As the first organisation to achieve the ISO International Standard for Diversity & Inclusion (ISO30415) and the first private sector organisation to achieve the British Standard for Diversity & Inclusion (BS76005), we have always seen inclusion as an essential part of our culture and value the benefits which diverse people bring to our organisation.
We continuously monitor, and seek to understand, our diversity in order to identify where we should focus our efforts and once again, every member of the team has chosen to participate in our diversity survey, providing valuable data to help us to do so. As a regulated firm we are also required to publish data about the make up of our workforce every two years.
Due to the size of our business, we are conscious of respecting that data and this report has been published in such a way as to minimise the identification of individual sensitive data.
Vista Diversity
- 67% of our team are female and 50% of those are in solicitor, other fee earning or managerial roles. 60% of all solicitor, other fee earning or managerial roles are held by women. All men in the team are either in a solicitor or other fee earning role.
- 56% of our team are over 45 and the remaining 44% are between 25 and 44 years old.
- 83% of our team are from a white background.
- 55% of our team have a religious belief.
- 22% of our team consider themselves to have a disability that presents limitations to their daily activities.
- 22% of our team are the primary carer for children under 18 and 17% of our team are the primary carer for someone with long term physical or mental health disability or age.
- Over 83% of our team attended a state run or state funded school.
- 38% of our team came from background where the occupation of the main household earner was either professional or managerial. This figure was 71% for our solicitors and fee earners and 28% for other members of the team.
- 82% of our solicitors and fee earners had a parent who went to university and gained a degree. No other members of our team reported having a parent who had been to university and gained a degree.
Action
Whilst Vista have continued to meet the requirements of the ISO Standard for Diversity & Inclusion and our diversity data is reflective of the most recently collected (2021) data from SRA regulated firms, there are areas where we can, and should, aim to improve our diversity to be more reflective of society as a whole and enable social mobility. We can do this not only through attracting diverse talent, but by further developing our ways of working to ensure that we are inclusive and retain our great team.
- We have recently enabled greater flexibility and widened our talent pool through remote working but also ensured that we maintain connectivity across the team through regular full team meetings online and in person. We have increased our focus on sharing learning and mentoring across the team.
- We have been trying to capture diversity data from our job applicants for a number of years in order to identify any trends. However, very few applicants choose to participate in this data capture, so we are now driving applicants to our own website application process to encourage greater participation.
- We have invested in supporting a professional qualification programme to grow our own professional talent for the future.
- All employees have access to training and development opportunities, which includes an additional individual budget to undertake any employment related training without prior managerial approval.
- We don’t use individual fee earning targets so that less experienced members of the team have exposure to a variety of quality work and we are involving support staff in business development projects. Taking this approach encourages a team focus across the business and values the contributions from every individual.
- Although we work remotely, we have recently introduced an Environmental, Social and Governance policy which encourages our team to minimise their environmental impacts, increase social responsibility and promote ethical business practice.
- We have introduced carers leave to match parental leave and all employees have paid volunteering leave to benefit our communities.
- We have committed to participate in further education careers fairs and activities to reach a wider pool of developing talent.
- We have increased our participation in networks to promote inclusion and are freely sharing resources that we have developed.