Integral Group 2019 Corporate Social & Environmental Responsibility Report

Our Response: “We’re Listening”

On June 3rd 2020 our leadership reached out to all staff through a firmwide live broadcast that was also posted to our intranet. Bill, our CEO and Kevin, our founder, turned our collective attention to the racial injustices witnessed in the United States. The call to action was made through launching an anti-racism task force. Staff who expressed interest were encouraged to contact the CSER team, who would help to launch the program.

On June 5th we released the following statement through our social media channels:

“In the wake of so much pain and justifiable anger, Integral Group holds space and stands with our staff, colleagues, and friends in the United States. We bear witness to the tragic and senseless loss of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and so many other Black lives. We also recognize our own difficult journey towards meaningful and lasting change must be informed by honest dialogue and self-reflection. Through the development of employee-led anti-racism initiatives we resolve, as a firm, to be accountable to each other and to our community. We commit to sharing our next actions informed by those initiatives through our Corporate Social and Environmental Responsibility report this summer. For now, we are taking stock, we are creating space, and we are listening because… BLACK LIVES MATTER.”

Anti-Racism Task Force (ART F)

Our Diversity Council was established in December of 2019. Its remit includes action on racism; however we acknowledge that its membership provides neither a broad enough base nor the depth of experience necessary to confidently guide the firm and its leadership on issues of racial injustice. Our Anti-Racism Task Force is intended to fill this gap.

The ARTF met for the first time on June 9th 2020, composed of 32 selfselected colleagues, representing all regions and countries within which we operate. Its membership is truly diverse and inclusive - spanning across all levels of leadership and job roles, ages, genders and races. It includes those with deep understanding of anti-racism work and those who are seeking to increase their awareness.

As a task force it is action-oriented and time-limited in its initial phase of work, although that does not preclude a recurrent or ongoing role. Its approach is outcome-based. Its proposed action plan spans across three time horizons: now, next and future. The preliminary outline is shared here (right).

Our Acknowledgement

We acknowledge that our values of Trust, Nurture and Inspire become meaningless if they are not in alignment with embedded actions in our organization.

Although great strides have been made on gender equality, we recognize that we still have a long way to go in attracting and retaining employees from other under-represented groups. Through our commitment as a JUST™ organization, we reflect on the racial and ethnic make-up of our offices and how they reflect our local communities, but we have work to do to close the gap.

We acknowledge our lack of representation of under-represented groups (Women, LGBTQIA+, Indigenous, Black, Latinx, Mixed-race, Multiethnic, People with Disabilities, and Veterans) at the leadership table. We are providing this data on page 10 of this report for full transparency and accountability.

We understand that efforts to recruit, hire, retain and promote people from diverse backgrounds will only be successful if the culture of the company is truly inclusive. And we acknowledge we have not been proactive enough in taking more meaningful steps to ensure a just and inclusive workplace for all.

We have not used our influence within our industry to create more pathways of mobility and access for those who have been marginalized.

We acknowledge that communities who have been marginalized based on race have been living with the reality of systemic racism for centuries. We recognize and own our shortcomings to address how this reality is affecting our professional community, as well as the communities in which we work and live.

Our Commitment

• To stand in solidarity against all forms of racism

• To be guided by our staff

• To listen more than we speak

• To keep the conversation going (internally + externally)

• To embed actions into operational programs

• To expand our understanding on the issues of racial injustice, both locally and globally

• To deeply and honestly examine the ways in which we engage in a system which is structurally inequitable

• To lift the voices of others who are already leaders in this space

• To look closely at our recruiting, hiring and promotion processes and make necessary adjustments

• To acknowledge that representation matters at the leadership levels

• To hold ourselves accountable by sharing the details on the actions that result from these initiatives in our CSER report this year, and in every year to come.