On Monday, Licensing International gathered some of the leading minds in licensing and retail to discuss the challenges and opportunities organizations face as they look to enhance diversity and inclusive practices in their workforces and culture.

While 30% of companies in the licensing sector currently have a D&I program in place, only 10% have budgeted financial support to those programs, according to a recent research study commissioned by Licensing International and conducted by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media.

The study will serve as a benchmark for the licensing industry as organizations around the globe tackle this moral and business imperative. One thing is clear, and that is the advantages of enhanced diversity in workplaces.

“At the end of the day, multiple points of view drive innovation, which drives dollars,” said Bryony Bouyer, Senior Vice President, Diversity & Inclusion and Multicultural Strategy at Hasbro, at the virtual event.

Executives from Petco, Encantos, Hasbro, Mad Engine and Hot Topic discussed substantive ways that organizations can enhance diversity and inclusion in their ecosystems. Here are some highlights:

• Tariq Hassan, Chief Marketing Officer at Petco: “You cannot only do this from executive-level down. If you want to tell people to bring their authentic selves to work, you’ve got to allow them to have a place to express it, and you’ve got to allow it to then influence the decisions of the company. … ‘You don’t have to ask for permission to be who you are’ – we have to create a culture that celebrates that insistence. When you put it that way, it stops being about what’s wrong, and it focuses on the energy and creativity of what’s right.”
• Eric Ueno of Hot Topic focused on the hiring process and said one key element was “paying attention to how you communicate with potential candidates – images, social posts, the words that you use, that those words reflect the goal of the diversity and inclusion and belongingness in your organization.”
• Cindy Levitt, Mad Engine said that transparency is key, in particular “making it a safe environment for everyone to talk about this very openly. … For everyone to really embrace it, we have to have an open forum internally to discuss it.”

Licensing International has also released a Diversity & Inclusion Toolkit with resources and actionable information on how to develop an effective D&I program, available for a limited time to all members of the global licensing community. Download it now here.

Members can view a recording of the full Workshop here.