AEGIS London

City Firm AEGIS London Focuses on Diversity and Inclusion

AEGIS London is a Lloyd’s of London syndicate and part of a long-established mutual insurance business. The company provides clients with specialist knowledge, continuity and security across many classes of business.

In 2019, at a time of much public scrutiny into the financial sector, in particular Lloyds of London, AEGIS London decided to run a diversity and inclusion survey to ensure their organisation’s culture was true to its values and that their diversity and inclusion work was targeting the right areas. Ruth Adamson, Head of Risk and Governance, AEGIS London, explains…

“The management team were keen to run a diversity and inclusion survey to ensure we really understood what was going on inside our business. We have circa 150 employees in just one office, so we like to believe we know what’s going on in the organisation, but we wanted to give staff an opportunity to give confidential feedback by running an independent survey to ensure that was the case.

Working with The Survey Initiative

“We had worked with The Survey Initiative on a staff survey a couple of years back, and they had been very effective, so were our first choice for the diversity and inclusion survey. We wanted the survey turned around quickly and the team were brilliant at getting a series of example questions over to us. We chose a set of questions that would enable us to effectively analyse our employees’ opinions, and Gary, our account handler, was incredibly helpful in ensuring the survey was robust enough to suit our needs. Within a very short timeframe the team got the survey up and running, analysed the results and fed back the data to the workforce – we were delighted!

The survey generated a strong response, which was great, as it gave our employees a chance to say things they wouldn’t normally say to their peers. The majority of the findings weren’t too much of a surprise, but there were a few outcomes, which have led to us implementing change.”

AEGIS London in action

“Following the results of the survey we’ve put in place our diversity and inclusion champions, so if anyone has a problem or would like to discuss anything about diversity or inclusion they know where to go, and know their opinion will be respected and listened to. The responses also requested that we do more for mental health and so we have launched a number of other initiatives such as a range of activities in support of Mental Health Awareness Week and giving all staff access to the Headspace app. It’s not always easy to open-up debate on mental health in a mostly male working environment, but we’re working to address this.

For us the diversity and inclusion survey has helped us ensure that we understand our employees concerns more clearly. We’ve been able to launch new initiatives and working practices, as well as improving others, such as our recruitment process and flexible working policies.  This all helps to ensure that AEGIS London is a great place to work. We’re keen to diversify our workplace and bring a wide range of people into the industry; however, we realise that change won’t happen overnight, but we are committed to recruiting top talent from all backgrounds.

We shall definitely be running further staff surveys in the near future to track our development with diversity and inclusion as well as other organisational matters.”

To find out more about AEGIS London, please visit www.aegislondon.co.uk.  To discover more about The Survey Initiative, visit www.surveyinitiative.co.uk.