Moments Lab – Diversity and Inclusion to fuel Innovation in the media, entertainment, and broadcast industry
Morgane Dalbergue, Technical Recruiter, Moments Lab
In recent years, we have seen businesses across many sectors re-evaluate their workplace to create a more diverse and inclusive environment for everyone. This initiative is crucial for all industries, and the media, entertainment, and broadcast industry is no exception. Historically a male-dominated space, it remains unbalanced to this day. However, change is happening, and there is cause for hope as the industry looks to become more diverse in terms of gender, disability, ethnicity, and more. Encouraging this shift is vital to creating and maintaining an environment where everyone feels valued, included, and represented. By fostering diversity and inclusion, companies in the media, entertainment, and broadcast sector can not only enrich teams with a variety of perspectives and experiences, but also create a more equitable and welcoming workplace for all.
There are several reasons why a more diverse and inclusive workplace is critical for fueling growth, and multiple ways in which businesses in the media, entertainment, and broadcast space can implement this in their company cultures. Here are just a few examples:
Why Diversity and Inclusion matter
The evidence is clear: diverse teams consistently outperform homogenous ones, and in an industry defined by innovation, this fact is more pertinent than ever. A recent McKinsey research report found that companies with diverse leadership teams continue to be associated with higher financial returns. In 2023, those companies in the top quartile of ethnic representation had a 39% greater likelihood for financial outperformance.
To drive creativity and innovation to their fullest extent and minimize biases, the media, entertainment, and broadcast industry requires a diverse array of perspectives and backgrounds. Remaining within ‘comfortable’, familiar circles risks creating an insular bubble that fails to adequately reflect the complexities of our world and its rich diversity.
This imperative for diversity becomes even more pronounced as the use of multimodal AI becomes ubiquitous. It is essential to have a team representing varied perspectives to effectively train and evolve the AI, ensuring that critical criteria such as skin color, educational background, disabilities, and more, are not overlooked. By embracing diversity, companies involved in media, entertainment, and broadcasting can enhance their teams’ performance while also ensuring that products are truly inclusive and reflective of the multi-faceted world we live in.
Strategies for Improving Diversity and Inclusion
There are several ways companies can foster a more diverse and inclusive workplace. One solution is pushing the needle on equal pay. By keeping an employee salary grid based on market data and re-evaluating it each year, companies can work toward eradicating potential pay gaps and ensuring consistently fair remuneration.
Actively inviting minorities and underrepresented individuals to pursue opportunities in the tech sector is also important. Company executives must take decisive action to facilitate this, implementing measures such as inclusive job offers and recruitment strategies — i.e. blind applications — accessible application processes, and managerial training. By proactively removing barriers, the media, entertainment, and broadcast industry can cultivate a more equitable and bias-free workforce.
Furthermore, embracing a genuine remote work culture is key, as it not only alleviates stress for working mothers — who, historically, have not had the adequate support in place for a work-family balance — but also provides individuals with disabilities a more accommodating work setup, free from the challenges of commuting, or unwelcoming or inaccessible office environments. Moreover, initiatives like menstrual leave are essential in acknowledging and accepting the needs of individuals who menstruate, breaking down societal taboos surrounding this, particularly in regions like France where such taboos are pronounced.
Additionally, taking concrete action to support working mothers so that they can continue to thrive in their careers is essential in promoting diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Supporting initiatives such as teleworking, paid maternity and paternity leave, and adopting working times and meeting hours that don’t exclude parent employees from participating in important company meetings and decisions go a long way to make workers feel valued, and demonstrate that the needs of the business can be met just as well — if not better — when employees’ needs are met first. Likewise, it’s also important to conduct regular management training to increase support skills and discrimination awareness on the issue of parenthood and related leave.
The future is bright With DEI initiatives
The media, entertainment, and broadcast industry is still a long way from reaching balance, especially from a gender equality standpoint. For example, at Moments Lab, we have noticed that 98% of job applicants for technical roles such as solutions architect, senior front-end engineer, and machine learning engineer are male. For marketing, HR, and sales roles, the ratio is a little more even at about a 66% male, 34% female. This is small but noteworthy evidence that more needs to be done. Thankfully, the industry continues to push for this balance, with more companies taking note and having greater awareness of what they can do to address the current lack of diversity.
To continue this trajectory of success and expansion, prioritizing diversity and inclusion is paramount. Ultimately, companies must embrace talent from diverse backgrounds, beyond their immediate sectors. Investing in transferable skills, establishing comprehensive training programs, and implementing specialized bootcamps for newcomers are proactive measures that will attract fresh talent to the field. By nurturing a wider pool of specialists, the industry can cultivate a rich workforce, encompassing individuals from various gender identities, disabilities, non-binary orientations, and diverse cultural backgrounds. This inclusive approach will not only enrich the sector but also works on a personal level and paves the way for a more equitable and dynamic future.
