Reimagining Omni-Culture in Digital Product Design & Development.

In creating a full-fledged customer experience, omni-culture is a must at Pàu. When we don't have diversity on our radar, we miss out on potential customers, in addition we miss out on digital talent to make a difference.

Pieterjan Bouten, Showpad opens up the conversation and frees up resources to foster an inclusive work culture in his company.  Carole Lamarque CEO of 'Duval Union innovative marketing' puts a mirror in front of us and begins a sincere conversation on systemic discrimination in companies with the questions: How homogeneous is the management team? How inclusive is the recruitment process, retention program, development plan, and promotion process?  

I am following the debate with great interest.  At Pàu, 1 in 4 of our 120+ employees has a migration background, often of the second or third generation.  I realize all too well that there still is a lot of work to be done.  However, the opportunity in digital is legion.  I see three interesting advantages to living an omni-culture policy:

Customer Experience 

As a digital company, I am convinced that we need to embrace diversity. It is particularly powerful to understand our customers' lives better from a well-considered approach in this environment. Our customers VRT, Flemish Government and City of Antwerp have issued a clear diversity policy. It is therefore appropriate for us to support these organizations from our own insights, widely supported by multi-cultural experiences of and within the team. Even more important is the awareness that inclusive collaboration with and for our customers starts in the workplace. A digital project is therefore an excellent opportunity to make employees with different backgrounds shine.

Talent Development

It also allows us, in a market where skilled resources in digital are rather limited, to discover new talent. We need to focus more on actively seeking out more diverse employees and recruit more broadly.  Where, in my view, it is an opportunity to become acquainted with initiatives such as SATT   (Seat at the table with Youssef Kobo & Hassan Al Hilou), but also other promising and self-confident youth organizations that can play a connecting role here. However, in my opinion, we still know too little about these initiatives.  Also in the further training and coaching on the job, there are opportunities to stimulate partnerships between education, digital learning paths such as Becode, the government and digital companies. 

Internationalization

Our clients with ambitions to expand internationally also ask for our advice to create a digital strategy and vision in new markets.  The solution goes beyond the development and translation of digital commercial business communications, building multilingual websites, webshops or outlining a Social Media Plan.  The key question is 'Who are your customers in your new markets'?  We are seeing that digital companies present in cities like London, Berlin, Paris, Stockholm and Amsterdam are doing a better job of providing a more targeted, diverse and broad-based response.  It is precisely these cities that are leading the way in their integration policies.  In addition, it is also these cities that are fully engaged in stimulating digital entrepreneurship in their local digital ecosystem. (source: European Digital City Index).