Altair is partnering with diversity and executive recruitment pioneer Green Park to drive EDI in housing leadership. Sioned Hughes explains the background.
Inside Housing’s 2021 Diversity Survey highlighted ‘there is no area of equalities in which we can say the sector’s top jobs are truly diverse enough or reflective of society’. Yet research consistently demonstrates that diverse boards and leadership teams deliver the best results.
The Sector Risk Overview – Challenges, Risks and Regulatory Expectations, published by Welsh Government in February echoes this message, referencing research that suggests ‘more diverse boards are associated with improved financial performance, enable good corporate governance and facilitate better decision making by bringing different perspectives to support constructive and challenging dialogue’ (Source – EHRC 2016). The regulator goes further to note that improving board diversity is only one of the elements of furthering equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) goals to meet the diverse needs of communities and different groups, but it is a very important one. There is no doubt that we need to increase the diversity of sector leadership.
To drive this change, leading social housing consultancy, Altair has partnered with diversity and executive search experts, Green Park, to help increase representation at the most senior levels of the housing sector. Together, Green Park and Altair are committed to working with clients to challenge expectations and change behaviours; to drive a culture shift to more inclusive recruitment and onboarding across the housing sector.
One of Europe’s fastest-growing search and organisational consultancies, Green Park is an industry pioneer in building diverse, senior leadership teams and promoting equitable workplace cultures. Mapping diverse leaders across the public, private and third sectors for over 15 years, Green Park operates in the intersection of talent, diversity and brand and in 2021 placed an ethnically diverse leader on to a board every four days.
Altair has a strong track record of ten years NED and executive recruitment within the housing sector, including the setting up of Leadership 2025 – a charity working to make the housing sector more diverse, as well as partnering with Imperial College and members of the G15 to create the Future Leaders programme to form a diverse leadership pipeline for housing.
Working with Green Park will marry housing expertise with multi-sector diversity and inclusion specialists and enable our clients to increase their diversity of thought at executive and non-executive levels.
This partnership will advance Altair’s wider offer and increase capacity to provide more support to leadership teams wanting to attract diverse talent from inside and outside of the housing sector.
Raj Tulsiani, CEO of Green Park said: ‘We have been hugely successful in championing diversity and inclusion since our inception and are passionate about the power of diversity as the source of competitive advantage. Working with Altair is an exciting opportunity to extend our work in executive recruitment to transform the housing sector and support the change which needs to be made.’
Fiona Underwood, CEO of Altair said: ‘This partnership with Green Park will bolster the NED and Executive recruitment services we offer to clients. We appreciate the challenge is not solved purely by finding talent. Together we will support the transformation of teams to attract, develop and retain highly effective leaders from different backgrounds, and leverage the strength of diversity. The sector’s need to change is clear and working with Green Park will provide the combined skills to reform cultures and lead this change. We continue to strive for a more diverse sector, led by inclusive and resilient organisations.’
For more information about how Altair and Green Park can support your executive and non-executive recruitment and interim requirements please contact: Sioned Hughes, principal consultant at Altair sioned.hughes@altairltd.co.uk or Jaimi Shanhan, director at Green Park Jaimi.shanahan@green-park.co.uk
Recruiting new ways of thinking with Altair and Green Park
Altair and Green Park will work together to undertake the briefing, planning, search, candidate presentation, integration, and on-boarding. We will:
- adopt a thoughtful, tailored, personal approach
- work in partnership with your board and executives to listen to your specific requirements, interpreting complex briefs in intelligent and innovative ways, resulting in a more diverse candidate pool
- communicate openly through the whole process, ensuring we are fully aware of your requirements at every stage, represent you most effectively, and deliver a positive candidate experience
- collaborate to ensure shared knowledge and talent pools for best results
- enable you to make the best decisions at every stage of the process
Diversity comes in many forms. We will work with you to understand your requirements and values, to identify and remove any ‘barriers’, we will also challenge your thinking and work on a common definition of what you mean by ‘diversity’ and how you want to address it.