Shoosmiths Social Mobility Action Plan – moving from Pledge to Practice

For many years Shoosmiths has been committed to attracting and progressing talent from all backgrounds - partnering with local schools and colleges, offering placements/apprenticeships, adopting innovative recruitment practices, and making efforts to ensure our workplace culture is genuinely inclusive.

In November 2018, Shoosmiths signed the Social Mobility Pledge, an initiative launched by Rt Hon Justine Greening to encourage businesses to play their crucial role in boosting social mobility. The Pledge asks signatory organisations to consider 3 measures: partnerships; access; and recruitment; which have all been identified as being able to improve social mobility dramatically.

In September 2019, wanting to take commitment to social mobility to the next level, Shoosmiths became one of the first companies to start working with Rt Hon Justine Greening and her team at the Social Mobility Pledge to develop a tailored Social Mobility Action Plan which would specifically address where Shoosmiths could uniquely promote social mobility within the firm and in the UK.

As part of this process, the firm consulted with colleagues from across the business and the Pledge team carried out extensive community-based research – looking at the biggest barriers to social mobility in each of the geographical areas where Shoosmiths offices are based.

The Shoosmiths Social Mobility Action Plan was due to be launched in March 2020, however in the circumstances this was postponed. The way we live, and work has changed significantly since then, but social mobility, and overcoming barriers to opportunity across the UK, has never been more important.

We are now pleased to announce that the Shoosmiths Social Mobility Action Plan was officially launched on 20 October 2020. The Action Plan proposes 14 recommendations based on the Pledge team research findings and centred around the themes of partnership, access and recruitment. The Plan also features case studies from two Shoosmiths employees who shared their social mobility stories.

We are now looking at how we deliver can on the localised recommendations and look forward to sharing an update on our progress with you in 2021.