As a major private investment company of more than 700 people, demonstrating Ardian’s solidarity with the societies where we operate is one of our most important priorities. We see great benefits in becoming more inclusive and diverse. By recruiting talented people from a wider range of back- grounds we will develop a better understanding of the complexity of the world in which we operate and ultimately achieve better results. We also believe that if the people who work at Ardian reflect the outside world, our ability to create positive social impacts will increase. This explains why inclusion and diversity have “We increasingly think become such central elements of the way we see about the strength the future of our company. Ardian is defined by of our company in its people. Creating a more inclusive environ- terms of inclusion and ment where people from all horizons will feel diversity. These are welcome and valued widens the pool of talent vital indicators of our that we can draw on and brings a richer set of capacity to understand opinions, experience and skills to the table. This the environment in strengthens both our collective intelligence and which we operate.” our bonds with society. — Jérémie Delecourt SETTING HIGH STANDARDS Our key step in 2020 was to agree our first Inclusion and Diversity Charter, inclu- ding company-wide monitoring of gender pay gaps, and formal policies on equal pay and support for parents and carers. As part of this process, we also set up national committees in France, the UK, the US and Italy, drawn from all depart- ments. These groups have developed our Inclusion and Diversity program in our three priority areas: gender, social background and disabilities. The charter sets a series of targets to be achieved by 2022, including developing policies to help us recruit candidates from a wider range of social backgrounds and putting in place systems to measure and improve our performance in these areas. Training for staff and new joiners is a central element of our charter commit- ments. All new staff now take part in workshops on unconscious bias as part of their induction and we plan to have provided training for all staff and managers by the end of 2021. 2020 ACTIVITY REPORT 23