ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP, SOCIAL AND GOVERNANCE ("ESG")

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The information contained in the ESG Report, or otherwise on or connected to the Company’s website, is not incorporated by reference into our proxy statement and should not be considered part of the proxy statement or any other report filed with the SEC.

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At Heidrick, we help our clients change the world, one leadership team at a time.®

In light of the importance placed on ESG issues by our clients, our shareholders, our employees, our communities and our broader stakeholder base, we evolve and monitor our ESG efforts through a global cross-functional team, including members of our Legal Department, Human Resources Department, Real Estate and Procurement teams and Sustainability practice, among others.

Our Nominating and Board Governance Committee of the Board is responsible for reviewing and making recommendations to the Board regarding the  Company’s ESG programs and disclosures.

The most significant aspects of our ESG efforts and accomplishments, both internal and client-facing, are outlined below.


2022 Environmental Stewardship, Social Responsibility and Governance (“ESG”) Highlights

Even as we achieved some of our best financial results in our history, in 2022 we also made important strides in ESG. We published our second ESG report, which provides an in-depth look into our ESG initiatives, outlines our expanded commitment to reduce our carbon footprint and continue substantially offsetting our carbon impact, and highlights our ongoing efforts internally and with our clients globally to build more effective and representative organizations. We are proud to share the progress we have been making on our ESG initiatives through the work and investments we have undertaken to lessen our impact on the environment, advance diversity and inclusion and innovate across our business to drive an increasingly sustainable business model for the future. At Heidrick & Struggles, we hold ourselves to the highest standards, and as a premier provider of leadership advisory services, people are at the center of all we do. Using our culture as a differentiator to attract, develop and retain the highest-performing talent and build a more diverse and inclusive firm is a strategic priority.

As trusted advisors in boardrooms around the globe, one of the most consequential conversations taking place and that we have the privilege of helping to shape is around sustainability and ESG issues.

Some highlights from our 2022 ESG efforts include:

  • At the Board of Directors level, 63% of our U.S. placements were diverse and 60% globally, exceeding our Board Diversity Pledge. 47% of our total U.S. placements were diverse.1

  • We completed 259 ESG related search and consulting engagements (including those relating to DEI) for clients.

  • Reflecting our own commitment to diversity, 43% of our own Board members are women, and 29% are ethnically diverse.

  • Women represented 63% of our overall workforce. In 2022, women represented 64% of our new hires2 and 64% of our promotions. People of color represented 26% of our U.S. workforce at year-end. In 2022, people of color accounted for 33% of our new hires2 and 18% of our promotions in the U.S.

  • We continued to focus on helping to ensure the health and safety of our employees. In late 2022, we expanded our flexible working philosophy to provide additional guidance to managers and employees on our evolving approach to a hybrid work environment. We are committed to ensuring our people can safely follow country- and state-level health guidance, while also having the opportunity to grow professionally and personally through in-person collaboration and development.

  • We expanded our efforts to foster the professional development of our employees and promote a continuous learning culture within our firm. In 2022, our Learning & Development team delivered over 17,900 hours of aggregate live training (deployed in both virtual and in-person formats) to our colleagues globally.

  • We increased our purchases of verified carbon offset credits, which are expected to increase through the coming years, and are expected to offset at least 58% of our 2021 carbon emissions in 2023.


HOW WE CHAMPION ESG

At Heidrick, we are on the same ESG journey as our clients. In September 2022, we published our second ESG Report to outline our efforts and disclose progress across ESG initiatives. Referencing both Global Reporting Initiative (“GRI”) and the Value Reporting Foundation Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (“SASB”) frameworks, our ESG Report delves, in-depth, into Heidrick’s commitment to serving client needs, leading on diversity and inclusion, supporting our employees and communities where we work and prioritizing environmental sustainability.

For our complete ESG story, the Company’s latest ESG Report can be found at the link at the top of this page. The information contained in the Company’s ESG Report, or otherwise on or connected to the Company’s website, is not incorporated by reference into our proxy statement and should not be considered part of the proxy statement or any other report filed with the SEC.

SERVING CLIENTS: FINDING LEADERSHIP SOLUTIONS FOR SUSTAINABLE, DIVERSE AND INCLUSIVE BUSINESSES

In 2022, we completed 259 ESG related executive search and consulting assignments, partnering with our clients, candidates, employees and communities with an aim to make the world a better place. From 2018 through 2022, we completed 945 such assignments – representing one of the fastest growing segments of our business. Our ESG and Sustainability Office focuses on sustainability officer roles, board placements focused on sustainability, sustainable product or service businesses, businesses working to embed sustainability into their strategy, sustainable  assets managers, private equity funds, not-for-profit and philanthropic organizations, development banks and others.

Our global Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (“DE&I”) practice brings together Executive Search and Heidrick Consulting to help clients build diverse and inclusive leadership teams, organizations, and cultures. Since launching in 2017, the DE&I practice has built a comprehensive, integrated suite of services and solutions that can be adapted to meet our clients’ DE&I needs. With a complementary lens on talent recruitment, leadership development, and building inclusive cultures, the practice enables us to help our clients achieve their DE&I goals, no matter where they are in their journeys. As a recognized industry authority on leadership and human capital, we take a business-focused, data-driven, and leader-led approach where DE&I not only fosters positive change, but also drives performance and growth. Our DE&I offerings provide strategic advisory services through data-driven insights designed to accelerate performance. At the Board of Directors level, 63% of our U.S. placements in 2022 were diverse and 60% globally, exceeding our Board Diversity Pledge. 47% of our total U.S. placements in 2022 were diverse.3

DRIVING CHANGE WITHIN OUR FIRM: OUR OWN DE&I JOURNEY

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We believe that diversity, equity, and inclusion are key elements of Heidrick & Struggles’ ability to mobilize, execute and transform with agility. Our commitment to DE&I is a key business imperative that is deeply rooted in our organizational values. We are dedicated to building diverse leaders and teams and creating an inclusive culture and workplace, where all voices are engaged and heard; all individuals feel safe, valued and accepted; and all feel empowered to thrive, make meaningful contributions and achieve equitable success. DE&I are critical strategic pillars at our firm that continue to sustain our multi-layered cultural journey as highlighted below. 

Leadership. In February 2022, we appointed Cecilia Nelson-Hurt as our firm’s first Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer, as we looked to accelerate our firm’s transformation and growth journey, globally. Ms. Nelson-Hurt is charged with leading the Company’s DE&I strategy and delivering long-term, sustainable programs and initiatives that build on our values and commitment to create an unrivaled culture within the executive talent and leadership advisory industry.

Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). Our ERGs, affinity groups for women, people of color, people with disabilities and LGBTQ+ employees, give our employees a chance to share experiences, mentor, advocate and engage internally and externally with various networks. The Professionals of Color, Women’s Inclusion Network, Pride@Heidrick, Honoring Equality and Inclusion for Disability, and Ethnic Diversity Engagement Network ERGs hosted global and regional panels and in-person events with leading experts and guest speakers throughout 2022, in addition to sponsoring days of recognition campaigns, internally and externally. As of March 2023, approximately 30% of Heidrick and Struggles employees were active members of an ERG.

Professional Development. We are committed to investing in professional development opportunities for various employee populations and position levels and have implemented and enhanced a series of programs that focus on training, coaching, community building and sponsorship for our next generation of diverse business professionals and senior leaders. These programs help us to engage and develop diverse talent in differentiated and comprehensive ways as we support them in their career advancement and accelerate their readiness for expanded roles and opportunities.

PEOPLE: WINNING TEAMS COME FROM AN EXTRAORDINARY CULTURE

As leaders in helping clients attract, develop and retain great talent, we are constantly learning and promoting management best practices, which we also seek to incorporate into our own firm. We therefore strive to create an open, inclusive and committed culture where our employees find fulfillment through their jobs and can deliver their best because they feel safe bringing their whole selves to work. This work begins by implementing policies and programs that support our employees’ success by creating a welcoming environment that is free from harassment, and provides growth opportunities, as well as health and wellness benefits.

In June 2022, we launched a new Voice of Employee pulse survey platform that offers employees the opportunity to regularly and confidentially share feedback on their experience at Heidrick and provides our leaders with additional data on how they can best lead their teams. We use the tool to evaluate three areas of the employee experience: Engagement, Diversity & Inclusion, and Health & Wellbeing. Data from the surveys is shared anonymously with key leaders across geographies, practices and businesses. Additionally, the platform allows us to track our progress and better understand how we are doing in our efforts, while using others in the industry as benchmarks.

We are committed to the professional development of our employees and promoting a continuous learning culture within our firm. Our learning and development programs have been created with the goal of building leadership, business development, account management, client service, and change leadership skills among our employees. In addition to building personal and professional capabilities, these programs set a standard for the behaviors we believe will help us realize our business goals and strategies. In 2022, our Learning & Development team delivered over 17,900 hours of aggregate live training to our colleagues globally. Our programming was deployed in both virtual and in-person formats. Our learning catalog outlines dozens of live, virtual programs and thousands of eLearning courses designed to help build and enhance employee leadership, business acumen  and business development skills. These programs are continually updated to reflect best practices and feedback received from employees.

In 2022, we continued to focus on helping to ensure the health and safety of our employees. We expanded our flexible working philosophy to provide additional guidance to managers and employees on our evolving approach to a hybrid work environment. We are committed to ensuring our people can safely follow country- and state-level health guidance, while also having the opportunity to grow professionally and personally through in-person collaboration and development.

As we strive to build an unrivaled culture for high-performing talent at Heidrick, our firm’s leaders continue to play a central role in this work, and we are further investing in our firm’s own leadership capabilities. This includes the launch of a new transformational leadership development program, which is designed to help our leaders maximize their impact in the rapidly evolving workplace and build upon existing leadership skills and experiences, focusing on resilience, vulnerability, trust, and living our firm’s values. In 2022, we launched six cohorts, and 119 senior level employees went through the program. The program is a multi-year investment in our leadership that we plan to cascade across multiple cohort groups throughout the organization.

COMMUNITY: LENDING A HAND TO OUR NEIGHBORS

We strongly believe that the benefits of our success and scale should enrich all of our stakeholders, especially the communities in which we operate. We are committed to being responsible global and corporate citizens by positively contributing to the communities in which we work and live. In 2022:

  • We donated to non-profit organizations, with a special focus on organizations providing humanitarian relief in Ukraine, and we completed pro-bono assignments for several non-profit organizations that meet our criteria to receive assistance.

  • On our Global Day of Service, over 700 employees in offices around the world donated over 2,400 hours and raised over $25,000 for various non-profit organizations.
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ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY: SHRINKING OUR CARBON FOOTPRINT

As one of the world’s largest executive recruiting and leadership advisory firms, we recognize the impact our offices and operations have on the planet, and we acknowledge our responsibility to reduce our environmental impact where possible and pursue environmental sustainability initiatives. We care about our communities – local and global – and we are committed to reducing our impact and creating transparency around our activities.

We have partnered with Indigo Ag for a multi-year program to offset a significant portion of our carbon emissions. Indigo Ag develops biological and digital technologies to improve farmer profitability, environmental sustainability, and consumer health. Their carbon offset credits support farmers who adopt regenerative, sustainable agricultural practices that reduce and sequester carbon dioxide while enriching their soil. Indigo Ag’s model is unique among carbon credit vendors—it offers technical and other support to growers and verifies carbon sequestered through a third-party audit for buyers. Our purchases of verified carbon offset credits are expected to increase through the coming years and to offset approximately 58% of our 2021 carbon emissions in 2023.

In 2019 we began studying our carbon footprint which shrank considerably in 2020 and 2021 as we transitioned to serving clients virtually due to the pandemic. We measure our Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 carbon emissions. In 2020, as most of our employees began working remotely under our newly formalized hybrid workplace philosophy, we began to reassess our total real estate footprint. Since 2020, we have successfully reduced our square footage from over 441,000 square feet to roughly 349,000 at the end of 2022, a reduction of 21% of our real estate footprint. In addition to office shrinkages, the way our teams work has also given us flexibility to recycle furniture throughout our various offices. 

Currently, Heidrick serves clients through a network of 54 offices in 29 countries. We lease space in over 20 green buildings across the globe, including many LEED buildings in the U.S. We pursue environmental sustainability initiatives when building and maintaining our offices globally. When assessing our lease renewals and moves, we take into consideration the type of green or LEED certified building and how it impacts our carbon footprint. When building or renovating our offices, we prioritize working with vendors and suppliers who produce eco-friendly products, and we look to add natural greenery into our offices around the world.


1Global diverse placement figures include women globally and ethnic diversity for women and men in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, where we currently track ethnicity.
2Excludes temporary employees deployed to clients in our on-demand talent business
3Excludes temporary employees deployed to clients in our on-demand talent business. Global diverse placement figures include women globally and ethnic diversity for women and men in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, where we currently track ethnicity.