Diversity pay gap statement 2022

Listen

To make meaningful change, we seek to understand the challenges that people face during their careers. The ‘Listen’ part of our strategy is designed to develop a culture where people are encouraged to share their experiences and feel they’re genuinely being listened to.

By gathering data through the pay gap analysis process, we can better understand the situation as it currently stands and investigate that data to identify trends. We also believe that sharing the data helps to foster a culture of openness.

Through our employee networks and groups and our D&I events, we have established spaces where people can share their personal experiences and we can take learnings to drive change. Our networks play a vital role in educating colleagues across the firm and influencing our culture through events and activities that everyone can participate in. We have also embedded D&I groups into a number of our service lines, which we envisage will increase participation in the conversation, help identify any issues relevant to the specific service line and take more targeted actions.

Educate

The ‘Educate’ phase of our strategy aims to encourage everyone at RSM to gain a better understanding of how we can address these challenges. We take an ‘always-on’ approach to education to foster a culture of continual learning and evolution.

To maintain momentum, we have a D&I communications calendar to ensure we regularly post content and videos about diversity and inclusion topics on our internal collaboration platform. We also host regular panel discussions and events to raise awareness of the challenges people can encounter and encourage everyone to join the conversation.

Allyship is an important part of ‘Educate’. Becoming an ally means being available to listen, increasing our awareness of our colleagues’ experiences and supporting each other in the most appropriate and effective way.

In May 2021, we established a Culture of Allyship programme, which brought together colleagues and partners across the business with a passion for supporting people in underrepresented groups. The group has created an allyship hub with resources including podcasts, playlists, TED Talk videos and online learning resources that support education. ‘Lunch and Learn’ sessions were delivered throughout our offices to show the importance of allyship and educate people on how to be an effective ally. Through changes made to our ‘High Five’ recognition scheme, we now encourage individuals to recognise colleagues who show examples of allyship in action.

Act

The ‘Act’ phase of our strategy builds on the learnings we take from ‘Listen’ and ‘Educate’ and includes the actions we take to drive change.

In recent years, we have raised the profile of flexible working to help people overcome the challenge of balancing their career with their personal commitments. We continue to develop our approach to hybrid working, giving employees greater choice over when and where they work while ensuring everyone has the tools and environment they need to thrive.

While our senior leadership team is actively involved in our initiatives, there is work to be done by everyone. We want to ensure that every decision maker or colleague with power to influence other people’s careers is helping us drive change and supporting our culture of inclusion. D&I and unconscious bias training is encouraged for anyone who manages people at RSM to help ensure day-to-day decision making considers everyone.

This year, we launched our first national reverse mentoring programme, which involved matching board members and the National Head of Inclusion with a diverse range of colleagues across the business. Our aim is to create a more inclusive culture in which we understand, embrace and learn from different cultures and experiences to help shape the business.

We are proud of the upward trend in the proportion of trainees we’re welcoming from ethnically diverse backgrounds. From FY21 to FY22, the percentage increased from 31.2% to 37%. We will support many people from past, present and future cohorts through strategies such as ‘Grow Our Own’ as they progress into more senior positions at RSM.

We are continually reviewing our recruitment processes at all levels to make sure they are open and a career at RSM is appealing to everyone. This year, we have continued to develop our in-house talent acquisition team, so that we have more control and visibility of the process and accountability for the outcomes.

One of the key goals of our national talent acquisition team is to increase opportunities for diverse talent to join RSM. As part of that aim, we review job descriptions to ensure use of neutral language. We have also broadened the number of platforms we use to advertise roles. These changes are designed to increase our visibility within diverse talent pools and demonstrate our ambition to recruit individuals who reflect our clients and communities. We continue to gather data on candidates and the candidate experience to identify whether we can further develop our approach. 

We work in partnership with a number of social mobility programmes and organisations including; Access Accountancy, Rise and Leadership Through Sport and Business, who we have worked with since 2014. Through this scheme we offer school leavers from underprivileged areas apprenticeship positions and support them as they study for professional qualifications. 

We are proud to be a 10,000 Black Interns partner, providing paid opportunities for young Black talent to gain valuable skills while taking the opportunity to learn from their experiences. Another strand of our work in talent acquisition is sharing more about RSM’s inclusive culture to help applicants envisage a career with us.

Looking ahead

Continuing to evaluate our recruitment and joining processes through in-depth data analysis and qualitative feedback will help us to find ways to make joining RSM the most informative and engaging experience it can be for our candidates from all backgrounds. Our aim is to show our commitment to our people from the outset and, in turn, nurture their commitment to our firm. In the year ahead, we will also look to continue to broaden our hiring managers’ knowledge and skills in diversity and inclusion.

It is crucial that we create opportunities for underrepresented groups to progress at RSM and reach senior levels. To that end, unconscious bias training is available for managers, and anyone involved in developing other people’s careers to reduce the risk of inadvertently limiting others’ potential.

To enable people to progress at their own pace, we provide the opportunity to self-nominate for our management and leadership development programmes, empowering our people to take control of their own careers.

To further drive progress, we have enhanced our new partner development programme with modules that nurture inclusive leadership skills and provide confidence in leading behavioural change at a cultural level.

Looking ahead

To increase visibility of opportunities, we have introduced a new AI-powered talent platform designed to help us share internal vacancies in a user-friendly way. We believe this will give our people better sight of opportunities across our firm, particularly those at higher levels with greater renumeration potential. The talent platform will also help us increase the depth of our diversity analysis, as it collects, manages, and helps key people visualise relevant talent data. We can track KPIs such as retention and career progression to understand if our strategies are effective in addressing factors like our ethnicity and gender pay gaps.

2023 will also see enhancements to our mentoring programme, with the aim of connecting all employees who are seeking guidance with a mentor. We support both mentors and mentees with training to help foster effective relationships and career support.