We proudly present our ‘Your story counts’ campaign. If you have a remarkable accomplishment that you want to share, or if you know someone who went through an inspiring journey, we want to hear about it! Click on the link below to visit the campaign website and share your story with us!
At WeAreOpen we experienced the immense impact of what it means when business leaders lead by example and when companies change from competing to cooperating to initiate positive change on important social issues.
At WeAreOpen we use this method that has become our signature: through the OPEN Campaign Model we design campaign ideas, and we invite hundreds of organizations, our Community members to participate and stand together for openness in public. For example, we launched such campaigns that brought together 100+ business leaders to stand together for LGBTQ+ inclusion and gender equality, and inspire others to join them as well.
In 2019 Pride month the signatures of 100 business leaders were featured in the print issue of Forbes Hungary with a joint statement expressing their support for LGBTQ+ inclusion and participating in the Budapest Pride march. In 2019 100+ business leaders, women and men stood together for gender equality at the workplace in the December issue of ELLE Hungary.
We are grateful for the OPEN Community, and we would kindly encourage others to join our future campaigns! We believe that visible gestures can make positive change happen – we inspire others to do so as well.
For Gender Equality at Workplaces
In Hungary roughly half of all employees would not choose to have a female boss or subordinate, according to a study carried out by Gemius and WeAreOpen in summer 2014. Global researches studies also show that diverse communities with greater gender balance are more successful. It makes business sense for companies and is good for employees too.
We believe there is a need for immediate action. With our campaigns, we raise awareness of the importance of gender equality at the workplace and beyond.
'Common Interest' - Gender Equality Campaign
In November 2019, WeAreOpen presented in partnership with ELLE Hungary: the ‘Common Interest’ gender equality campaign. We asked dozens of business leaders representing different Hungary based companies, women and men to stand together to promote equal opportunities for women and men at the workplace. 100 representatives of 50 companies were featured on the pages of ELLE magazine’s 2019 December print issue and on their website. This campaign would not have been possible without ELLE Hungary and the special campaign sponsor Coca-Cola HBC Hungary, our supporters and of course the featured leaders who made this inspiring campaign happen.
We believe along with the companies and organizations that already joined the campaign that women and men getting equal opportunities at the workplace is a common interest, and if we succeed in creating a gender balanced workplace, it benefits us all. The official launch of the campaign was set on the 6th of November 2019 at WeAreOpen’s OPEN Spotlight Award ceremony. After the official launch more than 160 representatives of 80 companies joined.
In 2020 Many of these companies made public commitments to improving gender equality internally – resulting in over 150 improvements across more than 40 companies!
In 2021 we will continue the Common Interest campaign together for equal opportunities for women and men at the workplace! While the past year we had to face many emerging social issues, according to UN Women’s global research the pandemic could wipe out 25 years of increasing gender equality and the crisis has deepened inequality between women and men. This is why today we ask Hungary based business leaders, women and men, to open up about their current experiences, best practices and make public commitments about their plans for this year. We will curate and publish the statements, best practices and thoughts of business leaders in an ebook, that we will make accessible to a large audience on our website, where you will also find the public commitments made.
WeAreOpen X Gemius Hungary Research
Two national representative research studies brought light to important dynamics behind gender imbalance at the workplace.
In partnership with Gemius, we have conducted two national representative research studies in 2014 and 2018 to understand the gender balance at the workplace as seen by employees.
The data showed us that in the past two years 60% of people experienced some sort of change that aimed to create equal opportunities for women and men at the workplace. These results show that there is a genuine need for improving equal opportunities and gender balance. As a result, we decided to launch a long-term program for gender equality – Two Steps.
The ‘Two Steps Campaign’ seeks to increase awareness about gender inequality at the workplace, while the ‘Two Steps For Companies Program’ helps companies identify and address this inequality.
WeAreOpen partnered with Gemius in doing this research – thank you, Gemius! Details of the research and other useful diversity and inclusive content can be found in Resources.
Equal proportions of female & male employees – 63% – believe women & men have to work together to ensure women have equal opportunities at the workplace
In companies that are working to achieve greater gender equality, 71% of staff approve of these changes
Equal proportions of female and male employees are concerned about work life balance
Over 60% of both women and men agree that it is also beneficial to men if women have access to equal opportunities at work
Two Steps Campaign
To achieve positive change we must keep moving forward: walk the talk towards gender equality! Backed by science, proved by experience: gender equality at the workplace has benefits for everyone. After several gender equality research studies and campaigns over the course of the years, in 2018 we launched something new, a long term campaign and service, Two Steps, to take a step forward in building a gender balanced workplace for all.
We believe, along with 63% of both female and male employees, that women and men have to work together to ensure that women have access to equal opportunities at the workplace. That’s also why the campaign is called Two Steps – if men and women take that next step towards gender equality by working together, we get twice as far!
As part of our first campaign under the Two Steps program, various Hungarian artists, comedians, actors, women and men, switched shoes for a little while to try to imagine themselves in the place of the other, and shared their experiences and thoughts with each other. The first step towards change is to spark meaningful conversations: men and women should act together to ensure equal opportunities for all.
Laszlo Pal, Journalist & Melinda Miklos, CEO WeAreOpen
#LetsTalk
Zsofi Kemeny, Poet, Slammer, Writer & Mark Suveg Saiid, Slammer, Writer
#ItIsSensitive
Eszter Rasko, Comedian, Psychologist & Adam Kiss, Comedian #AllThisGenderStuff
Viszkok Fruzsi, YouTuber & Makranczi Zalan, Actor
#IDontGetIt
Women's Day Campaign
It’s a long-standing tradition in Hungary for men to get flowers for women on International Women’s Day. In 2015, at the workplace, instead of giving flowers, we sought to inspire positive change. What does a professional woman want instead of flowers?
Giving flowers is certainly a nice and considerate gesture to celebrate Women’s Day but we believe that at the workplace, this thoughtful gesture should be altered or complemented with meaningful actions to trigger positive change in creating equal opportunities for both men and women.
So we asked the Open Community, what they want #insteadoflowers or #besidesflowers?
The campaign was supported by:
Alexandre Froment-Curtil
CEO, Vodafone Hungary
Gabriella Szentkuti
CEO, Microsoft Hungary
Peter Arvai
Prezi, CEO and co-founder; Chairman WeAreOpen Board of Directors
Krisztina Mate
Journalist, TV Host
Commitments to Gender Equality at the Workplace
Despite the fact that, when it comes to it, roughly half of people would not choose a female subordinate or boss, a national representative study by WeAreOpen x Gemius has shown that 77% of women and 69% of men believe that it is, or would be, important for the success of their company or organization for women and men to be equally represented at all levels of responsibility.
Various global research studies also show that diverse communities with greater balance between the numbers of women and men are more successful. It makes sense for companies and is good for employees too.
The findings of the research showed that there is need for action. To create change, WeAreOpen invited all who believe in openness to take a good look at their own company or organization to find if there is room for improvement. With the aim to ensure women and men have equal opportunities at the workplace on a daily basis, we asked organizations to make a public commitment on nyitottakvagyunk.hu to act. By standing up in large numbers for openness and diversity, including equal opportunities for women and men, and taking action we hope to inspire others too.
We ran the campaign for two years – in 2015 and 2016. We created a list of 10+1 changes that organizations could implement to provide equal opportunities for women and men. Over 150 commitments were made by various organizations such as Google, Aon, BP, GE and many others. In 2019, we took this further with the Common Interest campaign.
20+ | Organizations such as Google, Aon, BP, espell, GE, Prezi, IBM, Morgan Stanley, Auchan participated |
|
150+ |
Commitments made to improve gender equality within organizations |
10+1 | Changes like eliminating pay gap, increasing proportion of women in senior management, part-time work |
For LGBTQ+ Inclusion
LGBTQ+ people are the 2nd most rejected community at the workplace in Hungary (WeAreOpen x Gemius 2014 Research).
More than two-thirds of employees said they would not choose an LGBTQ+ person as their manager and more than half of employees would not want to be the manager of an LGBTQ+ person.
WeAreOpen believes employees should be judged solely on the basis of their acts and achievements, regardless of their gender identity, or of who they love. It is not only the right thing to do but building an open environment, where everyone can be themselves is proved to contribute to a more successful organization and makes people feel happier and safer at the workplace.
While more organizations are realizing this, there’s still a long way to go!
Companies to Pride
Business Leaders and their colleagues walk with Pride.
Before WeAreOpen arrived, it was not a practice of Hungary-based companies and brands to show up at Pride marches to publicly support the LGBTQ+ community. We are only aware of 2-3 companies that attended Pride before. In 2013, for the first time ever, we attended the Pride march with a joint WeAreOpen float along with our founding members and the companies and organizations who joined WeAreOpen. Already in the first year, we could contribute to a large positive change: the number of attendees of the march grew from 2-3k people up to 10k, according to the organizers of the Pride march. Of course, it didn’t only happen because of the members of the OPEN Community who marched with us, but we were happy to see how we could contribute to making the idea of marching accessible to many more people. In the past few years, with WeAreOpen, hundreds of businesses, including business leaders, and 2-3 thousand of their colleagues marched together with WeAreOpen to support their LGBTQ+ friends and co-workers and lead by example.
Budapest Pride is organized by Rainbow Mission Foundation each year: thank you!
Pride 2013
Founded by Prezi, espell and Google, the first ever WeAreOpen joint float at Pride
Pride 2015
100+ companies and organizations joined WeAreOpen to support openness at Pride
Pride 2017
100+ CEOs and 1000+ of their coworkers join the WeAreOpen float at Pride
Pride 2019
For the first time, the WeAreOpen float drove around the city spreading the message of openness
In 2019 the WeAreOpen van left the Pride march to spread our message on the importance of openness and LGBTQ+ inclusion driving around the busy streets of Budapest, while the people who joined us continued to walk at the official Budapest Pride route.
Some videos from our Companies to Pride march over the years.
Pride 2013
Pride 2014
Pride 2015
Pride 2017
100 Business Leaders to Pride
In July 2019 we brought together 100+ business leaders, whose joint statement and signatures Forbes magazine published on a double-page right before the march. Never before have so many business leaders officially featured in a print magazine showing support for LGBTQ+ inclusion in Hungary. The joint statement declared that they believe in the values of diversity and inclusion, therefore they will be marching at Budapest Pride to showcase their support for LGBTQ+ people. Please meet the business leaders who joined our “Business Leaders to Pride” online campaign giving their faces, photos to their statement on our website in 2017 and 2018.
2019
Please meet the 100 business leaders who participated in the Forbes Campaign, and their commitment which appeared in the 2019 July issue of Forbes Hungary. Click on the picture to see more.
2018
In 2018, over 100 business leaders have joined our online campaign and marched with us at Pride. Meet them by clicking on the image.
2017
In 2017, we launched the 100+ Business Leaders To Pride campaign. Click on their photos to get to know the leaders who have already joined the campaign in its first year.
WeAreOpen x Humen Magazine: #Happyprideweek
In July 2019 WeAreOpen and Humen Magazine together launched the #DressCodeChallenge during Pride week to raise awareness to LGBTQ+ inclusion and showcase support and acceptance. Dozens of well-respected Hungarian public figures, social influencers, artists, company teams and individuals participated in the #DressCodeChallenge by wearing rainbow print t-shirts or Pride flags on their social media platforms. The challenge went viral soon and was a smashing success on social media; many media, TV and news outlets were flooded with rainbow covering the images of our campaign reaching millions of people in only a few days.
LGBTQ+ Love Songs
4 musicians’ rewrote their love songs to same-sex love songs
Valentine’s Day, 2015: Love is love, and it’s in the air! In 2015, on Valentine’s Day we launched a campaign to raise awareness towards LGBTQ+ representation in pop culture and beyond. In cooperation with DDB Budapest we asked some of the most popular Hungarian musicians to perform their hit love songs, but change the lyrics to represent same sex couples where a girl is longing after a girl and a boy after a boy. The songs were played by radios and are available online. Watch the campaign videos!
Campaign Video: Everyone can love!
Kistehén: Szerelmes vagyok
PA-DÖ-DŐ – Szabó Klára
The Biebers – Sorry
For Openness
Our mission is to show millions of people that openness is a value for organizations, and the Open Community joins us in spreading this message. Look how people and organizations showed their support towards people with disabilities and from a Roma background, amongst others.
Standing for Openness
80 videos in two weeks sharing stories that proved, “Being open is a good thing. Don’t succumb to prejudice”
“It is worth it to be open, don’t listen to prejudices,” dozens of influencers, artists, and business leaders told in YouTube video messages. We called on the Open Community and others to celebrate the world’s diversity with us – by standing up for openness and letting their voice be heard.
We launched a public video campaign to spread openness. We hoped the videos would reach people who may be feeling alone or anxious, who perhaps have the greatest need of messages of acceptance. We asked public figures, musicians, actors, journalists, teachers, bloggers, athletes and many others to share a story from their life that proved to them: “Being open is a good thing. Don’t succumb to prejudice.” By sharing their own experiences in these video messages, they took a stand against prejudice, including towards Roma people, LGBTQ+ people, Jews and people with disabilities.
The campaign received over 80 videos in two weeks, passing 200,000 views! Check out the videos and the special messages shared.
D. Tóth Krisztina
Bombera Krisztina
Mautner Zsófi
Gerendai Károly
For People with Disabilities
WeAreOpen shares the belief, that it also the motto of Rehab Critical Mass: everyone is able, in different ways. With our campaigns for disability inclusion, we strive to create awareness on providing opportunities to people with disabilities and on how organizations can support them.
WeAreOpen goes to Rehab Critical Mass
Hundreds of colleagues from global and local brands joined Rehab Critical Mass with WeAreOpen.
In 2015, for the first time, members of the Open Community, both international companies as well as Hungarian businesses, and organizations joined WeAreOpen and took part in the Rehab Critical Mass march. The tradition we continued in 2016 as well. Together, we raised awareness of the motto of Rehab Critical Mass – ‘everyone is able, in different ways’ – and called for support for people with disabilities. By doing so we hoped to inspire others too.