Making diversity and inclusion one of our strategic areas of focus is not only the right thing to do, it is one of the ways we will continue to lead the CRE industry into the future. Simply put, diversity and inclusion make us better. They strengthen our business by enriching our culture, helping us deepen relationships among our people and accelerating success for our clients.
It’s Part of Our DNA
At Colliers, championing diversity and inclusion is not a commitment we take lightly. We pride ourselves in attracting, developing, and retaining top, diverse talent from around the world. As part of that, we are on a progressive journey to foster an environment in which everyone at Colliers, regardless of background, gender, ethnicity, age, religion, sexual orientation, or experiences feels respected and comfortable bringing their authentic selves to do their best work.
Our Global Leadership is committed to ensuring that our people in every country, at every level, every day can come into the workplace and feel like they truly belong. We hold a collective commitment to the following priorities:
Establishing processes to continually assess and track our diversity and inclusion progress
We will continue to implement qualitative measurements designed to capture our people’s experiences, as well as quantitative measurements to anchor those results and monitor progress.
Understanding and confronting unconscious biases
We are expanding our unconscious bias education to help our people recognize and minimize their learned biases. As leaders and role models at Colliers, we are holding ourselves accountable to understanding our biases, and interrupting when we see others engaging in biased behaviour.
Creating a trusting environment where meaningful, complex, and sometimes difficult conversations can take place
We will continue to create and maintain environments where our people feel comfortable reaching out to their colleagues and encourage our people to move outside of their comfort zones to learn about the experiences and perspectives of others.
Establishing relationships with external organizations to help us learn best practices
We have partnered with the BlackNorth initiative in Canada to learn best practices and take action in supporting underrepresented groups. As part of this partnership, we have pledged to create conditions to support the success of members of the BIPOC community at Colliers.
Making tangible progress towards executive gender parity
Our North American mentorship program that was focused on the promotion and advancement of women has expanded to become more inclusive and is now open to all Colliers people across different demographic groups. Colliers also provides annual scholarships for young female professionals to attend CREW training, events, and the annual multi-day conference.
Employee Resource Groups
We believe our Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are critical to achieving a truly inclusive culture that will empower employees to be their authentic whole selves and form a true sense of belonging in the workplace. Led by our employees, ERGs will foster more creative thinking and help us better serve our clients and community.
Promoting Supplier Diversity
We are committed to increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion within Colliers and across procurement practices to foster built environments that are inclusive and engaged. As a major purchaser of goods and services, Colliers recognizes the tremendous impact it has on the supplier community where it operates and conversely – the supplier community's impact on the products and services that Colliers delivers.
Colliers encourages our people to seek out supplier diversity, and encourages submissions, bids, and proposals from diverse suppliers. This allows potential suppliers to bid and promotes competition in the supply base, which can improve product quality, gain access to competitive offerings, and drive culturally diverse business interactions.
By providing more sourcing options, inclusiveness can also make the supply chain resilient and agile. To help identify diverse suppliers, the following organizations provide certification to suppliers:
