New Digital Age, in partnership with The Advisory Collective and Greydient Jobs is launching EQUALIZE, an initiative that seeks to help digital and advertising companies understand the benefits of recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce irrespective of gender, age, race, disability, mental health, sexual orientation, gender identity and religion.
In a continually-changing socio-economic landscape it’s becoming even more important that the make-up of internal teams reflects society at large, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because an inclusive workplace is known to provide a business with greater creativity, better decision making, stronger performance and of course a more engaged and committed workforce.
The aim of EQUALIZE is that through actionable insights, discussion groups, collaboration and consultancy, organisations will be better placed to answer questions such as:
How and where do you source diverse talent ?
How do you attract diverse talent to your business ?
How can you provide career development and equal opportunities for your current team without positively discriminating?
EQUALIZE will be led by Rob Howgate and Ellie Edwards Scot,who are both passionate about inclusivity in digital and believe that a fresh mindset is required to ensure that tokenism and word play is transferred into real action to the benefit of all.
Rob Howgate, founder at Greydient Jobs, noted that “Digital media has been so pioneering and innovative over the years that it’s baffling why progress has been so slow when it comes to something as important as diverse recruitment. And whilst we totally get the fact there isn’t a magic wand solution here, if we collaborate on an industry level, if we all work together, we can enable sustainable and actual change that will be free from bias against all groups and individuals, not just the ones we cherry pick as fashionable”
Ellie Edwards Scott; Co-Founder of The Advisory Collective and Digital Leading Ladies added that “The lack of inclusivity within the industry is something that has been talked about for years, but disappointingly we seem to be making little tangible progress and even going backwards when it comes to diverse representation at senior level. We are hoping that Equalize can help companies to make actionable changes which will both enhance their businesses and unearth more opportunities for all.”
The EQUALIZE project will work towards producing a Good Practice Guide and accompanying video tutorials by kicking off with an employee survey to understand the underlying issues caused by lack of diversity in recruitment. This will then be followed by a roundtable where invited industry guests and relevant professionals will discuss the results and the right way forward for our sector.
If you are a digital media business owner or business leader and would like to get involved in the project please get in touch to discuss further. There are several ways you can support this initiative and,in turn, gain tangible future benefits by building a healthier and more diverse recruitment strategy.
