Diversity, equity & inclusion
DEI is a strongly held principle of Hg’s (Please see our website for further information about our Diversity and Inclusion efforts). Hg believes that having a diverse workforce deepens the talent pool and brings a wider range of perspectives. We do our best to communicate and educate our portfolio on the importance of DEI, help them navigate DEI matters and measure their performance and impact. Our latest ESG diagnostic includes 20 questions relating to DEI including policies, gender & ethnicity pay gap reporting, measurements of gender & broader diversity, and diversity initiatives. To implement DEI strategies and advance DEI maturity across our businesses, Hg set up a DEI Council and invested in a toolkit to help provide guidance.
Portfolio companies have anti-harassment or equal opportunities policy
Portfolio companies have a DEI strategy
Portfolio companies have appointed a DEI representative to drive these topics across their business
Supporting our Portfolio on DEI
In 2022, we set up a DEI Council comprised of nine of our portfolio companies, led by a representative, typically from the DEI, ESG or HR departments. The forum created a space for companies to discuss, exchange views and advance the topics for DEI within their businesses. The main aim of the council was to:
- Support the development of a DEI toolkit and
- Bring together DEI professionals to discuss challenges and opportunities faced within their companies.
Over the course of 2022 we held bi-monthly sessions and focused on four topic areas; DEI Strategies, People, Culture and Communication, across the different geographies our portfolio companies operate in. On several occasions, we were joined by external speakers to provide clarity and expertise on more challenging topics.
Hg's firm-level initiatives on DEI
Nic Humphries
Hg Senior Partner and Executive Chairman
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. Hg proudly won the Real Deal’s Diversity and Inclusion Leader of the Year Award GP Upper Mid-Market in 2021 and 2022. In addition, Hg was considered a Leader in DEI by Honordex9, ranking 2nd place in the 2023 Inclusive PE Index (up from 3rd place in 2022) and was the most improved firm in the top 10 for two consecutive years.
9 Equality Group, Honordex: Inclusive Index Score 2023, Mar 2023
“Hg has over 20 years’ experience in partnering with rapidly growing innovative software businesses. This experience has demonstrated that diversity in leadership often leads to better investment and business decisions. Diversity in the technology sector continues to be a priority for us, the businesses we invest in.”
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 recent 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 under-represented within our industry via inclusive recruitment events, industry wide mentorship schemes, providing internships with the #10,000BlackInterns scheme and through talent engagement programmes with 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.
Throughout 2022/23 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.
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 a leader 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. We have support in place for employees who are planning to start a family, from preconception and fertility treatment to pregnancy and postpartum with Maven Clinic. We understand there can be difficulties perfectly combining work with families and so we provide a variety of resources to help with this, such as access to holiday activity sessions and children clubs, and several free days of child-care support each year. Further to this, we recognised a gap in our family care offering and that our employees could benefit from more support with caring for elder dependents too, so we launched a service that supports with just this.
Our maternity, paternity and adoption leave includes 26 weeks of fully paid parental leave, with no proration on bonus for taking leave.
When it comes to career development, we believe a transparent and fair approach to career development is fundamental for success and we build our talent development programmes around this ethos. To support our talent as they build exciting and rewarding careers with Hg we have a team dedicated to their learning and development, from 2 week onboarding Academies for our newest investors and an expert investor series where our talent learn from industry experts on a range of topics, to executive mentoring and coaching to assist our people as they reach their potential, there is no shortage of learning opportunities for those who want them.
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 does not 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 engagement surveys to solicit candid feedback to discover where we can make material improvements to be more inclusive, with action plans always taking place once feedback is analysed. 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 in the past two years have continued to set and achieve goals to target a more gender balanced executive team, we are pleased to report that our executive teams are currently 38% women with further targets being set for 2023. The medium-term target is 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, who 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.