Building more representative teams
Our mission is for Soho House to be a space for its diverse membership and teams to connect, grow, have fun and make an impact, and this starts at the very top. When we pledged to increase BIPOC representation within our top 70 roles, we knew the key to success would come from the strengthening of a few practices.
The first was to cast our net wider and ensure our opportunities reached more people through targeted job boards, recruiters, and direct head-hunting. The second was ensuring that every hiring slate includes qualified candidates from underrepresented groups. We also trained our hiring managers to make behaviour-based assessments when interviewing candidates, and led conversations around the cultural and financial benefits an organisation experiences when its workforce is more representative.
We improved our job descriptions to include our diversity and inclusion statement, and introduced checks for coded and biased language. Through all of this, we continue to look for and hire the very best talent to join our teams, while ensuring that everyone – regardless of their gender, race, sexual orientation, age, parental status or ability – has an opportunity to be a part of our journey.
Internally, only our new starters in the UK and North America share demographic information when they join Soho House. While we do not have much data for Asia or Europe, we do know that as a result of our revamped recruitment and interview processes, 35% of our global leadership team identify as from an underrepresented ethnic background, as well as 41% of the additional 1,250 new hires we have welcomed since January 2021 in the Americas and UK.
Inclusivity Board and member data
In February 2021, we opened applications for our Inclusivity Board – a group of advisors from underrepresented communities who elevate the needs of diverse members at Soho House, help us reach networks of creatives to increase representation throughout our membership, and award fellowships – complimentary merit-based memberships for creatives with a financial barrier. We received more than 600 applications, and with the help of our global membership teams and external consultants, nominated an inaugural board of 30 advisors.
One of our biggest learnings a year on from our pledge is that the definition of diversity is localised. Being a global company, we wanted to ensure that the intentions behind our pledge to BIPOC communities expanded to other underrepresented groups as well. So, we spent months working with our membership teams, Inclusivity Board advisors and external consultants to understand the terminology and nuances of the cities we are in. We also identified the need to understand the make-up of our membership and as such, developed and launched our very first membership diversity survey. We will use this survey to better shape a more representative and inclusive membership base and experience both locally and globally.
Creative contributors
Content and events are a huge part of the Soho House experience, both for our members and teams. As we continue to build out our digital platforms, we’re finding even more opportunities to welcome creatives from a variety of backgrounds into our storytelling and content creation. Our focus centers around ensuring that our representation is authentic to the regions they originate within, not anchored to demographic stereotypes within societies, and then amplify these stories to our global audience.
We are actively making space for a range of activists, entrepreneurs, wellness leaders, authors, designers, restaurateurs, producers and more to use our platforms to share their work across video, audio and written editorial. With each piece of content that Soho House creates, we ensure that diversity is also represented in the freelancers and creators we commission to create it, and that talent is not just in front of the camera, but behind it.
We mirror our member-facing content and programming ethos through what we produce for our teams. From film screenings and book clubs to family meals and wellbeing sessions, we not only try to uplift underrepresented cultures, but also share it through our employee channels to inspire a global shift.
We’re actively holding ourselves accountable to ensure that we’re authentically serving our audiences to best represent our brand, our members, and our teams at large.
Building and delivering training that aligns with our values
At the beginning of this journey, we realised that external support and expertise would be imperative to genuinely achieving our goals. We commissioned diversity and leadership coaches, change-management professionals and members to develop our strategy. One of our key areas of focus was training and education for our teams.
Alongside these consultants, we developed a three-hour ‘Bringing our pledge to life’ workshop, which covers important concepts such as unconscious bias, microaggressions and anti-racism, which to date, nearly 60% of our global workforce has participated in. We are driving towards 100% participation with these workshop bi-annually. Unilaterally, we have also hosted workshops on allyship, gender/sexual identity, disabilities at work, and more to build out our wider DEI strategy. As we educate, we also expect our teams to live out our core values of curiosity, inclusivity, connection, respect, and passion. We have a zero-tolerance policy for any form of harassment, bullying, or discrimination reinforced by mandatory trainings and policy.
Our wellbeing programme
We created the Wellbeing Manager role in October 2020, to have a passionate team member dedicated full-time to producing regular virtual programming via Workplace, expanding our mentoring and counselling services, aiding our leaders and teams, hosting office hours and more. Special group mentoring sessions focused on creating safe spaces for our BIPOC employees are available globally, while individual counselling facilitated by a black therapist is available to all of our UK and North America teams. In addition to this, we have ensured that the facilitators of the wellbeing programme on Workplace are from a variety of backgrounds representative of the global employee population.
Steering Committee and ERGs
In August 2020, applications opened to our teams globally to join our inaugural Steering Committee. The group, consisting of 15 team members from our Houses worldwide, was formed in September 2020 and meets with our leadership team on a regular basis to discuss the goals of our company and progress with our pledge. Meetings are structured around pillars and are collaborative spaces for committee members to share their thoughts on Soho House culture, community engagement and communication with our senior most leaders. We use the 10 guiding principles below to lead every meeting, and together conceptualised a new way of communicating our progress internally, the development of our Supplier Diversity programme, and an improved tool for raising concerns to leaders.
1. Be present
2. Be welcoming and presume welcome
3. Listen deeply to learn
4. No fixing
5. Suspend judgment and assumptions, and seek understanding
6. Speak your truth and respect the truth of others
7. Maintain confidentiality
8. Respect silence
9. When things get difficult, turn to wonder
10. Trust the circle
On top of establishing our Steering Committee, we also have our four Employee Resource Groups (ERGs):
- BIPOC@Soho
- Access@Soho
- LGBTQIA+@Soho
- Women@Soho
Zero tolerance, Let Us Know
Our Let Us Know anonymous online portal launched in 2020. We upgraded it in 2021 to include whistleblowing and to be more accessible for our teams. We understand that sharing feedback, reporting incidents and flagging concerns openly can be daunting. So, we want to make the process clear and easy to understand, and ensure our teams feel supported every step of the way.
We’ve redefined our Way of Living commitment and shared this with our members globally. It clarifies what we expect from all of our members, and it is our expectation that all members engage with this commitment. We hold them accountable and review their behaviour when issues are reported. We refer back to the Way of Living to ensure a more inclusive and safe space for all.
These tools were developed to continue to support our zero-tolerance policy for discriminatory or harassing behaviour.
House Check-In and updated policies
While our work is global, Asia specifically was a region where we needed support in identifying the issues and concerns experienced when it comes to diversity and inclusion. As such, we partnered with Great Place to Work who administered our first employee survey in Mumbai and Hong Kong last year. The research guided us to implement locally relevant changes, such as our new Menstrual Leave policy in Mumbai and more. We also collected feedback from our teams that led us to review and rewrite our House Style and Grooming guidelines to be more explicitly inclusive of underrepresented communities. Furthermore, our new handbook was published in the summer of 2021, which includes a range of more inclusive people policies. At the start of 2022, we issued House Check-In, our first global employee engagement survey that will help us truly understand the impact of our work over the last year, what’s going well, and where we can steer our focus moving forward.
Soho Fellowship
The Soho Fellowship programme gives complimentary Soho House and Soho Works membership to underrepresented creatives experiencing financial barriers. Fellows are awarded membership, as chosen in conjunction with our global Inclusivity Board advisors, for their potential to progress with an impactful creative project during their year with us.
Merit-based programmes, such as Soho Fellowship, are key to becoming a more inclusive space for creatives. We will share the progress over time as applications are reviewed and fellowships are awarded.
Supplier Diversity programme, building through partners
We committed to giving back financially and physically to our communities, and from this pledge point we’ve developed our charitable arm, Soho Give, and our Supplier Diversity programme.
Our Supplier Diversity programme dedicates funds for diverse-owned and led businesses, and improved partnerships both commercially and culturally. It is an expansion on our commitment to 30% BIPOC suppliers. Ultimately, we recognise that a name in a database isn’t as impactful as putting money into these businesses. With our definition of diverse groups agreed globally, we’re now in the process of auditing our existing supplier database. We will then identify areas of opportunity, work to improve the representation of our supply base, and set a target amount of millions of GBP per year that will be spent through these diverse suppliers.
In addition to this, we have partnered with business owners through initiatives such as Black Pound Day, restaurant and shop takeovers in our Houses and Studios, and in addition through our F&B supplier arrangements we look to help small businesses achieve global distribution across our sites.
OUR DLI TEAM
‘When I joined the company in March 2021, it was clear to me that while there is certainly work to do, Soho House is clearly committed to its mission of being a space for its diverse membership and teams to connect, grow, have fun, and make an impact with an emphasis on “diverse”. Our pledge is a part of that commitment, as was bringing me on board to form and lead the DLI team. We look after our teams by building and delivering our induction, onboarding, development and wellbeing programmes, engaging our employee resource groups, and also partnering with our membership and content teams to ensure our members see and feel our commitment to diversity and inclusion as well. Going forward, we will be investing even more in opportunities for each of you to learn, connect, and grow. You can stay informed through our Soho Learn page on Workplace.’
- Chris Clark
Diversity, Learning & Inclusion Director
Reporting and accountability
We are using this report to check in. This report is the first of many which will summarise our progress and highlight areas of focus moving forward. We plan to expand our reporting across racial and gender pay gaps . We’ve also hired our Global Director of DEI, Chris Clark, who drives our teams across all departments to work in aid of inclusion. We’re making this a living document so that it updates in real time alongside us, making our progress transparent for our teams and members worldwide.
Noise Pollution
We take seriously our responsibility to act respectfully towards our neighbours. This is particularly important in urban areas where our Houses may join or be very close to neighbouring properties. Soho House employees must not cause aggravation to our neighbours or immediate communities by making excessive noise during unsociable hours (generally before 7am or after 9pm), for example by emptying glass recycling into outside bins, playing loud music, or making excessive noise when leaving or entering our properties late at night or early in the morning.
While at work
Expenses (view doc)In certain circumstances, you may need to make purchases with your own money on the Company’s behalf. You should be extremely conscious when spending money on behalf of the Company and seek approval prior to any purchase.
Travel (view doc)The greenhouse gas emissions from business travel and commuting are often considerable and fall under our indirect (scope 3) emissions. In order to reduce the environmental impact of our business travel, we should only travel when absolutely essential. Where possible, we should always conduct our meetings using video conferencing facilities. No travel should be booked without following the guidance set out within the policy.
Commuting & Events
In addition to our business travel, we also take into consideration the carbon and environmental impact of our employees commuting to work and attending events by actively encouraging our employees to:
- Walk, cycle, or use public transport to get to and from work or events
- Car share wherever possible (ideally prioritising electric vehicles)
- Consolidate journeys and meetings wherever possible
- Take advantage of flexible working arrangements when appropriate
- Avoid paper waste by making use of e-ticketing and travel apps
- Carry a reusable water bottle and coffee cup
Relationships at work (view doc)Team members often form friendships and, in some cases, close personal relationships in our sites. In general we aim not to interfere, however we do need everyone to behave in an appropriate, professional and responsible manner at work. We therefore ask all team members embarking on close personal relationships at work to comply with our Relationships Policy and to declare the relationship to your manager as soon as possible.
