Winner: ATB Financial
ATB Financial set out to increase the awareness and understanding of the state of diversity and inclusion at the company by 20 percent and create a more inclusive and safe space for its team members to have meaningful discussions about diversity. These efforts sought to reinforce ATB’s commitment to an inclusive environment where team members can bring their true selves to work each day. Five demographic groups came up as areas that required ATB’s attention in its annual engagement survey: women in leadership, indigenous people, persons with disabilities, visible minorities in leadership and LGBT people.
The company produced six informative pamphlets for each of the five demographics described earlier and one for allies to help inform ATB’s employees. Each pamphlet included a visual representation of the demographic, a team member verbatim describing their personal perspective of diversity, the company’s demographic statistics and examples of how ATB strives to be inclusive. Team member postcards were also developed to reinforce the information from the pamphlets and invited team members to share personal stories and perspectives on diversity. Because of these initiatives, 90 percent of ATB Financial’s employees that responded to an internal survey reported a stronger understanding and awareness of diversity at the company, 73 percent of team members said the materials helped facilitate meaningful conversations about diversity with leaders and peers and three new team member networks were set up that include an indigenous team member network, a visible minority network and a new Canadian team member network.