Company: City of Saskatoon
Innovation: Building a Network for Diversity
Award Recognition: Honorable Mention
Diversity spending is new corporate focus, built with the intention of supporting a powerful new element in business interaction. Important to ethical business practice, the understanding of a variety of demographics, and the consolidation of a future network of valuable business connections, diversity is on the minds of most of the largest corporations worldwide. Imprint Plus is in an ideal position to participate, helping to develop a foundation for other businesses to take part.
As a women-owned business, Imprint Plus has been operating for over thirty years and has monitored this focus as it came to the forefront of corporate interaction. As a diversity business, it’s a matter of careful and strategic partnership—making diversity-related connections known and continuing to support this positive growth.
In essence, by dealing with other diversity businesses and operating under the umbrella of WEConnect and WBENC, among other affiliations, Imprint Plus can support the diversity network through outward and vocal participation in it. When connecting with and supporting larger corporations who sustain diversity budgets, such as Staples and Office Depot, they open the forum for similarly-sized companies to follow suit and further expand the network.
While Imprint Plus claims no pioneering in the promotion of diversity in business, consciously setting a contemporary precedent provides a strong foundation for the continued corporate mentality towards diversity spending. It’s a positive trend worth reinforcement, and it supports continued business goals along the way. Through the CEO’s extensive involvement with WEConnect, they try to pave the way for other women-owned businesses to succeed and grow.
Beyond the partnerships themselves, however, making known the company’s diversity status is equally important to the process. Ultimately a matter of marketing and public relations initiatives, Imprint Plus has made an effort to integrate its women-owned status and similar affiliations through standard promotions and announcements. Not only does this serve to promote their diversity status, it’s a demographically targeted ‘plug’ with ethical value that piques interest and sparks research into socially responsible budget allocation, i.e., diversity spending.
The glass ceiling is slowly dissipating for businesses like Imprint Plus, and this conscious inter-connectedness has a lot to do with their continued success.
