Hall of Fame - Diversity and Inclusion Award

The Diversity and Inclusion Award recognises organisations that have moved beyond a one-size-fits-all approach to managing their people  and in doing so, have created genuinely equitable opportunities for everyone. This award celebrates the understanding that truly fair people practices must also be flexible, responsive, and designed with real inclusion in mind.

Past recipients have demonstrated that getting this right isn't just the right thing to do, it makes for stronger organisations, better cultures, and more engaged people. Their work serves as a benchmark for what thoughtful, people-centred practice looks like in action.

Is your organisation leading the way on D&I? If your organisation has implemented initiatives that reflect a genuine commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, we'd love to hear about it. Find out more about the upcoming awards and how to apply.

Diversity & Inclusion Award 2025

dentsu Aotearoa has received the Diversity and Inclusion Award for its Authentically Led initiative, transforming a DEI committee into an employee-driven DEI Council. This shift ensured diverse voices lead efforts to foster belonging and equity. 

The council launched five communities—Māori and Pacific Islander, Rainbow, Neurodiverse, Early Careers, and Women at Work—providing advocacy and connection. The impact: 500% growth in membership, a 5-point rise in belonging scores, and an 11% increase in employees identifying as neurodiverse, cementing dentsu as a workplace that celebrates identity and inclusion.  

Watch the Award Video 

Diversity & Inclusion Award 2024

He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.

Diversity, equity and inclusion is a challenging journey, often the responsibility of the People and Culture function within corporate environments, addressed via a linear approach. Not so at Chorus. We initiated a circuit breaker that took all of our people, including board, on an insightful and developmental journey towards real workplace inclusion. At Chorus, a D,E&I lens is applied to everything we do. We’re proud to have moved from a place of traditional comfort and majority thinking, to an environment where a growth mindset is valued.

Watch the Award Video 

Diversity & Inclusion Award 2023 

Education Perfect is driven by the mission to 'humanise technology' to advance digital transformation in K-12 education. Our technology platform has been developed by and with teachers. 

We have a complete digital toolkit for teaching and learning and we are redefining education and as we go from school to school promoting a love for learning. With 22% of EPeeps (Education Perfect team members) identified as non-native English speakers, the organisation’s Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) committee decided to introduce an initiative to support this cohort. 

Diversity & Inclusion Award 2022

The Bank of New Zealand (BNZ’s) Te Hōkaitanga won them the inaugural HRNZ Supreme Award for showing the greatest overall leadership in human resources practice. The programme, which focusses on exploring and evolving leadership capability through a Māori lens, produced many quick wins… While originally thought to be a longer-term goal; BNZ have been able to rapidly accelerate career progression, organisational transformation, and culture change through strategic and thoughtful programme design. 

Within a short amount of time, Diversity, and Inclusion Award winners the Bank of New Zealand have been able to achieve significant outcomes through Te Hōkaitanga – BNZ’s Māori leadership programme. This programme was created with the intent to accelerate the development and representation of Māori in leadership positions and build a strong pipeline of Māori talent to live their mātāpono (values), honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and futureproof BNZ as an employer and achieve our strategic ambition of being ‘The Bank for Māori’. 

Diversity & Inclusion Award 2021 

SkyCity Entertainment Group took out the Diversity and Inclusion Award for Project Nikau. The key objective of Project Nikau was to achieve their Character and Culture goals and deliver on their sustainability strategy, ultimately enhancing their social license to operate, whilst also building a pipeline of talent for SkyCity. 

Diversity & Inclusion Award 2020, in association with Edvance 

Downer New Zealand is a large and diverse company with a workforce made up of over 24% Māori. In some business units and locations, this is as high as 38%. Downer acknowledge the special place that Tangata Whenua hold in Aotearoa and strive to be an employer of choice for Māori. The company has been on a deliberate journey over the last five years to create an environment where Māori culture is recognised and celebrated and the flow-on effects from this have created a significant change in our Downer culture, from the Executive team through to our Front Line employees.

Diversity & Inclusion Award 2019, in association with Skills Consulting Group 

Meridian is one of New Zealand's largest organisations, being the fourth-largest company on the New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZX). Meridian is listed on both the NZX and the ASX. We are majority owned by the New Zealand Government. Our core business activities are the generation, trading and retailing of electricity, sale of complementary products and services, and development of electricity retailing software in New Zealand and Australia. More than1,000 people are directly employed by or contracted to us.

We want Meridian's culture to be inclusive, respectful and engaging, and representative of the society and communities in which we live and operate. To achieve this, we have D and I goals set for the next four years, agreed by the Board and regularly reported on to the Remuneration and HR Board sub-committee. To help us achieve our objectives we've changed the governance of our D and I programme. We now have an executive sponsor for each of the four diversity strands (Gender, Ethnic Diversity, Flexibility, and Inclusion), who champion initiatives across the organisation to achieve each diversity objective.

Award for Diversity and Inclusion 2018 

Globally, Vodafone has recognised diversity and inclusion is both good for business, and the right thing to do for a number of years. Vodafone New Zealand’s current diversity and inclusion strategy has evolved to attract diverse talent and aims to embed ‘brilliant, unbiased basics’ through the implementation of our inclusive policies, processes and training to create a true sense of belonging among our people. In this entry we celebrate our Vodafone Employee Networks which have played a critical, contributing role in our lead position in diversity and inclusion today.

Diversity and Inclusion Award 2017

Noel Leeming Group’s ongoing success relies on expert service and a continued ability to meet the needs and expectations of our diverse customer base. Enabling this level of service means being responsive to customer and team members’ needs, and in particular celebrating the diversity of these stakeholder groups. With the opportunity to grow the number of female leaders in the business and focus on gender diversity, the Aspire – Women in Leadership programme was born. Aimed at preparing women for frontline leadership positions, this programme challenged us to confront our bias about the role of females across the company.