Our progress

We have continued to make significant progress on gender diversity. We have started by improving gender balance at the senior leadership level. We are pleased to have achieved the Hampton-Alexander Review gender diversity targets for Executive management. 50% of these senior roles are held by women today. Halma’s plc Board and Executive Boards are 50% and 67% women, respectively, and in July 2021 Dame Louise Makin became Halma’s Chair.

The three Sector Chief Executives who lead our portfolio of companies are women, and the gender ratio of our next generation of leaders is now more balanced with 49% women in our latest Halma Future Leaders cohort. We have also made progress towards our ambition for all our company boards to be within a gender balance range of 40%-60%, with female representation increasing from 19% last year to 22% this year.

We have been an active member of the 30% Club since 2017, a membership organisation which campaigns for at least 30% of board seats to be held by women.

In 2021 Halma was recognised by the European Women on Boards as gender diversity leaders, coming 8th out of 668 companies.

We have made public commitments to increase racial and ethnic participation in our senior leadership roles by joining Change the Race Ratio, a campaign founded by the Confederation of British Industry to increase racial diversity on boards.

We’re also committed to reporting on long term actions specifically on black inclusion. This includes tracking ethnicity data, conducting listening sessions to understand the experiences of black colleagues, and celebrating black leaders and talent in our organisation. We have already made progress against the campaign’s goals with two recent appointments – a new plc Board Director and an Executive Board member – who are from ethnically diverse backgrounds. We are also tracking ethnicity data to improve transparency and provide a benchmark which we can build on for the future.

A focus of our diversity strategy is working with recruiters to ensure they run a diverse application process and expanding our campus recruitment strategy for university and college graduates. While we base our recruitment decisions on skills and competencies, we hold recruiters accountable for presenting diverse shortlists which include varied educational and work backgrounds. We are confident that our focus on diverse hiring practices will start to deliver results and increase diversity at all levels of our organisation.