Working with some of the world’s biggest brands, from consumer packaged goods to health care to industrial agriculture, Barefoot Proximity delivers profound business results for their clients every day. As a leading advertising agency within a global network, a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion isn’t just the right thing to do—it’s the key to remaining competitive. 

Bottom line, ensuring the ability to hire and retain a vibrant, diverse workforce—one that reflects today’s clients and consumers—delivers the best work. 

But in the marketing and advertising world, you don’t have to look far to see examples of brands receiving backlash because they didn’t have diverse viewpoints in the room. No brand or agency executive wants to see these kinds of headlines about their work. So the urgency for having top talent that can understand the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion wasn’t felt just by Barefoot Proximity’s HR personnel, but also by their senior creative leadership. 

Getting Started With Ellequate

Barefoot Proximity turned to Ellequate to ensure their competitiveness in diverse recruiting, hiring, and retention. But more importantly, the agency wanted to create a more equitable workplace, cultivating their talent to ensure their work would reflect the world we live in—while making their clients shine. So when it came to kicking off their work with Ellequate, not only did Tricia Richard, the agency’s Talent Manager attend, but she brought along their VP of Experience Design, Brandon Blank.

But like many companies—in advertising and beyond—Barefoot Proximity’s prior DEI initiatives were mostly on paper. The company hadn't yet invested the time or resources to take on the critical changes needed. 

According to Blank, “people were talking about this in their own circles within the agency, having these tough discussions without the framework, without the context. But with Ellequate, there was a galvanizing element—the work that came out of that experience felt like, ‘OK, we're in this together, we're doing this together, we're evolving together.” 

Through their work with Barefoot Proximity, Ellequate brought clarity and the data necessary to make the case for inclusive workplace policies and practices, create positive momentum, and justify the funding to take good ideas to great execution.

Key agency actions after kicking off work with Ellequate include: 

• Creating an internal, cross-functional DEI team that shares responsibility for the work

• Establishing baseline benchmarks to identify opportunities for growth, and implementing methodologies (surveys, etc.) to measure and track actual progress

• Bringing accountability to individuals and the organization to follow through on good intentions 

• Conducting internal assessments, including a pay equity audit and unconscious bias training, to highlight specific areas of existing inequity

• Marrying internal efforts to the efforts of the agency’s larger global holding company to ensure the company is consistent with global initiatives

• Funding DEI initiatives and tracking efforts with the finance team to ensure resources are in place, fueling key activities, and measuring against the agency’s bottom line

• Ensuring all hiring materials—from job postings, to recruitment processes, to interview questions— are inclusive, resulting in more diverse slates of candidates

• Informing management training with greater knowledge, skill, and language to ensure “performance” is measured more objectively (rather than being centered on a perspective rooted in privilege)

With Certification Comes Results

One of Barefoot Proximity’s unexpected benefits from partnering with Ellequate was being in a Leadership Cohort alongside many diverse organizations—all in different phases of their own diversity, equity, and inclusion journey. 

According to Barefoot Proximity’s VP Blank, “the access to a cohort is invaluable. Having access to folks in different phases of the journey made the difference. It wasn't just like, ‘we're going to set up listening sessions, a few lectures here and there, and we're gonna throw some resources at you.’ The dialogue with current and past cohort members was really huge.”

This synergy and sharing of insights not only improved Barefoot Proximity’s journey—it energized their leaders by contextualizing the work within a broader landscape, providing visibility into companies and nonprofits across industries. 

Since becoming certified, Barefoot Proximity has seen significant improvements in:

• Identifying and recruiting a more diverse workforce

• Effectively mentoring, training, and managing a workforce outside of a traditionally white set of performance measures

• Identifying areas for ongoing improvement, including talent retention—room to grow

• Providing a concrete competitive advantage by cultivating a workplace that exhibits the qualities today’s creative workforce demands

• Improving the agency’s output (and safeguarded clients from public embarrassment and missteps) by ensuring a greater diversity of voices in the creative process

• Providing transparency within the organization about their work with Ellequate, increasing participation and buy-in throughout the company

• Continuing investment in this work to ensure the improvement is ongoing and is not “one and done”

Are you ready to boost your DEI efforts with a data-driven and people-centered strategy? Learn how to become an Ellequate member.

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