Nicole Brown, Chief Human Resources Officer, Mediaocean

As she steps into her new role as CHRO, Nicole will work as a member of the senior executive team to ensure global alignment, streamline processes, and further foster a culture of inclusion and engagement for Mediaocean’s employee base.

ESG (environmental, social, and governance) and sustainability have become increasingly popular but political topics within organizations, including whether HR must take responsibility. For Mediaocean CHRO Nicole Brown, it is a key priority for HR in 2024.

What are HR’s responsibilities for ESG initiatives within Mediaocean?

Our company’s most sustainable source of power comes from our people. As such, ESG and CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) provide an incredible opportunity to ensure everyone at Mediaocean knows they have a role to play.

HR oversees the roadmap and strategic planning for our ESG and CSR program, to incorporate all aspects of social impact into our programming. This framework allows our employees to actively be engaged and develop tangible skills. These opportunities are provided in our social impact-focused events, internal and external facilitated workshops, and partner initiatives.

Additionally, we’re responsible for aligning our annual employee training program with our ESG and CSR policies to ensure the highest level of compliance with data privacy, cyber security, anti-harassment, and corporate ethics.

What impact do you hope this will have on business practices?

By good business practices. This facilitates trust between our company, employees, stakeholders, and communities.

Through HR’s shaping of company culture, talent management, training, and development, we most effectively align the work we are already doing with the initiatives and values of our ESG/CSR program.

For example, we create positive social impact by prioritizing the S in ESG by treating our employees fairly, while remaining diverse and inclusive through an industry-leading DEI (diversity, equity, & inclusion) program. We keep employees safe, healthy, and empowered through career development, living wages, and social benefits. And lastly, we foster community and support for employee mental health and wellbeing.

Do you think some companies overlook the benefits of moving people into areas where they don’t necessarily have immediate experience?

The three pillars of sustainability provide the opportunity to educate and empower our employees to see the environmental, social, and economic impacts and opportunities via enabling diversity of perspectives.

They also ensure fair and supportive hiring and employee development practices while leveraging every employee's uniqueness to drive innovation and success. Using this approach, we’ve increased employee engagement in companywide ESG workshops to 70% for 2023.

HR also plays a key role in the completion of our annual EcoVadis sustainability assessment. Ensuring the input and partnership between HR and ESG has seen a more comprehensive reporting opportunity in an internationally recognized program. Mediaocean more than doubled our 2021 assessment score in 2022 and maintained that score for 2023.

How are you tying together your DE&I and ESG programs?

Developing a deeper alignment with our DEI and ESG program has had a meaningful impact on employee engagement through our philanthropy programming, people and culture events, and demographic representation.

ESG adds an intersectional lens to the work we’re already doing in DEI to broaden the scope of impact and education we can have with employees for social impact awareness. In 2023, through our philanthropy matching program, we supported over 40 different charities with $20,000 in donations.

It sounds like there’s a big focus on ESG education. What does that look like for employees?

Our commitment to providing continuous learning for our employees in DE&I content is a critical component of our strategy.

We’ve developed a fully-fledged "Belong @ Mediaocean program" which focuses on our work environment and how we support our employees and includes courses like Diversity 101, Unconscious Bias in the Workplace as a Manager, and Building Inclusive Teams. All Mediaocean employees are required to complete a minimum of three hours of DEI training annually.

We also have nearly ten affinity-based Career Circles. These, along with our five community-based circles, create collaborative and safe environments for our team members to share concerns, address challenges, and celebrate each other's successes. Over 20% of our global employee population is participating in our programs, up 15% from 2022.

How does you ensure employees understand and engage with your ESG work, particularly those who feel strongly about sustainability?

We ensure that all employees know they have a role to play in our ESG program through quarterly all-staff sustainability newsletters, updates in our company all-hands, quarterly state of sustainability in AdTech presentations, and education which includes training materials, created by our Green Dream Team and Learning and Development team.

What’s the Green Dream Team and how is it helping HR achieve ESG goals?

Mediaocean has seen incredible engagement in the development of our Green Dream Team with members participating across our global offices.

The Green Dream Team is an opportunity for multiple positive outcomes for sustainability at the company, including collecting direct input and feedback on the value that employees see in having sustainability as a core value of company culture.

It also offers opportunities to align the personal values employees have for sustainability with employee engagement opportunities and strategize ways to operationalize the sustainability values of employees into the company’s long-term business strategy.

Utilizing sustainability values to conduct market research and prioritizing growing societal values for sustainability helps us to attract the next generation of top talent and foster opportunities for the development and retention of our current workforce.