Continued efforts to promote Diversity & Inclusion

In 2022, we continued at Gorrissen Federspiel the efforts to promote Diversity & Inclusion in our firm. Sara Jursic, Head of HR, highlights the main achievements.

The D&I agenda has been a key focus area at Gorrissen Federspiel in recent years. In the words of Head of HR Sara Jursic, the efforts to reorientate the firm are characterised by a “relentless focus on change.”

She explains that this is an area in a state of flux, and that the nature of the concepts is changing along the way. Today, diversity is for instance more than gender diversity. Agendas, legislation and the expectations of the talent pool of future generations call for continuous adjustment of policies and regular introduction of new initiatives. In that sense, 2022 was “business as usual” – it was all about change and development.

“We must succeed with what we’ve set in motion. It takes patience, and we can’t just conjure up changes. But we’re well underway,” says Sara Jursic and she adds that, for instance, new and better parental leave schemes have been introduced, and these bring better balanced gender equality. In time – or at least that is what the Head of HR hopes – the new rules may provide a more balanced talent pool of ambitious lawyers with a desire to go all the way to partnership.

New parental leave rules

Since August, all fathers have had the right to 12 weeks earmarked parental leave. However, Gorrissen Federspiel already offered this opportunity to its male employees. It was therefore decided to widen the rights thereby achieving gender equality. Now both the mother and the father are entitled to take 24 weeks of parental leave.

“By providing equal rights to parental leave, we are hopefully conveying the message that having children and getting a good start with parenthood during parental leave are fully compatible with the career path you want to pursue. When we first widened the possibilities for men to take parental leave, this was welcomed, and it is also my expectation that the new rights will be welcomed,” says Sara Jursic.

Inspired Beyond Babies

Another parental leave initiative that was launched in 2022 was the Inspired Beyond Babies initiative. This is a community that facilitates inspiring network events and seminars and allows you to remain personally and professionally updated during the parental leave period.

“We’ve long wanted to join the Inspired Beyond Babies initiative. The initiative is in line with our desire to strengthen the affinity with our employees. Today, we conduct status interviews with employees before, during and after their parental leave. We’re now offering employees, who may so wish, the opportunity to seek inspiration and networking at a time when the newest member of the family is taking the centre stage. In addition, this initiative can facilitate the transition from parental leave to work.”

Unconscious bias

During 2022, we offered unconscious bias training to the entire organisation. Unconscious bias training addresses the biases or prejudices that we all hold when we interact with other people, both in our private lives and at work.

“The purpose was to raise awareness of our own biases and of how they unconsciously affect us. The board of directors, the executive board and the partner group first completed the training programme and the rest of the firm then followed suit. The attendance was good and there was positive feedback on the programme and the presentations. I find that many people have had eye-opening experiences along the way. It’s my hope that these experiences will resonate in recruitment and promotion and in interacting with other people in general,” says Sara Jursic.

New policy against bullying and harassment

The company policy against sexual harassment was accompanied by a policy against bullying and harassment. The new policy emphasises our commitment to ensure that everyone feels safe and comfortable, and that we always work together in a professional and respectful manner.

“At Gorrissen Federspiel we share knowledge, listen to each other and are helpful. We communicate openly and trustingly with each other, and we don’t accept bullying and harass - ment, including offensive and derogatory humour. That’s why, for reasons of precaution and to contribute to good relations, we decided in 2022 to introduce a policy on bullying and harassment,” Sara Jursic explains.

Joining the Diversity Pact

On 8 March, the International Women’s Day, Gorrissen Federspiel joined the Diversity Pact under the auspices of the Danish Chamber of Commerce.

“It was only natural to take this step because we’ve got a seat on the Diversity Council. For one thing, it’s the right thing to do, but it also shows our friends and competitors in the consultancy business where we stand. Under the Pact, we’re committed to objectives that we’re already aiming for, or that we’ve already achieved. And by taking part, we may inspire others to follow suit.”

Increased gender diversity by continuous focus on talent pipeline

We have an overall ambition to increase gender diversity across our organisation. We believe that in time this ambition will be achieved through continuous attention to a balanced talent pipeline. Today, we are an attractive employer for all genders early on in their careers. The challenge is to remain an attractive workplace all along their career paths allowing us to promote talented leaders of all genders.

We expect that in time our efforts will have an impact on the gender composition across our organisation. Thus, we are preparing to set targets for the underrepresented gender in other management layers of our organisation from next year onwards.