Look around your office. Is it serious about diversity? Take our survey

Campaign and Kantar are delighted to invite you to complete our third annual survey assessing equality and diversity in the Asian marcomms industries. The results will be released at the Women Leading Change conference in Singapore on June 9. We are very grateful for a few minutes of your time: please start the survey here. 

Diversity; inclusivity; equal opportunities; pay parity: these words and phrases must be some of the most common in the marketing and advertising worlds, where all companies are striving to project an image of themselves as safe, fair environments that welcome individuals of all possible variations.

While we know that many companies are making stirling efforts on this front and can genuinely call themselves equal-opportunity employers, and we're also seeing more and more work come out that champions diversity in wonderfully creative ways, we also know that much of the industry has a lot of internal work to do to achieve this ideal. India's #MeToo movement that began last year, for example, threw the question of appropriate behaviour and staff safety firmly back into the spotlight. 

The results from our 2018 survey with Kantar, published this time last year, found that more staff were noticing unfair treatment between different types of people and thought that change wasn't happening fast or visibly enough: the numbers of men and women who wanted to see their organisation doing "much more" to drive gender equality were up significantly on the previous year.

START THE SURVEY Deadline: May 7, 2019 The survey explores whether people have experienced bias based on preconceived notions of ability; respect in the workplace and whether there is pressure to conform to stereotypes. It also asks about how people are treated in your current organisation and what steps the company could take to improve. Finally, it covers inappropriate behaviour, including sexual harassment, and explores any of the reasons people hesitate to seek help.

The business case for diversity

The business benefits of a diverse workforce are no longer debatable. In one day-to-day example, our 2018 survey found evidence that the presence of female CEOs in meetings halves the amount of unhelpful and unfair male dominance reported. And a 2017 study by McKinsey found that companies who scored in the top quartile for gender diversity on their executive teams were 21% more likely to experience above-average profitability than those in the fourth quartile. 

Expanding the discussion beyond gender, as we have done with our survey this year, McKinsey found that ethnic and culturally diverse executive teams were 33% more likely to outperform less diverse ones. Research on 1,700 people worldwide (including China and India) by the Boston Consulting Group in 2018 also found a strong and significant correlation between the diversity of management teams, based on gender, age, nation of origin, career path, industry background and education, and companies' overall innovation revenue and financial performance. 

The stats are clear: diversity works for business. 

Many of the agencies in our 2018 Agency Report Cards told us that they are hard at work implementing mentoring programmes, building leadership pathways and installing diversity initiatives: but we want to hear from you about whether these are actually making a real impact in day-to-day working life, or whether "equal opportunities for all" remains nothing but a slogan. 

So please take our survey and help encourage the diversity movement to keep driving forwards: and win the chance to join us at our Woman Leading Change conference in the process! 

Take the survey and win a ticket to Women Leading Change To show our appreciation for the time it takes to complete this survey, we would like to offer one respondent (who will be randomly chosen) a free ticket to join our Women Leading Change conference, which takes place in Singapore on 4 June 2019. This full-day event will feature influential figures holding forward-looking discussions relating to women and diversity and diving into the controversial topics of the day. The day will also include useful training and learning elements.  Please note: the winning respondent must be employed in the advertising, marketing, communications and media industry in Asia and this prize does not include entrance to the Women Leading Change Awards. For any further questions about the survey or prize draw, please contact Olivia Parker on [email protected].