As investors, we also hold our investee companies to high standards when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) policies and practices, and we have seen first-hand how companies can reap the benefits of strong performance in this area through bringing together a wider set of ideas, perspectives and risks.

We recognise that it is crucial that we continue to play our part in making efforts to tackle the diversity challenges facing the asset management industry.

Employee insights

Newton employees share their thoughts and stories about various aspects of DE&I.

Diversity, equity and inclusion council

The Council members, and our employee DE&I affiliates, who participate in Council initiatives on a project-by-project basis, support the achievement of our DE&I strategy through initiatives that include data collection and measurement, recruitment, retention and mentorship, policy and partnerships, and diversity education.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, we have prioritised mental health support to employees. A dedicated mental health and wellbeing website launched in 2022, containing numerous resources available to all staff. We have also hosted guest-speaker events and launched an internal ‘Human@Newton’ podcast interview series, in which colleagues share their personal experiences to shine a light on some aspect of mental health, overcoming hardship or trauma, and building resilience. A programme of resilience training has been rolled out across the company and has resulted in the development of mental health and wellbeing ambassadors across the company.

Our hiring practices

We continue to work to build a more diverse workforce. We seek to achieve this through:

• diverse interview panels, and diversity and inclusion questions in interview guides
• final candidate slates for all open positions including female and/or ethnically/racially diverse individuals
• unconscious bias training for managers
• a selective leadership development programme, sponsored by our executive management committee, for high-performing diverse future leaders, and mentoring from the senior leadership team for diverse high-potential employees
• investment in a platform which champions women and broader diversity in the workplace to support and enhance our sourcing of diverse talent
• holding ourselves accountable through tracking our progress against our diversity objectives.

Among schemes in which we participate to increase the diversity of our workforce are a summer intern programme for Latin American and black students in the US, and a vocational trainee programme in the UK which takes talented leavers from London state schools and offers them the chance to study for a degree alongside working full time at Newton. This UK scheme has been running for many years, and we have seen many successful school leavers succeed and contribute meaningfully to the company.

We also sponsor a return-to-work programme for those who have been out of work for some time, and we have run a successful returning-military programme, from both of which several individuals have gone on to full-time employment with us.

We are an active member of the Diversity Project, and through it we work with more than 100 other investment firms to share and develop best practices. Most recently, we have been heavily involved in the development of the Pathway programme to double the number of female portfolio managers in London over the next three to five years.

We support working parents through family-friendly policies, and other resources that may include, depending on location, emergency childcare provisions, an online parental leave toolkit, a parental buddy programme, and a programme that supports parents currently on, or recently returned from, parental leave. We also offer carer resources to employees who may need support in caring for a family member.

We enable employees to work flexibly in most roles. We harness technology to improve connectivity and digital collaboration with clients and colleagues, and we believe this is key to attracting talent to our company. In addition, we are an accredited ‘living wage’ employer.

Employee resource groups

We support a network of employee resource groups coordinated by our parent company, BNY Mellon, which is open to all employees. The network includes:

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