Permira is nothing without its people. Permirans work collaboratively across all sectors and offices. We believe this fosters a dynamic environment that helps to attract and enable the best and brightest employees to reach their full potential and thrive. Being a good employer aligns with our determination to be a good corporate citizen and it also makes business sense.

We believe DEI is crucial to attracting and retaining a productive workforce. We aim to operate in a way that draws on and welcomes people from the broadest possible spectrum in the hope to have access to the best pool of candidates.

The firm’s DEI Steering Committee was set up in 2019 with the aim of pursuing meaningful, impactful and authentic activities to further our ambitions.

In 2022, we made tangible progress. We formalised policies affecting DEI and established benchmarks across a number of metrics in order to track progress in the future. We also introduced a number of workstreams relevant to DEI issues, such as the Women’s Network, Diversity in Internships and LGBTQ+ topics. This restructuring has resulted in a more action-oriented group that will serve us well as we mature in this arena.

In 2022, we reviewed our family-friendly position, making step changes to parental leave benefits and other policies relating to how our employees plan and manage their family alongside their work commitments. As well as supporting new parents, we introduced other policies designed to support employees’ family lives; financial support is available for family-related purposes such as fertility treatment, adoption and surrogacy fees.

We strive to create a working environment where everyone is heard and seen and where opportunities are equally available to everyone. In 2022, we embarked on a programme of DEI workshops designed to help us see where and how we can make the organisation more welcoming and accommodating to the widest range of people. This programme started with a workshop for Permira Partners covering subjects such as unconscious bias, the importance of diverse recruitment pools and the concept of a culture of insiders and outsiders. The workshops proved extremely valuable so we extended their reach, holding seven further workshops in 2022.

Diverse recruitment is a well-established theme for Permira and it continues to be central to our DEI approach. We have long-standing relationships with organisations such as Sponsors for Educational Opportunities, 10,000 Black Interns and the Opportunity Network.