As a company with a gay cofounder and an Asian cofounder, we think a lot about diversity in the workplace, and how video empowers us and our partners to meet their strategic goals.

Does your company or organization bake diversity into its strategy for growth and sustainability, and does video play a central role? If so, how can videos can help achieve those goals through powerful stories and transparent communications internally and externally: reflected in your video content strategy.
Video will amplify your diversity plan, here’s where we have seen it really work for our partners.

• A culture of innovation: Make videos about each other. By working with your internal teams to share diverse ideas about what’s working and what’s not, you are giving a platform to diverse voices and communities to be heard and share their ideas with each other in an open, transparent way that empowers innovation. This is something we have done with our partners, ranging from Google’s offsite meetings to Dell’s tentpole conferences.

Because videos carry unique stories and emotions, they are uniquely effective tools to motivate teams and get them excited about your mission, vision, and values. So take advantage of the medium and go for it!

• Relevancy to a diverse society: Make videos that reflect your diverse audience. If your audience knows that you can see them for who they are, they will feel connected to your company. We worked with YouTube to create videos that helped tell the story of their diverse community of creators to show off the incredible diversity of YouTube creators on their platform. Diverse creators are very much the heart of the platform, and YouTube wanted to showcase that in their “Creators for Change” Initiative: diverse creators who are making videos to make a positive impact in the world.

Similarly – we worked with the Propel LA, a part the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation, on their Hire-Ed Initiative to help showcase career pathways for high demand jobs in the region. These are jobs some people may have never even heard of, that need to attract diverse applicants by showcasing the stories of those from all backgrounds who are doing great work in the role.

For us – since we work in the world of digital media: ideas and audiences, diverse representation of ideas is absolutely critical to the success of what we make so it resonates with audiences of all backgrounds.

• Building a collaborative culture: Give credit where credit is due. Making a video that tells the story of the success of one of your teams or teammates is one of the best ways to capture the attention of your colleagues and peers. This is something we have found to be uniquely effective when working with our corporate partners to help tell the story of new initiatives that have a variety of stakeholders. Getting a chance to literally see that everyone played a hand in the project showcases a healthy collaborative culture positioned for growth.

Consider replacing a KPI email report on a particular initiative with a video. Now – anyone who watches the video can also hear and see from the people who made it happen.

• Recruiting new team members: Make videos about your colleagues’ success. Consider going behind the scenes of your workplace to capture authentic stories – how can you use video to lift up your team members to get the word out about your unique and fun place to work? This is something that I have seen Wistia do particularly well from their Wistia Studios HQ. For early stage companies, you can even work with innovative organizations like BuiltinLA (which has SEO driven company profile page listings for cities across the US) to host video content on a page that showcases unique elements of your company so that more people can discover the exciting place that you’ve created to work.

If finding the best talent is important to your organization, video needs to be a part of that recruitment strategy. People want to see and hear from the leaders of the organization, as well as their employees, and immediate network of partners. When I asked someone who had just started working with us why she took the job, she said she had seen a video that had been made where I talked about the mission and values of our organization that inspired her to take the leap.
So whether it is innovation, collaboration, consumer representation to drive customer loyalty or engagement, or recruitment, video is your secret weapon for empowering diverse representation. What you say matters, and how you say it matters too – but if people can’t see and hear you say it when they want to by searching for your organization inside or out, you probably haven’t said it with video.