If you’ve been following along with our success at HelloInfo, you have surely seen us tout the fact that we are proudly women-owned. As a certified member of WBE Canada, we have been attending events and writing extensively about how important it is for corporations to diversify their supply chains, by purchasing from diverse-owned vendors such as us.
And while our diversity is clearly visible from the outside – in our ownership, in our leadership and in our team, there is a lot that happens behind the scenes at HelloInfo that reinforces and solidifies this ethic. A philosophy of diversity, ethics and inclusion is embedded in our daily business practices and behavior. Let’s look at some ways we are achieving this:
DEI is embedded in HelloInfo policies and procedures
As a smaller-sized company with an Enterprise-sized value system, we have worked hard to find a balance of corporate DEI initiatives that not only felt like us, but also were attainable to achieve on a day-to-day basis. Some of the core initiatives that we have successfully launched include:
- Developing our own supplier diversity policies – We are committed to making our purchases from diverse suppliers. Diverse suppliers are those that are majority-owned by an individual or group that is part of a traditionally underrepresented or underserved group, including women, veterans, and Indigenous, disabled or LGBTQ2+ individuals. Every time a purchase needs to be made at HelloInfo, we first search for options that are available from diverse-owned companies, and if one of these suppliers meets our needs, they become our vendor.
- Hiring practices that support diversity – When seeking out new team members for the HelloInfo team, we not only post our jobs in traditional channels such as LinkedIn, but we also pay to post on job boards that assemble open positions specifically for certain minority groups, such as the Aboriginal Job Board. When resumes are received from traditional channels, personal information is stripped from them, to reduce any personal data that may identify an individual as belonging to a specific culture or gender, which further open equal chances to all.
- Aligning with North American governments when cultural dates of recognition are legislated – When Canadian and US governments pass legislation that sets aside dates of recognition as federal holidays, HelloInfo follows suit. Ensuring that we pause, remember, and support these initiatives is important to us as a small way that we can become involved in reconciliation processes. At this time, HelloInfo closes for the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, and for Juneteenth. On these days, HelloInfo colleagues are given prompts for reflection, and we share our reflections as a group following the day out of the office.
- Committing to company-wide diversity strategy, feedback, and education – At HelloInfo, we crowdsource our next year’s diversity strategy in an annual meeting where every employee has a say. We collect ideas to include in the following year and determine what initiatives we would like to see put in place. For 2023, the group agreed to incorporate Indigenous training and education into our onsite, and for 2024 we have been reading and sharing reports on books that represent a diversity of experiences. Throughout the year, colleagues are encouraged to table any ideas or feedback that they may have, and HelloInfo offers financial support for educational materials supporting DEI learnings.
DEI is embedded in client engagements
At HelloInfo, we have been vocal about corporations including diverse voices in competitive intelligence research, and our clients know firsthand about how including our research and perspective offers a fresh perspective on their businesses. Beyond this, we have developed a two-prong client DEI strategy, which sees us actively participating across two key activities:
- Supporting our corporate clients in furthering their own supplier diversity initiatives – As a member of WBE, and with connections to supplier diversity champions at some of North America’s leading supplier diversity programs, HelloInfo plays a role in connecting our clients to resources which can help them foster adoption and support within their own organizations. We also work to ensure that the money spent on our services is allocated and represented properly within our clients with existing supplier diversity programs. According to Harvard Business Review, companies with supplier diversity programs see benefits in enhanced candidate recruitment, better product quality, lower costs, and higher rates of overall employee perception.
- Working with clients that are diverse-centric and themselves support underrepresented groups – Perhaps one of our favorite initiatives is when we partner with clients that themselves support diverse and underrepresented groups. Consider for example, our client, the Military Family Action Network (MFAN), which connects military and veteran families to resources, people and information that supports them through all phases of their military life. Supporting MFAN in understanding its military stakeholders is a type of work that allows HelloInfo to use our own diverse resources to help other diverse groups.
At HelloInfo, we make it easy for you to trial a new strategic research vendor, and on top of this, we are diverse-owned, diverse-led, and diverse-operated! Are you a small, or diverse-owned business looking to develop a more robust program? Do you work for a corporate enterprise that is looking to develop a supplier diversity program? We’d love to chat. Schedule a call with us to explore how we can help you.
