nib earns first CQ Tick for cultural intelligence

nib earns first CQ Tick for cultural intelligence and capability

nib will today become one of the first corporate organisations in New Zealand to be awarded the “CQ Tick”, reflecting the health insurer’s commitment to exploring and responding to gender and cultural diversity both within the workplace and their customer base.

The CQ (Cultural Quotient) Tick is a formal certification by the Superdiversity Centre on Law, Policy and Business to recognise the progress that organisations are making to recognise, respect and improve cultural capability within their own structure and in terms of customer facing practices.

nib Chief Executive Officer, Rob Hennin, said the health insurer was proud and humbled to receive the CQ Tick, adding that the CQ journey had made a significant positive impact on the organisation and its employees.

“We’ve always valued cultural capability, but the CQ audit conducted by the Superdiversity Centre showed just how diverse we are, and demonstrated that we have huge potential to be a high-performing CQ company,” Mr Hennin said.

“It revealed some really interesting facts about us as a workforce. For instance we found that we have over 50 ethnicities, we speak 50 languages and almost half of us were born outside New Zealand. We also have a high number of millennials with 42% of our employees falling into this demographic,” he added

Over the past year, nib worked with the Centre to measure its employee diversity, identify gaps in cultural awareness and capability, recognise leaders who are capable of growing the company’s CQ and to promote opportunities for these leaders to champion diversity within the workplace.

Mr Hennin said the programme was also a great way to add value to nib’s business by helping the organisation to understand future business challenges as the New Zealand market continues to reflect changing demographics within the country.

“By recognising the benefits of diversity within our workplace we’ve been able to identify our internal capacity to engage more meaningfully with our customers, especially those from diverse ethnic backgrounds and needs, in ways which are relevant to them,” Mr Hennin said.

“It has opened our eyes to the possibilities that are available to organisations like nib that are committed to being genuinely customer-responsive in this age of increasing diversity,” he said.

Chair of the Superdiversity Centre, Mai Chen, said nib was quick to recognise the potential benefits from committing to a programme to explore, identify and understand the extent to which diversity exists within their organisation, and to provide its employees with opportunities to grow and develop that diversity through training.

“An organisation like nib which commits to a formal programme to enhance and grow its own diversity is recognising the need to pioneer new strategies to succeed in New Zealand’s rapidly changing client and staffing demographic environment.

“I have been impressed with nib’s willingness to lead and to be open and transparent about their diversity journey and to commit to fulfilling the potential of that diversity for their employees through training,” said Mrs Chen.

“Understanding the diversity that already exists within nib has enabled the company to support its employees as they develop their own potential and become even more valuable members of the nib team,” she said.

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