Impact Report 2020

Annual Impact Report 2020

“We bring about positive
change around the world by
placing exceptional people into
meaningful roles within good
organisations”
Our Purpose
“Society will be the retained
recruitment partner of choice
for responsible businesses and
purpose-driven organisations”
Our Mission

Introduction
2020’s Vital Statistics
Some day in the future, I can imagine a museum exhibit consisting of Annual
Report introductions from 2020, in which CEOs across every geography and
industry forlornly attempt to summarise that
unprecedentedly disrupted year.
It was quite a roller coaster.
For us at Society, 2020 started with a lot of buzz and
excitement, including a major office expansion in
London, and a big party to celebrate the firm’s 10th
birthday. We also found time to implement new
Childcare, Environmental, and Responsible
Procurement policies, all of which we had identified
as areas for improvement in last year’s Impact Report.
But then the world obviously turned upside down
overnight, we had to switch the entire business to
working remotely. And we quickly found ourselves in
the teeth of the fiercest crisis ever to hit our industry.
Clients largely stopped hiring, as the global economy
went into deep-freeze for several months.
1 Pandemic
14 different
countries
85 assignments
£632 donated to The
Society Foundation
52 clients
17 colleagues
I am deeply proud of how we responded. As a team,
we prioritised two objectives: continuing to deliver great work for our clients, and protecting jobs.
The fact that we came through the year with our Net Promoter Score at an all-time high and without
having made a single redundancy is testament to what can happen when you have the courage to
live your values.
Now we can tentatively look forward with some buzz and excitement once again, thanks
particularly to the launch of our Asia-Pacific presence early in 2021. In the meantime, I have to
confess that I’m particularly grateful we were able to hold our 10th birthday party before
lockdown. Otherwise we would only have had photos of Zoom calls with which to fill this
document. And that would hardly be worthy of a future museum exhibit!”
6 different
nationalities
2 offices
30 charitable gifts
given on behalf of
placed candidates
521 hours of
colleague time
volunteered
to community
organisations
11.95% mean
gender pay gap
48.2 Net
Promoter Score
Simon Lucas,
Managing Director

Our Social Impact
We think of our social impact holistically, encompassing how we affect our
clients, our candidates, our colleagues, our suppliers, our wider community,
and the recruitment industry at large.
4 QUALITY
EDUCATION
Dr Paul Wood appointed
as Principal of
Westminster Academy
Aread more
5 GENDER EQUALITY
Nancy Kelley appointed
as Chief Executive of
Stonewall
Aread more
We see our key social impacts as:
• the quality of the appointments we
help our clients to make and the
impact those individuals subsequently
have in-post;
• the integrity with which we help
candidates to define and to attain
their career objectives;
• the way in which we look after, and
develop our colleagues;
• the extent to which our business
consumes resources, and the size of
our carbon footprint;
• the impact and longevity of our work
in the community;
• the leadership we show within the
wider recruitment industry on issues
of responsibility, ethics, sustainability,
diversity, equity, and inclusion.
We’ve sought to make tangible
improvements in each of these areas over the
past year, which the remainder of this report
hopefully illustrates. As ever though, we
believe that the most significant way in which
we contribute positively towards society is
through the appointments we help our clients
to make. The impact that those individuals
have in-post has undoubtedly been our
single most crucial driver since the
company’s conception.
Increasingly we are choosing to look at the
appointments we handle through the lens of
the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Set in 2015 by the United Nations General
Assembly, and intended to be achieved by the
year 2030, the SDGs are comprised of 17
global goals designed to be a "blueprint to
achieve a better and more sustainable future
for all".
Here’s how our work related to those goals
during 2020:
9 INDUSTRY,
INNOVATION AND
INFRASTRUCTURE
Dr Farhat Haq
appointed as Provost
of LUMS
Aread more
11 SUSTAINABLE CITIEIS
& COMMUNITIES
Justina Cruickshank
appointed as Chair of
the Trustees at Wac Arts
Aread more
10 reduced
INEQUALITIES
Alison Bishop appointed
as Head of International
HR for Leonard Cheshire
Aread more
13. CLIMATE ACTION
Kiri Hanks appointed as
Climate Change Policy
Adviser for The Elders
Aread more
2. ZERO HUNGER 3 GOOD HEALTH &
WELL-BEING
Apoorva Oza
appointed as Global
Lead for Agriculture and
Food Security within the
Aga Khan Foundation
Aread more
Ismael Hayden appointed
to lead the ‘Becoming
a Man’ programme
within the Mental
Health Foundation
Aread more
15. LIFE ON LAND
Dr Sebastien Chapleau
appointed as a Trustee
of Trees for Cities
Aread more
16 peace, justice
& strong
institutions
Catherine Murphy
appointed as Secretary
of The Athenaeum Club
Aread more

Our Structure and Governance
Society is a private limited company, registered in England and Wales. We
have one wholly-owned subsidiary, ‘Society US Inc’, which is head quartered
in New York and registered in Delaware. Both companies are ultimately
overseen by a Board consisting of our Managing Director and two
Non-Executives.
The current shareholdings within Society are:
Simon
Lucas
(35%)
Daniel
Perrett
(30%)
Simon
Laver
(30%)
Emma
Hart
(5%)
As a B Corporation, our Articles of Association contains a pre-amble on ‘Responsibility’ that states:
“The purposes of the Company are to promote the success of the Company for the benefit of its
members as a whole and, through its business and operations, to have a material positive impact
on society and the environment, taken as a whole.”
The new text goes on to define a series of ‘Stakeholder Interests’, that the Board must seek to balance
as effectively as it can, without assuming any one area should take precedence over
the others. These include:
• the likely long-term consequences of any decision;
• the interests of our employees;
• our need to foster relationships with suppliers, customers and others;
• the impact of our operations on the community and the environment;
• our desire to maintain a reputation for high standards of business conduct.

Our Values
Our Strategy
We believe that organisations can have a positive social impact, and that
careers should have purpose and meaning. Our goal is to change the world
for the better – one appointment at a time. We’ve given a lot of thought to how
we want to do business. It boils down to five core values.
Our business strategy is oriented around five key characteristics
we believe Society must embody in order to be successful:
Partnership
We work in genuine partnership with our clients, remaining communicative and transparent
throughout the appointment process. We’re also a close-knit team, not just a collection of
individuals. We collaborate and share expertise across sector boundaries.
Authenticity
We’re not ‘salesy’. We ensure that our clients meet the colleagues who will actually lead our
work for them. We hire people who are genuine and personable. We value being trustworthy
and approachable.
Integrity
We treat people as people, not as a means to an end. We’re fair and straightforward in our
dealings with clients and candidates. We never ‘blag’. If we don’t know something then we’ll
admit it. We also seek to practise what we preach.
Creativity
Excellent search involves effective storytelling. We listen to nuance, put bespoke research into
every project, and think outside the box when sourcing great people. We’re also continually on the
lookout for innovative ways to use technology.
Diligence
We’re all about the details. We take in-depth briefings.
We follow up leads and leave no stone unturned when searching. We hold ourselves to the
highest quality standards. You can count on us to be thorough.
Responsible
We must fully occupy the purpose-driven/responsible business space in our sector. We must take
our own impact seriously, ensuring we remain values-led and make a tangible positive contribution
to the world. This will ensure our work is meaningful and give us a powerful USP.
Connected
We must continually cultivate and refresh our knowledge, networks and relationships. We must
build our brand and our credibility to ensure that we are visible to leaders and to people in
positions of influence. This will make us a desirable partner for the clients we want to work with.
Global
We must internationalise our client portfolio, our colleague base, and our physical presence.
This will increase the reach of our positive impact, reduce our reliance on any one
geography/economy, create career opportunities for our colleagues, and provide scope
for exciting innovations.
Diversified
We must diversify into new sectors and functional areas, expanding our expertise and capability.
We must widen our track record whilst also developing clear functional or thematic areas of
strength. This will protect us from over-reliance on any one colleague or sector.
Excellent
We must ensure that we have first-class systems, processes, and quality benchmarks, executed
consistently, and underpinned by high levels of productivity and accountability. We must collect and
utilise data to improve our performance. This will give us a vital competitive edge.

Business Performance
Commercially, 2020 was an acutely difficult year for our business, and for
our sector as a whole. When the pandemic took root, the first thing most
organisations did was stop hiring. We saw our pipeline for Q2 evaporate
within days, and the majority of our existing assignments get cancelled or
postponed. At the same time, prompt payment of outstanding invoices became
harder to secure, and fee pressure on the little work that remained became
acute due to intensified competition. And it was particularly
unfortunate that we encountered COVID-19 at a period where our cash
flow was already stretched, given the need to cover the various upfront
dilapidations, fit-out and deposit payments entailed by our office move.
Given this context, we consider it to be an impressive achievement that we reached the end of the
calendar year in such good shape. Although we saw several voluntary departures after the start
of lockdown – including by the Head of our Retail and Consumer Goods practice – we made no
redundancies during the period. As can be seen from the preceding pages, we also pulled off some
of the most impressive and high profile appointments the firm has yet made.
We are thankful for the support afforded to us by the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS)
and Bounce Bank Loan Scheme in the UK, as well as for the NYC Employee Retention Grant in
the US. Above all though we are thankful to those clients who continued to give us their business
during the difficult summer months, and to Society’s colleagues who endured a number of personal
sacrifices, including temporary reductions in working hours in order to smooth our way through
the crisis. It was heartening to see in our anonymous Staff Survey at the end of 2020 that 100%
of colleagues ‘Agreed’ or ‘Strongly Agreed’ with the statements “I feel valued and respected”, “I
feel proud of working for Society”, “I feel connected to the vision of Society”, “I feel encouraged to
come up with new ideas and confident they will be listened to”, “Society is communicating with and
supporting its colleagues well during the pandemic” and “I feel comfortable that Society is handling
the pandemic well”.
With the recovery now well underway, we feel this gives us a strong
foundation to build on.

Personal and Professional Development
Towards the end of 2020, we followed through on our commitment to launch a
Personal and Professional Development Allowances (PPDAs) scheme across the
firm. Despite our financial constraints, it felt important to make this a reality at
last: rewarding hard work and commitment across the business through
funding investments in colleagues’ personal interests and professional growth.
Upon completion of their probation period, every Society colleague now has access to an annual
allowance of £250 to use as they want for any kind of course, purchase, activity, or subscription
that interests them. This isn’t intended to cover work-related training that may be required, as that
will always be paid for by the company. Instead, it’s about supporting Society colleagues to be
more rounded, relaxed, and happier versions of themselves.
So far colleagues have spent their PPDAs on a wide range of things, including:
driving LESSONS
YOGA CLASSES
anti-racism training
academic textbooks
online subscriptions
genealogy research
The feedback on the scheme has been overwhelmingly positive so
far, with colleagues reporting a wealth of advantages, from greater
expertise to more confidence and enthusiasm about their work.

Moving Office
In February 2020, Society’s UK team was proud and excited to move to a new
office located in the heart of London’s jewellery quarter, Hatton Garden. An
award-winning development, the Johnson Building features six floors of office
space, a spacious central atrium, and a café accessible to the public.
Farringdon and Chancery Lane stations are within walking distance, making
it easily accessible for both colleagues and clients.
This felt like a pivotal moment in the development of the firm. And since it coincided with our 10th
birthday, we decided to mark the milestone with a big party for clients past and present. We also
used the office move to make some progress against our wider social and environmental goals, by
keeping the following points front of mind:
• Choosing a responsible freeholder. Derwent London have a keen interest in sustainability and
improving the environmental credentials of their assets. We were excited by their commitment
to creating a low-carbon, energy efficient building linked to their own carbon reduction targets.
• Wheelchair accessibility. The Johnson building incorporates lift and ramp access to the lobby
and has two lifts to enter our office space.
• Fit-Out. We switched the entire office to LED lightbulbs, which consume up to 80% less energy
compared to traditional incandescent bulbs and sourced most of our furniture from sustainable
and FSC certified suppliers. We even incorporated an element of biophilic design into the main
workspace with our vibrant moss wall.
• Facilities. We ensured we could expand our communal areas and provide shower facilities for
colleagues for the first time. The Johnson Building also has enhanced recycling facilities,
covering new categories like batteries, printer toner, fluorescent tubes and lightbulbs.

Our Net Zero Commitment
Society has joined B Corporations from around the world in declaring an
intention to reach Net Zero by 2030, 20 years ahead of the targets set by the
Paris Agreement. We are committed to collective and immediate action to halt
and reverse the current climate trajectory and to build an inclusive, equitable,
and regenerative economic system.
Our original plan had been to use 2020 in
order to establish our baseline emissions at a
granular level and to formulate a detailed Net
Zero roadmap. Completion of these objectives
was somewhat derailed by the pandemic,
however we have still managed to make
concrete progress in several areas:
• we have agreed to go plant-based
and locally-sourced for all future
Society events;
• we got rid of the London office’s much
used Nespresso machine and switched to
a B Corp coffee supplier, eliminating
hundreds of plastic capsules a year;
• for those emissions we cannot eliminate,
we have agreed only to use verified
offsets, emphasising carbon
removal projects;
• Scope 1 – direct emissions from owned or
controlled sources. eg. gas boilers and
company cars
• Scope 2 – indirect emissions from the
generation of electricity we buy
• Scope 3 – all other direct emissions that
occur in our value chain, including the
goods and services we purchase, capital
goods, transportation and distribution,
waste disposal, business travel, employee
commuting, investments, and leased assets
Like most businesses we are
finding that 75%+ of our
emissions lie within Scope 3.
We therefore know we have
a lot of work left to do
• we have begun the process of calculating
our emissions across all three scopes so
that we can set targets that are truly
comprehensive:

Volunteering
Health and Wellbeing
Throughout 2020, and in spite of various lockdowns and restrictions, Society’s
colleagues continued to volunteer their time and expertise to a range of
organisations across London and New York.
Volunteering is an excellent way of recharging our batteries and contributing
to team building, but it also allows us to forge meaningful and long-lasting
partnerships with our communities. We’re pleased that, given the challenges of
2020, our colleagues still managed to undertake a diverse range of activities.
In 2020, we launched a new Workplace Health and Wellbeing Policy and a
new Childcare Policy, formalising some of our existing commitments and
making additional support available to colleagues. Our Childcare Policy
includes clarity around the support offered to mothers, such as a safe space to
breast feed. This turned out to be good timing, since three Society colleagues
are already set to become first-time parents in 2021. We hope that by putting
into writing what can be expected, it will give every colleague added
confidence to tailor our working environment to their needs.
In total, we spent more than 500
hours volunteering during 2020. Some
examples include:
• helping with shopping and picking
up medicines for elderly and
vulnerable neighbours;
• running a workshop about gender
equality for Year Nine students
in Peckham;
• purchasing and delivering food and
clothing as part of a welcoming committee
for refugees housed in a local hotel;
• enlisting as a Local Enterprise Advisor
to support schools with their careers
programme;
• working in a church kitchen to provide
meals for school children, NHS staff and
vulnerable adults during the first lockdown
(the kitchen provided around 250 meals
daily at its peak, with over 10,000
meals delivered in total!)
Due to the Covid-19 restrictions, we were
unfortunately unable to undertake our usual
whole-company volunteering day this year.
We are very much hoping to be able to
re-engage with a team activity again in 2021,
restrictions permitting.
Society also has colleagues who are governors
of schools in Essex and Hitchin and trustees of
charities in London. We are encouraging and
supportive of colleagues who have long-term
voluntary commitments and board-level roles,
as it’s a great way to develop inclusive and
innovative leaders within our firm.
We have also been sharing health-related
content and materials to support each other’s
mental and physical health through lockdown.
It has been a challenging year, and advice
around mindfulness, healthy living, and
opportunities to connect socially have been so
important to get us through.
By the end of 2020, we had also revisited our
Wellbeing Booklet, turning it into a more
coherent framework and incorporating an
easily actionable approach for individual
health and wellness planning. This revised
model uses the acronym PINCH, as it is
Practical, Individualised, focused on Natural
solutions, encourages Collaboration, and
seeks to be Holistic.
By encouraging and supporting employees to
foster health physically, emotionally, and
mentally, Society is demonstrating a
commitment to building a working environment
that truly cares. We want everyone in the team
to feel their best and hope to encourage the
whole company to thrive, as individuals and a
group, not just in work but in all areas of life.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
Life Under Lockdown
Although ED&I has been high on our agenda for a number of years, George
Floyd’s murder on 25th May 2020 acted as a catalyst for us intensifying our
efforts. Over the remainder of 2020 we focused particularly on issues relating
to black people, who face not only discrimination, violence, and oppression,
but also systemic obstacles – including deep-seated and pervasive racial
prejudice – that can prevent them experiencing the security and success that
many others are able to take for granted. Practical steps we have taken include:
2020 was unlike anything any of us have experienced before. At Society, we
tried our best to transition as smoothly as possible into living life under
lockdown. But it was a jarring adjustment. After all, our London team had only
just moved into a shiny new office space, and was looking forward to a busy
period of meetings, socialising and exploring. Suddenly our existence was
sharply curtailed.
• all donations Society colleagues made to
Black Lives Matter, to other associated
organizations, and to the various bail
funds for those involved in the BLM
protests, were personally match-funded
by our Managing Director;
• we have begun making our Diversity
Monitoring Reports – previously an
optional bolt-on – available as standard,
along with more general reporting on
estimated racial/ethnicity data at each
stage of the appointment process;
• we have committed ourselves never to
hold an event with an all-white panel, and
extended that commitment to other choices
we make across the business;
• from our internal ‘Book Club’, to our
choice of weekly TED talk, we will become
much more purposeful in ensuring that
black voices are sought out and heard;
• we have hosted three free webinars
speciically about combatting racism
in recruitment;
• we have revised our Responsible
Procurement Policy to ensure that, where
price and quality are equal, preference in
future procurement exercises will be given
to independent, women, and/or
minority-owned suppliers;
• we have begun taking urgent steps to
address the lack of ethnic diversity in our
own Board and Senior Leadership Team;
• we have expanded our office library with
around 20 new books on racism,
white privilege, slavery, and the legacy of
colonialism;
• we have committed to offering any BAME
candidate who applies to work at Society
some meaningful and constructive
feedback on their CV and application.
Communication became very important, so we
put in place structures to ensure that we could
see other colleagues via video call several
times a day, and that we came together as a
whole team regularly to discuss the unfolding
crisis and our response to it.
We also found some ways to have a bit of fun,
amidst all the chaos, including:
• Zoom quizzes galore;
• an online escape room where two
opposing teams of colleagues had to
puzzle their way out of a ‘Witches Tower’
within a strict time limit;
• online yoga and meditation at the start of
our virtual Summer BBQ;
• snack boxes delivered by post to all
colleagues, with lots of delicious treats
inside for us to eat together online;
• a frantic, fun, and thoroughly silly
scavenger hunt at the start of our virtual
Company Away Day;
• a surprise delivery of gluten-free prosecco
just before Christmas, facilitated by
Thomson & Scott, a fellow B Corporation.

Looking Ahead
Here are some of the projects we are looking forward to tackling in 2021:
• working towards our B Corp re-certification with a target score of 95+;
• further fleshing out our Net Zero roadmap;
• giving greater coherence and focus to our commitments around employee Health
and Wellbeing by fully embedding our proprietary ‘PINCH’ model;
• appointing a group of Non-Executive Advisors to enhance our governance;
• organising external anti-racism training for all colleagues;
• creating ED&I-specific materials that we can share with clients;
• organising focus groups with candidates from under-represented demographics;
• finding additional sources of funding for the Society Foundation to enable it to carry
on its work even in the immediate aftermath of COVID-19;
• getting our work experience programme back up and running;
• holding a whole company volunteering event again as soon as COVID regulations allow.

If you’re interested in learning more about Society, we’d love to hear
from you. Please contact us on hello@society-search.com or via one
of our offices:
Society Europe
The Johnson Building
77 Hatton Garden
London
EC1N 8JS
United Kingdom
+44 (0)207 935 4052
Society North America
1460 Broadway
Floor 16
New York
NY 10036
United States
+1 (917) 882 9827
Society Asia Pacific
PO Box 147526
Ponsonby
Auckland
1144
New Zealand
+64 21 419 727