Translations

Diversity and Inclusion through technology at Dolphin Digital Technologies in Canada

2. Human Rights

Diversity, equal opportunity, and fighting discrimination

Sector Telecommunication, Medias, ITC

Year 2016

Country Canada

Transmitter

Context

Dolphin Digital Technologies is an ICT consulting boutique founded in 2005 by Jamie and Scott Burton in the heart of the Canadian Silicon Valley (Ontario). It focusses on finding innovative solutions through virtualization and the correlation of business and technical analysis. It is a social venture and has a unique business strategy to differentiate itself from the sector giants such as Google or Microsoft. Their HR policy is to hire the best people solely on the basis of their intellectual property without taking into account their academic and professional background or their disabilities.

Objectives

Differentiate from its competitors in filling a gap on the market such as the employment of disabled people
Increase awareness on benefits of hiring people with disabilities
Maximize potential through technology and innovation

APPROACH

Facing difficulties to assess people without resumes, education or interview experience, Dolphin Digital Technologies developed a virtual platform to evaluate the skills and the abilities of individuals under three criteria:

Communication
Business acumen
Specific skills needed for a position (ex: Programing)

Dolphin also created a virtual office that enables their employee to work anywhere at any time.

It became part of their business to show clients the advantages of this hiring strategy and to help them implement the required tools.

Furthermore, high application rates and the difficulties to assess the potential of disabled for most companies led them to establish the Dolphin Disability Mentoring Day (DMD) in 2010. They created a matching algorithm to bring peoples’ abilities and potential work position together.

CONTRIBUTION TO COMPANY PERFORMANCE

This diversity helps them to survive and to increase their productivity.
Strong employees’ commitment as they had a 0% turnover and two sick-days in the past three years.
Dolphin Digital Technologies is well known despite no investment in marketing.

Benefits

Hiring disabled people help them being integrate into society
Dolphin’s success is an example that encourages other companies to follow with similar initiatives.
Their practices and actions led to many awards recognising their leadership and inclusion initiatives
The DMD had 4 mentees and 7 mentoring organizations the first year, now it is happening in 7 cities in three countries with 40 mentoring organizations and 75 mentees.
80% of DMD mentors mentioned an increase in confidence in working with a person with a disability,
91% expressed that DMD helps to promote the hiring of persons with disabilities as part of a diversity and inclusion strategy