Diversity at the top: still a way to go
Progress within adland’s diversity realms feels at times like it has come on leaps and bounds.
This year alone WPP AUNZ revealed a target of 50:50 gender distribution across senior leadership positions to be reached by 2021; Initiative was recognised for gold standard LGBTI inclusion program; News Corp Australia launched a two-week campaign in support of National Reconciliation Week across metro and regional mastheads, and even brand behemoth Unilever committed to gender parity at managerial level by 2020.
Initiatives and gold stars are aplenty across many facets of adland as task forces rally prioritise challenges spots. CEOs seem to be stepping up in more areas beyond the bottom line and importantly, employees are demanding greater standards.
From age and education, to ethnic background, geography, life experiences, sexual orientation, values and cultural norms, we know diversity extends well beyond gender alone.
There’s no arguing that as a whole there is certainly a common archetype of CEO in the industry – many male CEOs of a similar age, with a similar education, social economic and career path/background.
“For me personally, given my background and family origins, I’ve never felt necessarily from this characteristic CEO mould, nor have I ever really thought about it that much,” says Michael Rebelo, CEO Publicis Groupe Australia and New Zealand.
“As a proud, non-caucasian Australian, it’s only been recently with the heightened conversation around diversity that I’ve started to think about myself as an example of diversity in leadership because of the colour of my skin.
“Over the past 22 years, I’ve been fortunate to work for a company where this has never been a barrier to my career growth. But that doesn’t mean that I’m naïve to the fact that this is a real issue in our industry, and in addition to seeing the gender balance fixed, I’d love multiculturalism to truly be represented in agency leadership and across the business as a whole.”
Rebelo says this is changing and cites the Communications Council Board, which he sits on, as a real cross-section
