Cisco HR: Achieve more together

Overview

An inclusive and diverse workforce is essential to the success of any large organisation especially one that is operating on a global scale. For Cisco, Inclusion and Diversity (I&D) is intrinsic to its culture. However, the success of I&D itself requires continual awareness and propagation throughout the ‘ecosystem’ of the organisation. That means communicating and sharing I&D practice and processes to current and prospective employees, customers, partners, suppliers and other stakeholders and commentators.

Working with Cisco’s Inclusion and Diversity team, The Rubicon Agency developed thought leadership and behavioural content to educate and inspire internal leaders and external influencers.

Messaging

Cisco achieve a culture and behavioural change to ‘Achieve more together’. Whilst it’s easy to view inclusion and diversity as simply a ‘tick-box’ exercise, Cisco needed to convey the breadth, depth and value of their approach. By addressing inclusion as more than ‘the right thing to do’ and diversity as more than a ‘nice to have’, we were able to focus on real-world advantages and the business benefits that both can deliver.

We also backed up our claims with researched facts and stats. It was also essential to make the campaign actionable as well as aspirational by encouraging the audience to explore additional content showing further evidence of Cisco’s leadership approach to I&D.

Meaning

I&D can mean many different things to different people. So it was essential for The Rubicon Agency to create messaging, content and assets which would resonate equally well across a wide-ranging audience of influencers and decision makers. It was also important to recognise that anyone can be both a beneficiary and an enabler of inclusion and diversity. The key was striking the right balance between idealism and pragmatism.

Mojo

The risk with a subject like I&D is that you can quickly turn off the audience if you begin to sound pious. Likewise, if it’s too idealistic without a process that people can follow, then it can also dampen interest. Authenticity is essential and that’s why we chose to tell it the way that it is for Cisco – which also happens to be the way that people want to hear about the personal and professional value of inclusion and diversity. By not overloading assets such as the ‘awareness’ video, we were able to make a human story spark human interest.

The video also created the impetus for viewers to take a deeper dive into the more detailed aspects of Cisco’s Inclusion and Diversity practice.

Manifestation

We created a short awareness video which set the scene for the audience to explore other campaign assets appropriate to their specific interests in I&D and Cisco.

By creating an Infographic, we were able to distil key facts and information about I&D and highlight aspects such as the need to enable a multi-generational workforce.

As an evolution of this campaign, presentations were also created to enable customers and Cisco sales people to understand the inextricable link between I&D best-practice and the provision of collaborative technology.