We follow through with action:

Following all-staff feedback surveys and focus groups, we are prioritising three key areas for development in 2025.

1. ‘Banter’ and inappropriate conversations

• We have a measurable strategy to recognise and eradicate ignorant and malicious banter, through coaching. Starting at manager level

2. Women’s wellbeing

• We have a quantifiable plan in place to improve the wellbeing of women, who comprise 44.2% of Harts Group
• For women to feel respected and comfortable to be themselves at work
• For women to feel safe to challenge the way things are done at work, or when they see any behaviour that they perceive as wrong
• We are working to eradicate all sexism and sexual harassment

3. Communicating in different languages

• We want to celebrate the fact that we’re a multilingual business by explicitly promoting language-based inclusion
• We have a plan to communicate in both English and Spanish for all company-wide communications
• All team-members will make an effort to speak in a common language to avoid excluding others, and check that each individual understands what is being communicated to them

What we’ve done so far:

Since 2022, we have been issuing company-wide staff surveys to ensure that our policies, plans and practices reflect the lived experience of staff.  We have overall company response rates of 74%, 74% and 84% respectively for the last three years. Diversity and Inclusion questions contained within this survey were:

• As a result, we sought advice from hospitality coach Madeleine Geach from The Good Life, who put us in touch with Nathan Nalla from Be The Riot and Sofia Gassne from Culture Bar:
  • Nathan facilitated 2 Intro to EDI and 1 EDI Vision & Strategy workshops, which were attended by Harts Group’s leadership teams and heads of departments. 6 Inclusive Behaviours workshops aiming to equip our managers with knowledge of how to create more inclusive workplaces are began in March 2025, aimed at Restaurant Managers, Assistant Restaurant Managers, Floor Managers, Bar Managers, Reception Managers, Head Chefs and Sous Chefs.
  • Sofia Gassne has delivered 4 Gender Equality workshops which were attended by the leadership teams, GMs, AGMs, Restaurant Managers, Head Chefs and Sous Chefs. E-learning resources are currently being developed which will form part of mandatory compliance for all team members.
• Following this, we improved the signposting of our HR policies and processes by clearly outlining the harassment reporting procedure as well as definitions of acceptable and unacceptable behaviours in our staff handbook and on team noticeboards. An electronic confidential reporting form for sexual harassment was also created.
• In response to team survey comments for a set of clear guiding principles to define a consistent standard for behaviour across the company, we also enlisted the help of coach Sanja Moll who facilitated 6 listening circles (four conducted in English and two in Spanish) where 70 team members representing a mix of different roles, brands, seniority and length of service were all invited to share their feedback of their experience working at Harts Group. This was then shared with the directors who, with some input from Nathan Nalla, became the Harts Group Way (above) and which also proudly features a commitment to diversity in the first behaviour.
• Since June 2024, we have offered Babbel language app to our employees, allowing them to learn any language from the 14 offered. As of March 2025, 141 team members have been able to benefit

• Since February 2025, five senior staff members have begun mentoring on the Elevate Mentorship Scheme. This 6-month programme is run by Be Inclusive Hospitality, sponsored by OpenTable, and is aimed at restaurant founders who identify as Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic. Through the programme, Harts Group has been paired up with a South London-based restaurant, and the team will be aiming to offer guidance on concept and business development, operational management and training over the course of the programme.

• In March 2025, we visited The Courtyard School in north London, a specialist school offering mainstream education to 13-to-19-year-olds with autism spectrum condition needs, with the view to establishing a work experience framework for some of their students at Harts Group restaurants. In return, the school would offer our teams training in better understanding how to be a neurodiverse-friendly employer

• As of March 2025, we are in the process of setting up a partnership with the Mallorquin charity, Esment, a visionary foundation for people with intellectual and developmental difficulties, rooted in the idea that everyone deserves to enjoy a good life. Barrafina will be fundraising for Esment through the ‘Invita’ guest chef series, and there are other plans afoot.

• We currently have an e-learning module on our e-learning software, Mapal, entitled “Diversity, Inclusion and Equity” that all team members must complete within their first 30 days.

Remaining Challenges:

We have identified the following eight EDI-related challenges as other areas to maintain and improve the culture at HG:

• Neurodiversity awareness and support
• Cultural awareness
• Diverse Representation (inclusive recruitment and progression)
• Reporting processes for EDI-related concerns
• Accessibility
• Guest discrimination
• Further engaging with our 16-24 year old team members
• BOH-FOH Divide

This EDI statement is up to date as of 28/03/25 and will be monitored and updated regularly.

If you have any comments or questions, please get in touch with Head of Learning and Development, Darryl Chan, darryl.chan@hartsgroup.co.uk