About Balance for Better Business.
In the era of Time’s Up and #MeToo, Balance for Better Business was set up to be an independent business-led Review Group established by the government to improve gender balance in senior leadership in Ireland.
The Review Group is looking after the gender mix within the governance and senior management of companies in Ireland and calling for a reform of the system to ensure that more women have a play on board level and senior leadership teams.The Review Group has set progressive targets to 2023 for the achievement of improved gender balance on the boards and senior management of these companies.
A Challenging Brief.
CDG were selected by The Department of Justice to develop, design and implement a public identity befitting such a high-level public organisation with important social and business objectives.
Our challenge was to create a strong, bold and powerful brand that reflected the status and importance of The Review Group and its mission – creating a level playing field and allowing companies to reap the benefits of having board members and senior managers with diverse skill sets and experience.
The task was to build a brand and supply supporting marketing material including a website and online presence that would represent not just the review group, but also everyone with the same beliefs and fighting for the same objectives.
A brand built for better balance and performance.
CDG understood that Balance for Better Business’ primary objective was to strengthen women’s voice at a senior management level in Ireland. Using this as inspiration, CDG created a new brand – Balance for Better Business – which focuses on improving the gender balance amongst boards and senior management.
In developing an effective brand and identity, it was important for CDG to understand the approach being taken by the Group in the pursuit of its gender balance objectives. We spoke with a sample number of large organisations in order to grasp their ‘take’ on gender balance with regard to recruitment and promotion. The results of our research concluded that an inclusive and informative approach was the best fit with regard to communication with the Group’s target audience.
Our development of a new identity builds on this by focusing on the “why?”, asking the question “why are we doing this?” and then answering the question with the simple idea – Balance is Better for Business through improving performance.
The logo developed reflects a conversational nature, mirroring the Group’s position as a catalyst for debate on greater female representation in Irish business.
In order to maximise the Group’s online presence, CDG designed a modern, inclusive and user-friendly website. We wanted to deliver an open and informative platform that, through the use of news, analysis, and statistics, would successfully communicate the Group’s ideas ambitions and progress.
The website structure is clear and concise and points easily to the workings of The Review Group – this is who we are, this is what we do, this is the progress we have made and these are our further ambitions.
Our online development was supported with the implementation of social media strategy and design, specifically utilising Twitter and LinkedIn to further engage and inform the business community.
In addition, a full suite of offline brand collateral and guidelines were produced to support and uniformity in appearance and approach.
Closing the Gender Gap
Balance for Better Business set actionable and progressive targets for companies listed on Euronext Dublin and for private companies in Ireland to encourage them to address the gender balance issue on their boards and leadership teams as a matter of priority.
Following the launch of The Review Group and implementation of our branding and online platform, 41% of appointments to listed company boards were female, 31% for large Irish privately owned companies.
Significant progress at board level with a 13-point increase in female appointments in the ISEQ 20 boards since the Group’s launch in 2018.
The gap between Ireland and the EU has narrowed significantly from 8.1% to 0.9% in gender leadership balance since the establishment of Balance for Better Business. Ireland is now only slightly behind the EU average.
Our ranking amongst EU countries has also improved. Ireland is up to 12th from 17th place despite coming relatively late to the implementation of a focused initiative on improving gender balance on company boards.
CDG is proud to be associated with Balance for Better Business and we hope that our brand and online initiatives have gone some way to enabling greater awareness, creating more effective communication and contributing the ongoing success of this organisation.
Services Provided
- Brand Strategy
- Web Design & Development
- Maintenace
- Brand Collateral
- Digital Marketing
- Ecommerce
- Digital Advertising
- Stationery and Print Collateral
- Seo & PPC
