Harvard awarded full Blueprint status

We are so proud to have been awarded full Blueprint status, building on our Blueprint Ally status secured in 2020. It reflects the hard work and investment we have put into our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) journey, and the culture that exists at the agency today.

While we will take a moment to celebrate this achievement, we know there is still much work to be done.

It is undoubtedly encouraging to see the business world take DE&I more seriously these days, but we all know this is long and difficult path – especially in the comms sector, where representation remains poor.

With continued investment and commitment from our leadership team and engagement from the wider business across all areas and levels, our own DE&I journey continues to make progress right across the board. It is fair to say, however, that we would not have achieved what we have without the framework, structure, and guidance from The Blueprint around race and ethnicity.

When we first applied for The Blueprint back in 2020, we knew we had a lot of work to do in ensuring we were providing a safe and inspiring environment for Black, Asian, mixed race, and ethnic minority colleagues.

The framework and structure laid to bare some of the significant issues we and our industry faced – from recruitment processes and retention, through to representation and training. As we acted to address these, we knew we could only achieve so much in a short space or time and that the cultural growth we wanted would take time.

Over the last couple of years, we have worked so hard to take our Ally status forward. We have, for example, overhauled our onboarding programme, undertaken a series of training sessions around race at work, are one of just a few agencies to report its gender and ethnic pay gap data, and hosted internal panel sessions around major race-related issues. Simply put, we viewed Ally status as a sign that we’d made some progress, but we moved on quickly and focused on continuing that.

This has seen representation of Black, Asian, and ethnic minority talent rise to 31% across Harvard, with 97% of our employees believing Harvard has a positive culture regarding DE&I.

Of course, there remains so much more to be done.

Our leadership team remains absolutely committed to our DE&I journey and The Blueprint. It is a journey that will never end but will always be fundamental to the agency’s development and culture.

This is not a time to rest on our laurels, but to double down on our progress and support the wider industry to do better and be better.