Overview and objective
Golin Hong Kong was awarded Diverse-Inclusive Workplace at the Women Leading Change Awards and went on to win Diversity and Inclusion Company of the Year at the PR Awards Asia 2022.

Focusing on “Creating Change That Matters”, its vision was to ensure that all employees understood, felt and lived the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) mindset through culture, diversity, talent management and contribution.

Strategy
To ensure that DEI was integral to operating components, Golin surveyed all staff to get the data needed to pinpoint focus actions. From there, it strategised an Equitable Ecosystem designed to implement DEI education addressing the diverse issues in the market, ensure clients were aligned to Golin’s values and facilitate evaluation of inclusive vendors and partners.

Implementation
To communicate Golin’s DEI stance with its team, Golin focused on:

• Ensuring open discussions of culture, religion and related celebrations and requirements.
• Advocating for women’s leadership openly via senior management publishing perspectives and counsel.
• Hiring a positive psychologist - an industry first initiative in Asia - and renegotiating employee insurance to support neurodiversity.
• Training leaders as mental health first-aiders to ensure consistent help on hand for those needing support.
• Supporting Hong Kong’s refugee community through pro bono work for NGO Branches of Hope.

The Equitable Ecosystem was incorporated into talent management through recognising different identities within Golin’s team and supporting its individualities. To do this, the team:

• Created and communicated clear career management guidelines to ensure equal career growth and opportunity for all.
• Created a new hiring tool that addressed diversity and unconscious bias from the start.
• Created the Golin DEI handbook which was distributed to all and is now a part of the onboarding process.
• Expanded the training programming to include 90 in-depth lessons resulting in over 1,500 training hours logged since January 2021.
• Carried out a ‘work from anywhere’ policy and developed new meeting guidelines to boost time efficiency.
• Implemented a new bonus system and opportunities that reflect performance.
• Launched hybrid team bonding activities, including virtual bar / hangout ‘The Go Lounge’.

Results
The work was judged by Golin’s own team, its most important stakeholders. Feedback from the team survey showed:

• 100 percent of Hong Kong respondents gave positive feedback on Golin being committed to diversity and inclusion and welcoming to people with different backgrounds and perspectives.
• 100 percent agreed that their opinions are valued.
• For workplace accommodations, there was positive feedback for accommodations in areas such as mental health and identity-based needs, with the agency accommodating to unique needs.
• 83 percent shared that Golin progressed forward on its DEI journey.