These Organizations Are Advocating For Diversity in the Workplace in Brazil

Diversity is a good business. According to McKinsey’s 2020 report, “Diversity wins: How inclusion matters,” diverse work teams outperform and are more profitable than their less diverse peers. Many Brazilian organizations know this and have been fighting for minorities’ employability for years.

Daniele Mattos created Indique Uma Preta, which translates as “Refer a Black Woman,” in 2016. Mattos, who worked at a creative agency at the time, felt compelled to create a safe space after working on campaigns for a cosmetics brand that promoted itself as diverse. However, only white people worked on its campaigns. According to “Potências Invisíveis,” a report conducted by Indique in 2020, though Black women represent the biggest demographic group in Brazil, they face the worst labor conditions, including fewer opportunities, underpayment, and work conditions that don’t comply with labor laws.

Mattos started Indique Uma Preta as a Facebook group where Black women could exchange job opportunities. Through the group, Mattos met Amanda Abreu and Verônica Dudiman, who became business partners and transformed Indique Uma Preta beyond the digital world. The team started organizing events where Black women talked to other Black women about the challenges and opportunities to navigate the labor market. Indique Uma Preta also offers free professional courses; community members can get mentored by experts who want to help Black women go further.

Then, in 2020, after the murder of George Floyd and the worldwide protests it ignited, many companies reached out to the leaders of Indique Uma Preta, asking them to talk about race within their organizations. “It seemed like people realized racism existed just at that moment,” Abreu told the FBomb.

In response to this growing demand for training and information regarding racism in the workplace, the three women realized that in addition to providing a platform for Black professionals, they also needed to support people’s and businesses’ interest in creating more diverse workforces. They launched INDQ, a “consulting services company that wants to talk to the labor market,” Abreu said. INDQ provides services like recruiting, conducting research and internal surveys, communication initiatives, and custom-made activities for each client. Over 70 companies, including huge players such as Spotify, Google, and Pinterest, have already worked with INDQ to make their work environments more diverse and safe for Black people. At the same time, the group continues to impact over 60,000 people who follow them across their social media channels.

However, the work is not without challenges. Abreu told the FBomb that some company leaders are only interested in appearing diverse, not having honest conversations about and changing internal structures. “It requires maturity to be able to have a conversation and do something serious about the matter,” she told the FBomb. Moreover, many companies don’t realize that once they hire more diverse people, they must also give them opportunities to grow and build a prejudice-free environment where they feel comfortable. “It’s our biggest challenge today to make companies realize they need to do this self-awareness exercise and decide to invest in changing things,” she added.

Another organization promoting employability among minorities is Transempregos, a project born in 2013 when a group of diverse Brazilian professionals, including trans-identifying lawyer Márcia Rocha, got together to discuss what they could do to make transgender people’s lives better. Employability was one of the topics that came up since, according to one report, almost 90% of trans women and “travestis” in the country rely on prostitution as their only source of income. Rocha knew from her own experience as well that trans people who have great CVs excite recruiters or hiring managers — but those gatekeepers may change their minds after meeting in person, or the candidate’s trans identity is otherwise revealed.

“My main argument for the CEOs is that they are losing great professionals due to prejudice,” Rocha added. “It can’t be good for business, can it?”

And so Rocha and other professionals created the Transempregos portal, where transgender folks could upload their CVs and signal their availability for work. Soon after this launch, the founders added a new feature that allowed companies to post their job openings so trans professionals could apply directly.

“The trans person gets frustrated,” Rocha told the FBomb. “They go after a job; they don’t get it. They go after another; they don’t get it. They get demotivated. That’s why having a space where you know you’ll be accepted is super helpful.”

But Rocha soon realized the platform wasn’t enough — that it was also necessary to address systemic issues in companies to increase the employment rates of trans folks. In 2015, Rocha attended and participated in the Fórum LGBTI+, an event where CEOs and LGBTI+ activists talked about and agreed on a series of commitments for making labor more diverse and egalitarian. One of the points they signed was creating affirmative action for hiring more trans people. At first, only nine companies signed this agreement, but now over 130 have made this commitment.

Now over 1,900 companies, including huge tech and telecommunications multinationals such as IBM and Sony, post job opportunities in Transempregos; around 20 new positions are published daily. More than 20,000 transgender professionals are actively looking for new opportunities on the platform and also enrolling in free courses promoted there. “It has probably been around three years that we haven’t actively looked for new partners. The companies are coming after us now,” Rocha said. Still, when their partners want to organize an awareness-raising presentation or workshop for their staff, Rocha and her partners are happy to give a hand.

According to Rocha, companies that have hired through Transempregos gave very positive feedback. Sectors that have difficulty finding and retaining staff are learning via the platform that there is an untapped pool of talent just waiting for an opportunity. Thousands of trans professionals have been hired thanks to the portal, and many are supporting their trans staff on the job because, as Rocha put it, “you can’t just hire. You need to include, encourage, train, etc.”

Organizations such as Transempregos and Indique Uma Preta are working to create a world where everyone can feel accepted and have the same opportunities as the one next door. As Rocha put it, “We need society to see us in a different way.”