“Our commitment to ensuring a diverse and inclusive culture throughout the firm remains steadfast and it is only by embracing our differences – and what makes each of us unique – that allows us to achieve better outcomes for our people and our clients in a fast-changing world,” he said.

“There are almost 400 million individuals with disabilities across the globe, but if employers fail to create environments conducive to their needs, they risk losing out on vast swathes of untapped talent.

“By recognising the power of diversity and inclusion, we believe we will be in a better position to drive innovation, collaboration and better business decisions – but, above all, by leading for inclusion through our new commitment, we will be enabling our people to be their unique selves every day.”

The commitment combines the importance of championing disability with tangible actions that will improve working conditions for any individual with a disability. According to the firm, it also recognises that individual employees have personalised needs and ensures that tailored adjustments can be made to working environments, whether these are physical or non-physical.

Calvin Shaw, senior associate and co-chair of our Australian Ability Network, said that the commitment from HSF means staff across the world would receive increased support to “embrace their differences”.

“The commitment means we support our people and clients wherever they are in the world in addressing barriers to their participation in the global workforce. As a global firm, we have people and clients who move across borders, and our commitment means they can embrace their differences wherever they are in the world,” he said.

“Certain places in the world are better for disability inclusion than others. This kind of initiative is a way of using the high watermark set by those places as a benchmark for the other places in the hopes it drives a broader change. Ultimately, our clients and our people should not feel constrained to particular locations or career choices. We want to expand the range of possibilities for our people and clients.”

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This news follows HSF’s partnerships with Purple Space, Valuable 500 and IncludeAbility – which are part of numerous initiatives within the firm to help drive diversity and inclusion, according to Danielle Kelly, director of culture and inclusion.

“We want to be the leading global law firm for diversity and inclusion. We have a number of networks within the firm that help us to drive diversity and inclusion, including our LGBTI+ network Iris, our gender equity network, our multicultural network and our Ability Network.

“We also have committed to a number of significant initiatives such as our 10 Actions for Change – action areas that we are focused on to improve representation, support and experience for our black, First Nations, Asian and minority ethnic colleagues. In addition, we recently launched eight Drivers for Gender Equity, which is a global framework that brings together existing and new areas of focus for the firm, including targets for the proportion of women in our partnership,” she said.

“In the same way the 10 Actions for Change are helping us to improve ethnic diversity in the firm, our eight Drivers for Gender Equity will help create focus and accountability in our work to improve gender balance in our partnership and across the business.”