Equity, diversity & inclusion

Updated: September 2023

Context and our commitment

To do this, we are committed to creating an environment of respect, acceptance, and equal opportunity in the workplace, and to fostering a culture of inclusion and appreciation for diversity. Claremont is a small but growing company, so our approach to EDI is driven as much by a commitment to learn as we grow and to develop our thinking and policies in line with our growth.

In our relatively small team, we are proud to have people who differ in their sex, gender identity, ethnicity, age, neurodiversity and religious and social backgrounds. Our Senior Management Team (SMT) has an equal balance of people of different sexes. We support neurodiverse and flexible ways of working, with staff empowered and encouraged to discuss and share their diversity of thought and background.

Our Overarching EDI Themes and Objectives

1. Working Environment

As a small team, creating a working environment that promotes inclusion and enables collaboration built on mutual respect is crucial.

We will:

• Create an open and welcome working environment where everyone is treated with dignity and respect.
• Nurture freedom of expression without fear of judgement or discrimination.

2. Equal Opportunity 

Much of our client work is focused on audiences and sections of society that are underserved and deserve greater equity. We want to model the change we wish to see in the world.

We will:

• Commit to providing equal opportunities in the workplace and ensuring that no employee is treated differently based on their age, race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, religion or belief, marital status, maternity or pregnancy status, or any other protected characteristic.
• Demonstrate zero tolerance for any form of discrimination, harassment, victimisation or retaliation in the workplace.

3. Embracing Diversity

It is intrinsic to the success of Claremont and the wide range of work it undertakes that we can bring divergent and innovative thinking to bear on the problems we are trying to solve with our clients. Embracing diversity is fundamental to enabling this, and results in a supportive positive culture, happier employees and better work for clients.

We will:

• Recognise diversity as one of our greatest strengths, and create an inclusive environment that embraces differences of opinion, perspective, background, and experience.
• Embrace and celebrate diversity and consistently aim to promote an atmosphere of mutual respect and understanding.
• Acknowledge openly that we all carry in-built bias and seek not to shy away from this, but to name it and adopt novel approaches to actively challenge it
• Commit to keeping our team meetings democratic and inclusive, and ensure line managers have ongoing dialogue with their line reports to ensure diverse thought is captured on the culture and work of Claremont, and fed back to SMT. Providing different forums for our team to feed in their views will accommodate the diversity of working preferences across our staff.

4. Leadership

Claremont’s culture is not hierarchical, but leaders still have an important responsibility to demonstrate the values and standards to which we hold ourselves accountable.

We will:

• Aim to ensure there is diversity in our SMT, particularly in relation to sex
• Work collectively as a SMT to model the behaviours we wish to see across the team, and encourage leaders at all levels within Claremont to do the same.
• Communicate with honesty, bringing our whole selves to the Claremont workplace, recognising and celebrating difference and enabling contribution.
• Appoint a SMT lead to own the monitoring and reporting against EDI, working with a small team of staff at Claremont to track our progress and improve our learning.
• Report annually to staff on progress, learnings and action planning for improvement.

5. Recruitment

Claremont’s core team is growing, and the network of associates and freelancers working with us, or seeking to, is similarly increasing. We are proactive in building EDI principles into our recruitment strategies.

We will:

• Not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment on any basis prohibited by applicable law.
• Act in accordance with our EEO policy, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, colour, national origin, age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, disability, or any other basis protected by law.
• Continue to publish the salary of new roles for transparency.
• Ensure all job advertisements state our commitment to diversity and that we actively welcome applications from people from diverse backgrounds

6. Continuous Improvement – Training & Education

We recognise that EDI evolves alongside society and corporate practice, and we will continue to learn and adapt our approach.

We will:

• Further promote diversity and inclusion by providing ongoing training and education opportunities to our employees. These initiatives will aim to raise awareness of issues related to diversity and inclusion, and foster an environment of mutual respect and understanding.

Measuring progress

Claremont is a small and tightly-knit team. Any failings in our approach to EDI, or perceived failures, will quickly impact our culture. We will encourage all staff to be aware of our EDI ambitions, and speak to their line manager or any Director to raise concerns of flag opportunities to improve.

We will conduct an annual all-staff survey that will measure quantitative ratings against our EDI themes:

• Working environment
• Equal opportunity
• Embracing diversity
• Leadership
• Recruitment
• Continuous improvement – training & education

The survey will solicit feedback across each theme, which will be reported against at an all staff meeting, led by the responsible member of SMT. Priority areas for the next year’s EDI action plan will be collectively agreed upon.

Our goal is to benchmark across our EDI themes, identify areas of improvement collectively, define our action plan and strive for continuous improvement year on year.