In a world that is changing and evolving every day, Optimation is committed to equitable diversity and inclusion and this reflects on our policies and value pillars that state “Empathy & Respect - We are all special, unique and important” and “Social Consciousness – We make a positive impact to people’s lives”. This is celebrated and part of the fabric within Optimation as an employer of diversity in gender, ethnicity, religion, languages, sexuality and age.
Optimation embraces diversity as a critical business enabler for thought diversity that delivers our purpose to empower organisations through partnership, human intelligence and smart technology. We believe diverse teams make better decisions and we are proud of our mixed team - we have over 15 different nationalities amongst us:
Our Diversity and Inclusion programme includes Accredited Employer status with Immigration New Zealand, and bespoke programmes such as Welcome to New Zealand, Te Reo for Business, and Celebrate! which is our internal diversity and inclusion framework.
In addition to driving our cultural diversity across the teams, Optimation has a target for a gender-balanced workforce. The female presence at Optimation is 48% higher than the average of the industry*, and this is encouraging progress within what has been traditionally a male-dominated tech sector.
This month we are hosting a few activities to promote the wellbeing and bring engagement of our people through Celebrate!
Celebrate! is about celebrating what makes us special not just informally recognising it. It is our very own platform for education, insight, thinking, inclusion and pride; supported by events, workshops, social activity and information sharing.
This Tuesday (25), at our head office, we had the pleasure of having three special guest speakers bringing successful stories on how diversity can enrich a workplace:
Fleur De Bes - Prevention Manager: Harm Reduction from NZ Police, Deborah Hume - Executive Leader from NZTA and Rebecca Gill the former teacher of Steven Adams as referenced in his book My Life. My Flight. They shared their stories with diverse teams and unique journeys as successful women to our group. The panel challenged our traditional thinking on what inclusion means, and we got several insights from them on what we can do to improve the connection within our teams as an output of this round table. I was all about connection: by feeling included, you, therefore, feel connected.
*Based on the 23% rate of all IT professionals roles overall. Source: TechWomen