DEI Policy Statement

Given our place at the heart of the creative and marketing industries we are in a position of influence that significantly impacts the opinions and actions of both brands and agencies. This has a knock-on effect on the messaging and imagery that consumers engage with day to day, which in turn ultimately informs culture, opinions and behaviours.

We are a small business, but with disproportionately wide-reaching influence. As such, we believe that we must take our responsibilities seriously with regards to diversity and inclusion. We must think hard about our own actions and influences and we must aim to ensure that Creativebrief, as a company and a culture, can have a positive impact on shifting attitudes and behaviours to change the industry and the world for the better.

In addition to the moral argument for greater inclusion and equality, we are also strong believers in the business case for diversity as evidenced by numerous robust reports and studies. McKinsey’s 2020 Diversity Wins report found that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on leadership teams are 25% more likely to have above average profitability than companies in the bottom quartile, the number increased to 36% when viewed through the lens of ethnic diversity.

However, it is worth noting that these studies analyse a broad range of industries, and over time we want to be a strong part of proving this business case beyond doubt within our own industry specifically and use this as a way to support brands and agencies to accelerate what is currently frustratingly slow progress.

We also know that our ability to credibly influence the industry must start by getting our own house in order. We believe we have made real strides in recent years to create a culture that strives to be inclusive, without boundaries. We have fought to provide our staff with a working environment in which they feel at home, in which they have a voice, and in which a lack of tolerance is not tolerated. But we also recognise that we have some way to go on the journey yet and that, ultimately, we will never be ‘finished’.

Specifically, we have made real progress from the point of view of gender. As a business today (time of writing was Mar 2021) of 15 permanent staff we are 60% female and within that have representation of 50% female at team heads level, 67% at senior leadership level. But we know we must go further, and our representation of racial and ethnic diversity within the business is lacking in comparison.

Currently our ethnicity split is representative to a level of 20% people of colour across the whole business, 17% at a team heads level and 33% at senior leadership level. We know that there is more work to be done here and when looking at intersections such LBGTQ+, disability, socio-economic backgrounds and more, we are not indexing as well.

This charter sets our current policies and our intention for the months and years ahead, during which time we will set ourselves targets, measure our progress and hold ourselves to account in taking the next step towards fostering, cultivating and preserving a truly diverse, inclusive and representative company – with a culture in which everyone can feel welcome and confident, be themselves, and have their talents recognised, appreciated and developed.

We are working towards removing any sense of ‘otherness’ in the business, and to do this we have established policies that promote inclusiveness, protect minorities, and create an environment in which people of colour feel safe and able to express themselves.

The five areas we are focusing on to drive change are:

1. Company (data, training and awareness, leadership, partnerships, suppliers etc)
2. Talent (recruitment, retention, progression)
3. Marketing and PR (amplifying our voice and those in the industry around us in support for greater equality)
4. BITE (providing a platform for new, progressive, diverse voices)
5. Influencing the industry at large (partnerships, our take on the pitch, applying pressure to agencies and brands to improve etc.)

In support of the above we have set out a number of additional commitments:

• We are ensuring change is driven from the top, and the senior management team are taking ownership

• We are ensuring that some degree of education, training and resource engagement is mandatory

• We are introducing some of these measures and intentions as a part of our appraisal system for staff

• We are creating space for a % of each individual’s time to be dedicated to driving our agenda for change

• We are using stats, figures and trusted data sources to continue to assert the clear business case for industry diversity

• We are conducting a company wide diversity survey twice a year to monitor progress and set benchmarks

• We are more openly and regularly publishing our staff make-up from an overall DEI perspective

• We are taking steps to towards being more actively anti-racist and anti-discriminatory

• We will allow any employee who wishes to join peaceful DEI marches and demonstrations to do so without it affecting holiday allowance

• We will not work with any business that has racist or far right views or any recent affiliations that imply so; and we will tell them

• We are sharing our DEI charter with organisations who wish to work with us, to ensure we can call out any behaviour that doesn’t fall in line

• We do not tolerate any form of racist or discriminatory behaviour within the business and are putting a discrimination incident plan in place

Our Gender split

Our Ethnicity split