Diversity & Inclusion

Barracuda's Mission

Barracuda believes in equal opportunities and recognises the commercial and cultural benefits of an inclusive workforce. Our aim is to make our clients more successful by presenting the best candidates for each appointment. We are nevertheless acutely aware of the need to redress the current social imbalance and continuously strive to produce diverse shortlists without compromising on quality.

Diversity & Inclusion is an increasingly important issue for businesses, across all geographies and all sectors. Clients and customers will no longer settle for a service or business partner that doesn’t reflect their own values and represent their needs. At Barracuda we recognise our crucial role in this mission and strive to build diverse senior teams for our clients, not only to represent their customer base, but also to bring different market-leading ideas and perspectives to the table.

In the retail and consumer-focused industry this is more important than ever, as customers are increasingly turning toward values-led organisations with a clear D&I strategy and commitment, and away from those that haven’t taken a stand in this area. There is a distinct commercial advantage that can be gained from taking D&I seriously. An inclusive offering can be demonstrated to shoppers in a number of ways: through the products being sold, the way they are advertised and how and where they are available to buy – but it all starts with people.

This is where we can help. At Barracuda our inclusive culture starts with us. Our varied backgrounds bring different perspectives and approaches, but working together we strive to create a workforce that reflects the clients we serve. Together we are stronger and deliver better results.

This mentality connects us with our clients. Our shared commitment to excellence, innovation and social responsibility enables us to champion emerging leaders and help implement real change. We work closely with our clients to develop an inclusive culture and search strategy, and we are not afraid of pushing them out of their comfort zone.

We are not about quotas. Judgements based on a candidate’s individual professional merit is at the heart of our decision-making. However, we are committed to continually educating ourselves on effective ways to not only identify diverse candidate pools and promote their inclusion and progression, but also how to attract candidates from a broad spectrum of demographic and philosophical differences.

Our mission is to make our clients more successful through their people. We believe that success in business is all about innovation, and diversity is the key.

 

Case Study

In 2019 we were retained by a FTSE 250 client to search for a Sustainability Director. Our remit was to find a suitable candidate to join the senior management team of this organisation, who could lead and champion the social and environmental agenda of the company within a commercial framework.

Whilst diversity was not mentioned as essential in this search, it was recognised that, in order to capture hearts and minds and bring a large organisation (and its customers) on a sustainability journey, the leadership needed to embody more than a singular social group.

Through a creative search strategy and sourcing our extensive network, we were able to produce a highly diverse candidate pool and speak with individuals who could all bring something new and different to our client’s business.

Final analysis of the assignment provided the following statistics:

The longlist of 8 candidates who were suitably qualified and interested in this appointment comprised

Gender split – 37.5% female, 62.5% male

Ethnicity – 37.5% BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic), 62.5% White British

The shortlisted 4 candidates comprised

Gender split – 50% female, 50% male

Ethnicity – 50% BAME, 50% White British

Ultimately, the placed candidate was both female and BAME.