Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
What we stand for
Aquent is an equal opportunity employer. We believe an inclusive environment—where different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives are valued—is critical to ensuring everyone can contribute, grow their careers, and thrive. We also believe that diversity goes beyond race and gender. Diversity includes things that are visible and those that are not. It's a person's age, status, ability, neurodiversity, sexual orientation, and so much more. These differences help foster a more progressive workplace. We embrace them all.
“Time's up for talk—we need to take action.”
JOHN CHUANG / CEO, AQUENT
Here's how we're taking action.
Recruiting
- Developed ongoing audit of the full recruitment life cycle
- Expanding diversified talent networks and pipelines
- Offering unbiased anonymised resumes
- Creating gender-neutral job descriptions
- Reinforcing interview best practices
- Ensuring pay parity and equity for all employees
- Developed multiple guides for hiring managers to take action on diversity, equity and inclusion in their workplaces
Monitoring
- Expanded equality data collection, monitoring, and reporting in line with UK Government and EU guidelines
- Measuring progress on an ongoing basis
Education
- Formed local and international Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) Councils with representatives from across the company
- Developed company-wide education materials, training, and discussions around underrepresented groups, racial injustice, and its historical significance
- Expanded our resource library and access to external courses on themes like mitigating bias and fostering an inclusive workplace
- Introduced ongoing internal training, including unconscious bias, anti-racism and allyship, LGBTQ+, neurodiversity in the workplace, digital accessibility and the importance of inclusive design, and more
- Started Cultural Clubs that foster insightful conversations about books such as The New Jim Crow, The Nickel Boys, and Who Moved My Cheese, movies such as Disclosure, Untold: Caitlyn Jenner, The Rachel Divide, Nail Bomber: Manhunt, and series such as Black & British: A Forgotten History
Community
- Raised over $110,000 in contributions to social justice organisations including more than $66,000 to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund
- Formed Employee Resource Groups for BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and working parents and allies
- Awarding Designing for Good grants that help bring creative ideas to life for nonprofits
- Creating an Aquent Cookbook with nearly 90 recipes celebrating the diversity of Aquent's multicultural employees in a simple and playful way
- Sharing talent art from creators of colour or that celebrate diversity, equity, and inclusion across our social media platforms
- Providing free, real-time market salary data to the public through our Compare My Salary tool
- Engaging in candid conversations as part of the Voices of Aquent series that explores topics involving diverse groups of employees at Aquent
- Ensuring that the events we run and participate in include diverse speakers
Outreach and partnerships
- Corporate Plus member of the National Minority Supplier Development Council, achieved by 1% of certified Minority-Owned Businesses
- Collaborating with The Diversity Partnership on internal training and content including A Best Practice Guide on Improving Diversity in the Workplace
- Proud supporters of Aleto Foundation, Crisis, Mind, Friends of the Earth, NHS Charities Together, and Scope
A commitment to Diversity, Inclusion & Sustainability is in our DNA.
As an organisation, we have been committed to diversity, inclusion and sustainability from Day One, and we're now formalising our approach and building these things into every aspect of our company. We've formed employee-led Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Councils in every country we work in to help drive this work forward. We're holding ourselves accountable to create a better future, assess our progress, and identify opportunities to continuously improve.
