Diversity Spotlight: Inclusivity supports high-performing teams
With around 40,000 employees across its portfolio, it’s imperative to attract and retain the best talent. Engagement through inclusivity is key to making this work.
Just as Inflexion’s own success is underpinned by the diverse fabric of its team, a variety of backgrounds drives growth across the portfolio. "Inflexion has long been committed to promoting diversity and inclusion (D&I) within our firm, and this commitment extends to our portfolio companies. We know that enhancing D&I is crucial for attracting, retaining, and engaging top talent," explains Freddy West, Talent Director at Inflexion.
Research backs up the importance of this, with research from McKinsey citing a 48% differential likelihood of outperformance between the most and the least gender-diverse companies, with equally compelling results for ethnic and cultural diversity.
Without inclusion, it is difficult to get genuine diversity and the richness of ideas that can bring. For this reason, D&I features prominently in Inflexion’s proprietary ESG Framework which helps guide its portfolio. “With a wide and growing portfolio, we feel it is crucial we lead by example, particularly in the areas of climate and diversity. Focusing on these areas will mean that our businesses are capable of more sustainable success,” says Jennie Galbraith, ESG Director at Inflexion.
Driving outperformance through active management: Key D&I issues are regularly discussed with portfolio Chairs and at Inflexion-hosted events, such as the annual Diversity Exchange, featuring high-profile guest speakers leading in D&I. We also promote the sharing of best practices across our portfolio and have developed guidance documents to help companies in this space, including advice on developing a D&I policy and strategy. Balanced longlisting and interviewing practices are encouraged, mirroring Inflexion’s own internal policies.
D&I in the ESG Framework: Inflexion’s portfolio companies build high-performing teams by strengthening their policies and governance frameworks, particularly around gender diversity. This includes monitoring data and implementing strategies and initiatives to enhance D&I. Over time, this should result in a greater representation of women in senior positions throughout the portfolio and more balanced decision-making.
Measuring the D&I impacts of our portfolio: Portfolio companies are required to track gender data within the first year of investment. To facilitate this, we collect gender data, and where available, ethnicity data, for all our portfolio companies, covering the total workforce, senior management, and Board level on an annual basis. These insights help support portfolio companies in thinking strategically about their D&I impacts and identifying opportunities to create value. We are proud that 83% of the portfolio already have women at the C-suite level.
Once gender data is tracked and understood, portfolio companies are expected to set D&I targets and adopt initiatives that promote D&I. This is a requirement for all portfolio companies, and they are expected to achieve it by the time of exit. At the time of Inflexion’s latest measurement, nearly half (49%) of the portfolio had D&I targets, up from 20% a year prior.
To further upskill the portfolio, Inflexion hosts training sessions on collecting D&I data, apprenticeships, and topical issues such as the cost-of-living crisis.
Portfolio spotlight
Risk management firm Alcumus is leading the way in D&I with an extensive strategy covering gender, LGBTQ+, disability, ethnicity, age and socio-economic considerations. In 2022, Alcumus launched several employee networks to represent these underrepresented groups and increase awareness across the employee base, including the Alcumus Pride Network, Alcumus Women’s Network and Alcumus Military Veterans Network.
IT recruitment specialists Calco is making great strides in the D&I space as they aim to increase gender diversity in the IT sector in the Netherlands. Not only do they consider diversity in their recruitment selection procedures, they also run events to introduce the next generation of female professionals to the IT sector, and work with their clients to demonstrate how gender diversity can drive value.
Innovative technology and training services provider Sparta Global counts D&I a core part of its human capital strategy and centres its business model around training graduates in a range of tech skills and then deploying in roles within client firms. It deems the inclusion of more women, ethnic minorities, neurodivergent talent, and talent from lower socio-economic backgrounds as an intellectual and strategic asset to any business.
By ensuring its own intake is diverse, Sparta helps its clients achieve their D&I objectives, and provides them with advice around initiatives to further improve D&I. This includes a strong client base of UK corporates and public sector organisations such as BUPA, Channel 4, Deloitte and the Home Office. In this way, Sparta is a truly forward-looking business that is paving the way for other businesses to become similarly progressive.
In recognition of their commitment to diversity among other ESG themes, Sparta Global was given the King’s Award for Enterprise, one of just eight companies to be recognised for its excellence in Promoting Opportunity (social mobility). Last year it became B Corp certified, and was ranked the 15th best employer in the 2023 Social Mobility Employer Index.
K2 Partnering Solutions' position as a provider of end-to-end consultative technology solutions to over 500 businesses across the globe gives them a unique perspective on the hiring landscape.
The firm's talent network of 1 million contractors serves corporations from offices in North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia Pacific, ingraining the value of regional differences long before the term DE&I became a buzzword.
K2 began to formalise its policies around diversity in 2018, shortly after receiving minority capital from Inflexion. The firm has since seen the gender split of its internal technical workforce shift from 18% women in 2022 to 27% in 2023. This progress stemmed from many factors: K2's training business launched an IT Academy targeting women and teaching them sought-after Salesforce skills, managers were coached on bias, and the firm created a web page featuring testimonials from successful women, inclusive images and gender-neutral language. The gender split is a metric the firm will incorporate into its yearly DE&I reporting as they strive to reach a 50:50 split.
K2 also has a programme for hiring for professionals with disabilities. The impetus was two-fold: the firm was already committed to diversity, and legislation passed in Brazil, one of K2's key markets, necessitated businesses of a certain size to ensure a set percentage of its workforce is from this cohort. Partnerships were struck with disability advocacy organisations which provided valuable insights, guidance and support in designing and implementing inclusive recruitment strategies. These efforts mean that today 5.6% of K2's workforce is comprised of disabled people, comfortably above the 2% target required by Brazilian regulation.
Pharmaceutical company CNX Therapeutics, is another example of a portfolio company that is leading the way with their people strategy. They’re particularly focused on inclusivity and continue to make their working culture as flexible and accommodating as possible. Some of their initiatives include setting summer hours where the team finish early on a Friday during June, July and August, receive a well-being allowance each month, as well as increasing the number of annual leave days that all employees are entitled to. CNX recently launched LearnSync where employees receive up to £250 to learn a skill, which may or may not be directly related to their role. All employees will share the skill in interactive ways at their team meetings, and for every new skill learnt CNX will match the contribution for chosen charities.
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