Ketchum UK is PRWeek UK's Best Place to Work for Diversity & Inclusion

Ketchum UK’s ethos of “culture add, not culture fit” underlines its commitment to embracing difference in its recruitment and people practices. Another mantra – “reassess, not replace” – ensures that hiring decisions do not simply perpetuate existing stereotypes of what a comms professional looks like.

In practice, this means there is extensive recruitment training for all employees involved in the hiring process. The firm champions practices such as sharing interview questions in advance, which is particularly important when interviewing those with neurodiversity or whose first language is not English, as well as removing candidates’ identifying information when assessing applicants to mitigate against unconscious bias.

For two years, Ketchum has partnered with The Social Mobility Foundation to offer a Kickstart at Ketchum internship, which is designed to find talent who might otherwise be held back by traditional predictors of career outcomes. Four new interns are welcomed every six months, and the vast majority have since transitioned into permanent roles.

Ketchum’s approach to diversity is steered by its Inclusion Council of 40 colleagues with diverse backgrounds, experiences, races, sexualities and neurodivergent traits, which has catalysed initiatives such as a flexible public holiday policy, allowing personalised celebrations for meaningful events in exchange for a UK bank holiday. Inclusivity is also promoted through a family leave package of six months’ pay and a return-to-work bonus of one month’s salary, available for all staff with no qualifying period. Parental returnship was 100 per cent across both 2022 and 2023.

All this has led to an agency staff that is 74 per cent female and 28 per cent non-white, with the figures for its leadership team almost exactly matching those figures, at 73 per cent and 27 per cent respectively. Impressively, in a recent survey 82 per cent of the wider team agreed that the company excelled in fostering a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion.

Ketchum UK is also proud to have been Highly Commended in the Large Consultancy of the Year category.

Here’s what the judges had to say…

“Ketchum’s recruitment and retention efforts are seeing great results, and diversity is reflected in leadership. It’s great that the Inclusion Council also supports client work, underlining that this commitment is well embedded.”