.8% of our employees are from an ethnically diverse background as at 31st December 2024.
Our Diversity & Inclusion progress includes:
- Increasing our maternity and shared parental leave to 26 weeks full pay
- Increasing our paternity leave to 4 weeks full pay
- Continuing to offer parental transition coaching for employees before, during and when returning from an extended period of leave
- Issuing twice yearly D&I Working Group internal newsletters
- Becoming a member of the Business Disability Forum (BDF) in 2023
- Amending our Annual Leave policy to offer employees the option of swapping a number of bank holidays for religious holidays or festivals
- Creating an annual Health & Wellbeing programme and continuing to raise awareness and education around long term conditions and disabilities
- Launching a Workplace Nursery Benefit Scheme
- Using internal screensavers to celebrate and educate employees on religious festivals and national campaigns
December 2024 Employee Survey Results
- 93% proud to work at Derwent London
- 91% overall employee satisfaction
- 91% would recommend Derwent London as a good place to work
