We are entrepreneurs. We are colleagues. We are a team. We are all equal. We are Equality Check
Equality Check was founded because although diversity and inclusion have long been on the agenda in the business world, many organizations have traditionally struggled with how to effectively tackle an often sensitive issue. Talk and discussion would usually fail to materialize as real change.
But the challenge has not been a lack of will to change, but the complexity of creating positive, long-term change in large organizations. And our experience has told us time and again that there are usually three common factors contributing to businesses struggling with equality and how to create change:
1. Identify: We don’t know what data to collect Which data is the most meaningful or useful? How does data collection work in the context of equality?
2. Understand: We have knowledge gaps internally when trying to analyse and interpret data Workplace equality is a specialist topic that can rapidly evolve with social, political and regulartory changes. Keeping up with the latest in best practices and research is a challenge.
3. Act: We don’t know which actions will actually be effective There's no one size solution that fits all, but how do we know what will actually work for us? How do we get leadership to drive change from the top down?
From social movement to technology platform.
In 2015, after arriving back from attending the UN women’s conference in New York, Equality Check cofounder, Marie Louise Lunde bumped into an old school friend, Isabelle Ringes. In their professional lives - Marie as a recently qualified surgeon, and Isabelle as a tech entrepreneur - both had personal experiences of the entrenched stereotypes and gender bias still in powerful effect within traditionally male dominated fields. In sharing their experiences with one another, they came to a realisation that instead of waiting for change to happen, they could engineer it themselves.
They started with a hugely successful youth-led social campaign movement in their native Norway to raise awareness and discussions around gender stereotypes and unconscious bias. With momentum building, the pair became respected authorities in Norway on workplace equality, becoming trusted advisors for CEOs and politicians, and eventually publishing a book together “Hvem spandere? Fordommene du ikke visste du hadde” (Who’s paying? Biases you didn’t know you had).
In 2017 they raised funds for a research project together with the Norwegian government’s Centre for Research on Gender Equality (CORE) to look at how to improve diversity in the workplace. During their research and consulting work for businesses, they observed two powerful truisms:
(i) Major cultural and systemic changes within organisations are almost always fuelled by better data and increased transparency. In business, what gets measured, gets managed.
(ii) Positivity works. Their focus on positive, inclusive and fact-based communications was very important in capturing wider attention.
Reinventing the workplace,
– powered by passion, amplified by data
Logically, with their backgrounds in science and tech, Marie and Isabel were at the forefront of understanding the potential of data-driven technology to help companies tackle workplace equality.
Equality Check is built to help organizations create more equal workplaces for all. By combining data-driven technology with third-party domain expertise in a single platform, organizations are empowered to go beyond superficial measurements, and accelerate real change.
We help you collect the right data and analyze it, to objectively to understand both clear and invisible patterns of bias in your organization, and offer practical resources with evidence-based solutions to help you move from insight to action.
Everyone in your team deserves the same chance to shine, and that’s why we built Equality Check. Let’s build more equal workplaces, together.
