People
We back the people in our team, the clients we work with, and the community around us. That means the causes we quietly get behind, the time we give, and the doors we try to hold open for people coming up behind us.
Diversity & Inclusion
We hire for the brain, not the CV.
The best person for the job is often the one nobody else would interview. So 21 Degrees Digital interviews them. This is the honest version of who we are: the real numbers, the bits we’re proud of, and the bits we’re still working on.
That’s roughly one in seven of us. Wired a little differently. Brilliant at things most hiring processes are too rigid to spot. Too much of that talent gets filtered out before anyone even reads the good bit, not because they can’t do the job, but because the process was built for one type of brain.
We thought that was daft. And a waste. So we did something about it.
An agency built to let people in, not weed them out
Most agencies bolt a diversity statement onto their site because they reckon they have to. We wrote ours because it’s the reason we’re any good.
21 Degrees Digital is a Leeds digital marketing agency built on inclusive hiring: we pick people for how they think, what they can do, and whether they’ll make the work sharper, not for how neatly a CV fits a box. That means writing job ads people actually understand. Interviews built to show strengths instead of hiding them. And a workplace that bends to fit the person, rather than the other way round.
It’s not charity. It’s the smartest hiring decision we ever made. Open the door wider and you get the talent everyone else walked past.
The numbers, warts and all
- 33% women across the team
- 33% from BAME backgrounds
- 2 accreditations that we had to earn
We’re not going to show you a stock photo of four people high-fiving and call it diversity. Here’s the real picture. A third of our team are women, and they sit on our exec board and lead departments, not just fill seats. A third of our team are from Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds, in an industry that’s historically been anything but.
We hold Mindful Employer accreditation and we’re Disability Confident Committed. Not because a badge looks good in the footer, but because they hold us to something.
How we treat people
A workplace that adapts to you
Inclusion isn’t a poster in the kitchen. It’s the boring, practical stuff you only notice when it’s missing.
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Hiring that shows strengths
We write plain-English job ads and run interviews designed to let people show what they’re good at, with adjustments as standard, not as a favour you have to ask for.
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Work that flexes around real life
People do their best work in different ways, at different times, in different places. We build around that instead of pretending everyone’s the same.
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Minds looked after, not just managed
Being a Mindful Employer means mental health gets treated like health. Support that’s real, and a culture where you can actually say you’re struggling.
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We keep checking ourselves
Policies and processes get reviewed on purpose, because “we’ve always done it this way” is how good intentions quietly rot.
Want the full list of perks, holidays and the actual benefits? That lives on our careers page See careers 
People. Planet. Place.
Three things we can’t switch off caring about.
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Planet
Every business leaves a mark. We’d rather ours was a small one. So we look hard at how we work and where we can do less damage, without the greenwashing waffle.
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Place
We’re a Leeds agency and proud of it. We put time and effort into our corner of the world, because a good business should make its own city a better place to be.
Don’t take our word for it
We could talk about culture all day. Here’s what it’s actually like, from the people who live it.
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As a business owner of Afro-Caribbean descent, I'm incredibly proud of our D&I record.
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I've always worked hard to promote neurodiversity hires. It's not always been easy, but we do our best.
We’re not done, and we won’t pretend we are
A third women. A third from BAME backgrounds. Ahead of a lot of this industry. Also not good enough for us to sit back and feel clever about it.
There are gaps we’re still closing and things we haven’t cracked. We’ll keep showing you the real numbers as they change, up or down, because a company that only ever talks about its wins is a company you can’t trust with the truth.
If that kind of honesty is your sort of thing, you’ll fit right in.
Fancy building something here?
If you’ve read this far and thought “yeah, these are my people,” we should probably talk. Come and see what we’re working on, and whether there’s a spot with your name on it.
Not after a job, but want to work with an agency that gives a damn? Say hello
