Thrings

 Ros Trotman, Head of Development in the Bristol office and Women in Property South West Chairman 2019/20

Thrings recently launched its Gender Equality Think Tank (GETT) – a group of volunteers from across all our offices and at all levels including HR who meet bi-monthly to discuss and come up with ways of improving gender diversity within the firm all the way to the top. The themes included:

• How to address the gender pay gap;
• Getting more women into more senior roles in the firm;
• Flexible working policies and practices;
• Review of maternity, paternity and parental leave policies and practices

Since it’s official launch in September 2018, Thrings has:

• Rewritten its maternity, paternity and shared parental leave policies. In particular the firm now has a much more competitive maternity leave policy
• Improved its results in the gender pay report
• Increased the number of women at senior positions
• Rewritten the description of roles for fee earners within the firm to ensure a clear and consistent process to progression across the firm
• Rewritten the flexible working/working flexibly policies
• Is working on improvements to the maternity leave practices i.e. information we give people going on mat leave, keeping in touch generally and use of Keep In Touch days, supporting people back into work after mat leave and plans to roll out training of new policies and practices across the firm

This is a clear illustration that by setting up internal cross-department groups you can really bring about change for the better within your organisation