Adland Diversity & Inclusion Index 2021: M&C Saatchi Indonesia

M&C Saatchi Indonesia made a lasting mark on our judges through its championing of “Diversity of Thought” through gender equality. Founded in 2018, the creative agency exploded from just three co-founders with an aligned vision to a whopping 110 member staff over the past three years. This allowed for people of different walks of life to be part of the M&C Saatchi Indonesia family. In fact, the agency strongly believes that in the creative industry, it is the difference in ideas that brings a work to life with more divergent and richer ideas.

“Diversity here is not closed to male and female, but in all social aspects. We believe this diversity will bring us more development than just being stuck in closed-minded similarity,” said M&C Saatchi Indonesia.  So, diversity and inclusion became one of the key cornerstones of its business.

While gender wasn’t the only component of its championing of the diversity of thought, the agency still said that it is one of the biggest social issues facing many firms in the country. The Global Gender Gap Index 2020 placed Indonesia in rank 85 out of 153 countries despite the country being made up of 50.21% male and 49.79% female citizens. As such, the agency incorporated gender equality and diversity in its recruitment process itself. Alongside recruitment, it also put in place an equality of pay benchmarking without gender discrimination. To appreciate the strong women in the office, M&C Saatchi also takes them to a lunch of their choice on International Women Day.

The agency also actively takes part in the “The Shine for Women Programme” which is a global programme for building balanced organisations where men and women coexist sharing power, responsibility and challenges. M&C Saatchi Indonesia was proud to participate in the programme, with the vision of building a healthier, diverse and inclusive organisation. In a series of virtual sessions, the agency’s president director, Anish Daryani, undertook training on policies and practices pertaining to build a balanced agency culture. Sensitive issues such as maternity leave, nursing leave, parenting-planning leave were discussed, and policies were drafted based on those.

The agency also sent its happiness manager who handles HR and administrative tasks, Yoli Anastasia, to experience the Shine Programme in London herself in 2019. With her first-hand training, she is now tasked with making the organisational policies championing diversity from HR and admin perspectives that make M&C Saatchi Indonesia a happier place to work in for men and women alike. In supporting work and life balance, the agency also provides special leaves to each of its talents as paid leave. For new parents, special requests are often taken into consideration and for female employees, menstrual leaves are always on the table without the deduction from their annual leaves.

M&C Saatchi has 51% male and 49% female talents spread across its departments. In 2020 the number of management level staff changed, with 40.91% of managerial and above level being male and 59.09% being females.

“With a diverse gender, religion, sexuality, age and ethnicity it helps us to become creative and lead us to think out of the box. That’s exactly how we land more and more clients and bigger than ever projects,” said the agency.

To read the rest of the agency initiatives in the Adland Diversity & Inclusion Index 2021, click here.