Creating Diversity that’s Good for the Business

Building authentic diversity matters, however, the challenge goes beyond focusing on labels and percentages.?

In their article for Harvard Business Review, Robin J. Ely and David explain that the learning-effective approach toward diversity, in which “people draw on their experiences as members of different groups, in terms of tasks, processes and organizational norms” is the one that truly enables companies to increase their effectiveness.

With this aim in mind, Omek and 耐克 have created a space where talent teams can meet driven professionals from bicultural backgrounds and find the right candidates a lot faster than via traditional HR channels. This tailored 4-week program consisted of 3 main parts focused on introducing shared values, skill development, and interviews with hiring managers.

Kemo Camara , Omek’s founder, explains: "My vision for the program is to show companies like Nike the potential and power of the bicultural community. In a nutshell, the program focuses on helping them authentically engage with the community, tap into this talent pool and create a talent pipeline to hire bicultural talent. We aim to make it easier for them not only to recruit biculturals but also turn them into a consumer base while contributing to a positive change in the community.?

Nathan Braga Pires , Diversity Partnership Manager at Nike, stated the company had several reasons for collaborating with Omek: "Nike as an organization wants to be recognized as a leader in advancing diverse, inclusive teams and a culture where belonging is our home court advantage. We wanted to see how we can use our digital insights and match them with our diversity actions.?

We partnered with Omek to not only identify potential talent who would be interested in our organization but also accelerate their entry into the digital environment. Our team introduced them to NIKE to help them understand how we work, why we do the things we do and also to understand in which ways we can contribute to their professional development.”

Reflecting upon completing the program, they had the following observations:

"I have been working with Nathan and Nike team on this program for over six months. We have been tailoring it in line with the needs of Nike and the bicultural community. It took a lot of trust building and collaboration to make it come together. We vetted really talented people and during the past three weeks we have seen that talent coming in, expressing themselves, overcoming their shyness and showing their skills and personality to the Nike team they met on campus. Seeing all this come to fruition has been really rewarding." — Kemo Camara

"It's been amazing. I see that [the program] has had such a positive impact not only on the candidates but also on everyone within Nike that participated in it. I feel we are making a real change here and I feel very grateful and lucky to be able to drive this initiative with Omek and Nike. As a big organisation we have as much to give as we have to receive. The amount of input and insights on what really matters for these candidates is something we did not have before and in this sense the program gave back to us.” — Nathan Pires

To find out more about how this initiative could help your company contact us at [email protected].