Our diversity, equity and inclusion pledge
A pledge, not a poster
Owned by Raoul (Alex) Müller, co-founder. Next review by 31 August 2027. Every change to this page is listed at the bottom, with the date it was made.
This is what Digital Movement UK promises about diversity, equity and inclusion, and it is deliberately short. We are a very small company. A long strategy document would say more than we could ever be held to, so we have written the opposite: a list of specific things we do, a list of things we do not yet do, and a named person answerable for both.
Everything below is something a two-founder agency can actually carry out. Nothing below depends on a budget we do not have, a team we do not employ, or a certificate we have not earned.
You can hold us to it. There is a named contact and a complaints route in section 08, and the review date is fixed rather than vague. This is one of the commitments we publish, and they are all written to the same standard.
Who and what this pledge covers
Digital Movement Marketing Ltd, trading as Digital Movement UK, is the company making this pledge. It is registered in England and Wales under company number 17110525, at 128 City Road, London EC1V 2NX. We work with clients across the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
We are small, and the pledge is written for a company of that size. Two founders run the agency. A small group of specialists and freelancers works around them on design, development, content and ad management. Most of the people who touch a client project are contractors rather than employees, so a pledge that stopped at staff would cover almost nobody. This one does not stop at staff.
It covers five things
- ✓How we hire. Every paid role, employed or freelance, and every unpaid opportunity such as work experience.
- ✓How we pay. Rates, salary transparency and how quickly invoices are settled.
- ✓Who we buy from. Freelancers, subcontractors and suppliers working on our projects.
- ✓The work we produce. The websites, copy and advertising we build for clients, and the people who end up using them.
- ✓Who we take on as a client, and the work we turn down.
The law it sits on
The Equality Act 2010 governs us, and it protects nine characteristics: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. We treat all nine the same way.
Sections 158 and 159 of that Act also allow positive action. In plain terms, we may encourage applications from a group that is under-represented in our industry. What the Act does not allow, and what we will not do, is appoint someone because of a protected characteristic. The decision is always about the work.
Ten commitments we can be held to
Each one is a thing we do, not a value we hold. That distinction is the whole point of the page.
- ✓1. We advertise every paid role publicly. No role is filled quietly through the founders' own contacts, because a founder's network looks like the founder.
- ✓2. We put the money in the advert. Every role names a salary or a day rate. We never ask what someone currently earns, since that carries an old inequality straight into a new job.
- ✓3. We ask every candidate the same questions, and we send them in advance. Preparation time helps anxious, autistic and dyslexic candidates without taking anything from anyone else.
- ✓4. We write the decision down before we discuss it. Each of us scores against the job description first. It is a cheap way to stop a room talking itself into the familiar candidate.
- ✓5. We do not require a degree for any role. Not one job here needs one, so asking for one would only screen by background.
- ✓6. We pay for reasonable adjustments and we ask first. Everyone who works with us is asked at the start what they need. The cost is ours, not theirs, and nobody has to disclose a diagnosis to get it.
- ✓7. We work flexibly and remotely by default. Hours can be arranged around caring, prayer, medical appointments or a condition that does not run to a nine-to-five.
- ✓8. Everything we build meets WCAG 2.2 level AA. Accessibility is part of the build, never a line item a client can decline.
- ✓9. We pay contractors within 14 days. Slow payment is a tax on whoever has the least cash behind them, and that is rarely the biggest supplier.
- ✓10. We turn down work we believe is discriminatory, and we say why rather than inventing a diary clash.
How we recruit, and what we pay for
Small agencies hire badly by default, and not out of malice. A founder needs someone next week, asks three people they already know, and the shortlist arrives looking exactly like the founder. That is the failure this section is written against.
Before the advert goes out
We write the job description first, and we write it as a list of things the person will actually do. Then we cut every requirement that is a preference rather than a need. Degrees go. Years of experience go, and a demonstrated skill replaces them. Language such as "rockstar", "ninja" or "hungry" goes too, because it narrows a candidate pool without improving it.
The advert names the pay. It also names the location rules, the hours and whether the role can be done part-time, since a role that quietly cannot be part-time excludes most people with caring responsibilities before they ever apply.
During the process
Every candidate gets the same questions, sent before the conversation. Every candidate is offered the interview in whatever format works for them, including written answers or a call without video. We ask what adjustments would help, and we do not ask why.
We do not ask for unpaid trial work. If we want to see someone work, we set a short paid task and we pay the same rate to everyone who does it.
On pay
Rates are set by the role and the skill it needs. They are not set by how hard somebody negotiates, which is the single most common way a pay gap opens in a company too small to have a pay structure. We never ask for salary history.
Freelancers are paid within 14 days of invoice. We do not use payment terms as free credit, and we do not net off a late client payment against a contractor who has already delivered.
Equity in what we build, not just in who builds it
This is the part most agency pledges leave out, and for a search agency it is the part with the widest reach.
A page we build for a client may be read by tens of thousands of people. How many of them can use it is a fairness question long before it is a technical one. So the commitments here are about the output, not the office.
Accessibility is in the build, not on the invoice
Every site we produce meets WCAG 2.2 level AA as a floor. In practice that means colour contrast that survives a bright screen outdoors, every control reachable by keyboard, forms whose labels a screen reader can read out, alternative text on every image that carries meaning, and text that resizes without the layout collapsing.
A client cannot decline this to save money, because it is not priced separately. It is simply how the site is made.
Plain English is an accessibility measure
We write short sentences and ordinary words. That is usually described as a marketing decision, and it is one, but it matters far more to a reader with dyslexia, a reader with a cognitive impairment, or a reader working in their second language. Jargon excludes people quietly, and nobody complains about it. They just leave.
Advertising audiences
We do not build advertising audiences that exclude people by a protected characteristic, unless the law specifically permits it for that role or service. Ad platforms make this exclusion easy and largely invisible, which is exactly why it belongs in a written commitment rather than in someone's judgement on the day.
Images and language
The photography and illustration we choose for a client should look like the people who will actually read the page. We avoid gendered job language, and we avoid the ableist metaphors that creep into marketing copy without anyone deciding to use them.
Who we work with, and the work we decline
Most of what a small agency does is bought in. That makes our supplier choices a bigger part of this pledge than our staffing ever will be.
Freelancers and subcontractors
Anyone working on a Digital Movement UK project is asked to confirm they will work to this pledge while they do. It is one short paragraph in the engagement, not a compliance pack, because a compliance pack aimed at a sole trader is theatre.
We open freelance briefs beyond the people we used last time. When we need a skill we have bought before, we still ask at least one person we have not worked with, which is a small habit but the only one that changes a supplier list over time.
Clients
We will turn down work that we believe promotes discrimination against a protected characteristic, and we will say that is the reason. We will also raise it, once and plainly, if a brief asks us to build something that would exclude people unlawfully. If the client wants to proceed anyway, we step off the project.
That is a commercially inconvenient promise for an agency of two, which is precisely why it is worth writing down in advance rather than deciding in the moment.
What we count, and what we refuse to publish
Most diversity pages open with a percentage. Ours does not, and the reason is worth stating clearly rather than leaving as a gap.
At two founders and a handful of contractors, a workforce diversity percentage would identify individuals. Saying that a given share of this company holds a protected characteristic names a specific person to anyone who can count. That is a data protection problem dressed up as transparency, so we will not do it. We are also well below the 250-employee threshold at which UK gender pay gap reporting begins, and we are not going to publish a figure that only creates a false impression of scale.
What we publish instead are four counts that mean something at any size, because they measure our behaviour rather than other people's identities.
| What we count | Why this one | Reported |
|---|---|---|
| Paid roles advertised publicly, as a share of all paid roles filled | The single strongest predictor of whether a small company's hiring stays inside its founders' networks. | At each annual review |
| Roles where the pay was named in the advert | Salary transparency is the one pay measure a company our size can fully control. | At each annual review |
| Accessibility issues found and fixed per client site at launch | Counts the reach of the pledge into the work, where the numbers are largest. | At each annual review |
| Average days taken to pay a contractor invoice | Tests the promise in commitment 9 against what actually happened. | At each annual review |
The first set of figures is due with the review on 31 August 2027. Until then this section carries no numbers, because we have none we could stand behind, and an invented baseline would undermine every other line on this page.
What Digital Movement UK will not claim
A pledge is only as credible as the things it admits.
- ✓We hold no diversity accreditation. We are not a Disability Confident employer, not a Living Wage Foundation accredited employer, and we hold no equality certification or award. If we earn one, we will name it and date it here.
- ✓We have run no formal diversity training. When we do, the change log will say who delivered it and when.
- ✓We publish no workforce diversity figure, for the reason set out in section 06. Nor will we describe our contractor pool as diverse, since we do not hold that data and would not publish it if we did.
- ✓We will not call this a programme or a strategy. It is a pledge from a company of two, and inflating the language would be the first thing to make it untrue.
- ✓We will not present a client's record as ours. Work we have done for an organisation with a strong inclusion record does not transfer to us.
- ✓We will not use this page as marketing. There is no enquiry form on it and no pricing. It exists so that a client, a candidate or a supplier can check what we said and hold us to it.
If we get this wrong, here is exactly what to do
Anyone can raise a concern under this pledge: an employee, a freelancer, a candidate who was not hired, a supplier, a client, or someone who simply could not use a site we built.
Who to contact
Raoul (Alex) Müller, co-founder, owns this pledge. Email office@digitalmovement.uk or call +44 7865 064463. If the concern is about him, send it to the other co-founder, Martey Quaye, at the same address marked for his attention, and he will handle it alone.
What happens next
We acknowledge it in two working days
In writing, naming the person who will deal with it. No form to fill in and no case number.
We answer within ten working days
In writing, saying what we found, what we are changing, and by when. If it will take longer, we say so before the ten days are up rather than after.
The change is recorded here
Anything we alter in this pledge as a result appears in the change log, with a date. The complaint itself stays confidential.
Two things we promise not to do
We will not ask anyone to sign a non-disclosure agreement about discrimination or harassment. And we will not end a contract, a freelance relationship or a client relationship because someone raised a concern in good faith.
If our answer is not good enough
You do not have to come through us at all. Acas offers free, confidential advice on 0300 123 1100. The Equality Advisory and Support Service can be reached on 0808 800 0082. An employment tribunal claim is also open to workers, and the deadline is usually three months less one day from the act complained of, which is short, so take advice early.
Version history and next review
This pledge is reviewed once a year. The review is done by both founders together, and it has to produce one of three outcomes: the commitment stands, the commitment changes, or the commitment is dropped and the page says so. A review that quietly changes nothing is not a review.
Next review due: 31 August 2027. If that date passes without an update appearing below, the page is out of date and you should treat it as such.
| Version | Date | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | 16 August 2026 | First published. Ten commitments, four measures, named owner and escalation route, and the list of things we do not claim. |
How to cite this page
Digital Movement UK, Diversity, equity and inclusion pledge, version 1.0, 16 August 2026. Available at digitalmovement.uk/commitments/diversity-equity-inclusion/.
Related: All our commitments · Who we are · Privacy notice · Sitemap
Questions people ask about this pledge
Is this a policy or a pledge?
A pledge. A policy tells a large workforce what the rules are. Digital Movement UK has two founders and a small group of contractors, so what is useful here is a short list of things we promise to do, dated, with a named person answerable for each one. Every commitment on this page is something a company our size can actually carry out and be held to.
Why do you not publish workforce diversity figures?
Because at our size a percentage would identify individuals. With two founders and a handful of contractors, saying that a given share of the team holds a protected characteristic names a specific person, which is a data protection problem rather than transparency. We are also far below the 250-employee threshold at which UK gender pay gap reporting applies. Instead we publish four counts that are meaningful at any size: roles advertised publicly, salaries named in adverts, accessibility issues fixed, and average days taken to pay a contractor.
Does this pledge apply to freelancers and subcontractors?
Yes. Most of the specialist work at Digital Movement UK is done by contractors, so a pledge that stopped at employees would cover almost nobody. We ask every freelancer and supplier to confirm they will work to this pledge on our projects, and we pay them within 14 days of invoice.
What does this mean for clients?
Three practical things. Everything we build meets WCAG 2.2 level AA as a minimum, so your site works for people using a screen reader, a keyboard or a magnifier. We write in plain English, which is an accessibility measure as much as a marketing one. And we do not build advertising audiences that exclude people by a protected characteristic unless the law specifically allows it.
Who is accountable for this pledge?
Raoul (Alex) Müller, co-founder, at office@digitalmovement.uk or +44 7865 064463. If a concern is about him, it goes to the other co-founder, Martey Quaye. We acknowledge any complaint within two working days and give a written answer within ten.
What UK law sits behind this?
The Equality Act 2010. It protects nine characteristics: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. Sections 158 and 159 also permit positive action, such as encouraging applications from an under-represented group. They do not permit appointing someone because of a protected characteristic, and we do not do that.