RWI Centres Inclusion and Diversity with the 50/30 Challenge

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The 50-30 Challenge

The 50-30 Challenge is an initiative created by the Government of Canada for businesses and diverse organizations across the country. The goal of the program is to challenge Canadian organizations to increase the representation and inclusion of diverse groups in their workplace in the interest of “highlighting the benefits of giving all Canadians a seat at the table.” 

The initiative challenges corporations, SMEs, non-profits, charities, and post-secondary institutions to achieve and maintain two employment goals in their Executive Boards and Senior Management: 50% gender parity and 30% representation of under-represented groups.


RWI’s 50-30 Philosophy

RUNWITHIT Synthetics has proudly worked to facilitate a diverse and equitable workplace for all individuals since 2014. Joining the 50-30 Challenge was a natural decision for us. RWI prides itself on the active consideration of intersectionality and how it applies to minority and discriminated communities across Canada and has accepted the Government of Canada’s challenge to pave a more equitable and inclusive path forward. 

RWI Synthetics is a woman-led Aboriginal business with an employee composition of 70% women. Diversity, inclusivity, and accessibility are built into our hiring and human resource practices. To ensure intersectional thinking occurs throughout the organization, every employee at RWI is required to complete the Gender-Based Analysis Plus (GBA+) certification. GBA+ is an analytical process used to assess how diverse groups of women, men, and non-binary people may experience policies, programs, and initiatives. The “plus” in GBA+ acknowledges that GBA goes beyond biological (sex) and socio-cultural (gender) differences, recognizing the multiple identity factors that intersect to make us who we are: race, ethnicity, religion, age, and mental or physical disability.

To RWI, on an organizational level, the 50-30 is about challenging the community to actively commit to diversity and inclusion and create a shared standard for representation to benefit organizations and individuals alike. On a societal level, we fully believe that a healthy and vibrant society is one that considers and infuses diversity, inclusivity, and accessibility not only in its social composition but also in its infrastructure, economics, and policy. This belief is what drives our overall mission as a company. 

“As a Synthetic Modelling company, we can bring to life emergent intersections between humans, technologies, systems and futures. Designing systems that address the needs of everyone is crucial to advancing true resilience and sustainability and making the world a better place to live for all. The unique and shared aspects of who we are, interact with situations and surroundings differently, and in many cases, disproportionately and historically; this difference has too often been excluded from research and data analysis. This leaves a significant gap that can explain the inequities in current policies, service design, mobility systems, and even access to energy and emergency response. At RWI, we work hard to account for this gap in each model we create by making the marginalized populations visible, allowing decision-makers to view how all groups in society interact with their infrastructure, economic and policy initiatives and investments. This fully allows diversity, inclusivity and accessibility to be factored into the decision-making process.”

- Myrna Bittner

Founder and CEO, RUNWITHIT Synthetics

Why should you join RWI in the 50-30 Challenge? 

Joining the 50-30 Challenge is a step towards furthering inclusivity, diversity and accessibility. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that leveraging diversity and inclusion can lead to competitive advantage in a multitude of ways, such as increased satisfaction and engagement, greater access to more diverse markets, reduced risk, or higher revenue as a consequence of bringing multiple perspectives and experiences to the conversation. 

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Boston Consulting Group (BCG) conducted an innovation and leadership diversity study across 1700 companies spanning eight countries in 2018. Their analysis examined six dimensions of diversity among employees occupying leadership roles at the management level, including; gender, age, nation of origin, career path, industry background, and education. The study found a statistically significant correlation between the diversity of management teams and overall innovation, with innovation being measured as the percentage of total revenue from products and services launched in the past three years.

These findings are supported by McKinsey & Company’s 2017 diversity analysis, which demonstrated companies with executives in the top gender diversity quartile were 21% more likely to experience above-average financial profitability in the fourth quartile, and companies in the top cultural and ethnic percentile had a 33% likelihood to outperform on EBIT margin.

“As a Synthetic Modelling company, we can bring to life emergent intersections between humans, technologies, systems and futures. ”
— Founder, CEO Myrna Bittner

Accomplishing diversity and inclusion not only helps organizations advance their goals but also makes the world a better place for all to live.
Join us in the 50/30 Challenge!

 


References

  • Armstrong, C., Flood, P. C., Guthrie, J. P., Liu, W., MacCurtain, S., & Mkamwa, T. (2010), The impact of diversity and equality management on firm performance: beyond high-performance work systems. Human Resource Management, 49(6), 977-998.





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