The accolade rewards the major moves the firm has made to revamp its D&I strategy since last year
Russell McVeagh has been granted Advanced GenderTick status in a landmark first for New Zealand law firms.
The recognition rewards the major moves the firm made to revamp its diversity and inclusion strategy in March 2022. This has included being one of just a few law firms to publicise gender and ethnicity pay gap information.
“Achieving the GenderTick is a visible sign of our commitment and work toward gender equality to create change and to hold ourselves accountable in this area to our people and the communities and clients we serve”, Russell McVeagh CEO Jo Avenell said.
Under the firm’s new D&I strategy, it set key goals for gender, inclusion and ethnicity. One gender diversity goal that was confirmed involved Russell McVeagh’s partnership being composed of 40% women in the next five years.
The firm explained that it was actively seeking “to better understand and act upon the specific biases and barriers to the promotion and retention of women”. Thus, Russell McVeagh has also set initiatives like ‘Respect’ workshops for all staff and inclusive leadership training for the CEO as well as all partners.
In addition, the firm unveiled an improved parental leave policy that better supported parents and whānau. It also put a gender identity and sexual diversity policy into effect.
To further boost its efforts to cultivate a gender-diverse team, Russell McVeagh has teamed up with organisations like Rainbow Tick, UN Women Empowerment Principles, the Law Society's voluntary Gender Equality Charter, InsideOut, Auckland Rainbow Law Network, Global Women and Champions for Change. The firm also committed to offering pro bono services to RainbowYOUTH and Coralus.
Russell McVeagh confirmed that it had disclosed the D&I plans internally and conducted drop-in workshops to facilitate discussions of all aspects of the strategy.
"Ensuring positive change requires an ongoing focus on implementing a wide-ranging work programme to support our goals", Avenell explained.
The GenderTick status is conferred based on compliance and leadership in the key indicators of equal pay, leadership representation, flexible work and leave, gender safe workplace, and gender inclusive culture.
