Inclusion matters: Lighting up with Pride

Our London headquarters is lighting up with Pride from Thursday 8 to Friday 17 September to celebrate LGBT+ inclusion, with a focus on education, visibility and intersectionality.

We have 13 employee-led groups focused on driving inclusion across our business. SchOUT is our community for our LGBT+ colleagues and allies committed to building professional and supportive networks in the business, with the aim to help recruit, develop and retain talent from the LGBT+ community.

Our Pride celebrations kicked off in June with the Schroders logo incorporating the Pride Progress flag, actively showcasing our support for LGBT+ inclusion and the importance of intersectionality. Plus the launch of our pronouns initiative to normalise the discussion around gender, where we actively encouraged our people to add their gender pronouns (she/her) (he/his) (they/theirs) to their email signatures and social media profiles.

Emmanuelle Mathey, Head of Credit Risk and Chair of SchOUT our LGBT+ employee resource group explains: 'Celebrating Pride is important to further inclusion because positive visibility matters. It's a chance to be reminded that we are part of a large and diverse community that comes in all shapes and colours and that we have many allies.'

The cancellation of the Pride in London Parade hasn't stopped our active UK SchOUT network organising a host of events focused on education and allyship. These events are fundraising for LGBT+ homeless charities: akt, The Outside Project and Stonewall housing. A large floral rainbow arch also welcomed our people and visitors into our London office this week.

We were honoured to welcome Nicola Adams, OBE - British boxer and double Olympic champion -for an empowering fireside chat in the UK, hosted in collaboration with four of our employee-led inclusion networks. Nicola shared her experience of coming out and powerful insights into sport, mental health, gender equality, racism and resilience; inspiring us with how she dusts herself off after taking a hit, and the vital importance of being yourself to realise your full potential.

Our Europe SchOUT chapter launched this July with a virtual event focused on how we're supporting the LGBT+ community at Schroders and in the wider financial services industry.

In Asia Pacific, SchOUT with Pride which is coming up in October will focus on building allyship. We'll also be supporting the #PinkFridayPride multi-industry LGBT+ inclusion initiative for the third year running.

Driving inclusion at Schroders

We actively seek to create a culture where inclusion is a priority across all levels of the business, where creating an inclusive environment is everyone's responsibility, and where the focus is shifted from unconscious exclusion to conscious inclusion. 84% of our people feel they are treated with fairness and respect and 84% feel that Schroders recognises and values diversity among its employees*.

Hear from our people about how we are continuing to create a more inclusive workplace here at Schroders

*From our latest 2021 employee pulse surveys.