After winning the Oscar award for best actress earlier this month, Frances McDormand ended her acceptance speech by saying “I have two words to leave with you tonight, ladies and gentlemen: inclusion rider.”
This set off a frenzy of Google searches to find out exactly what an “inclusion rider” is. As NPR put it, an inclusion rider is “a stipulation that actors and actresses can ask (or demand) to have inserted into their contracts, which would require a certain level of diversity among a film’s cast and crew.”
And Hollywood is reacting. The Guardian reports that Hollywood bigwigs such as Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Paul Feig have committed to adopting inclusion riders for their companies’ films, adding that the “public pledges from the high-profile actors and directors to embrace inclusion riders…has increased pressure on other celebrities and studios to follow suit, and comes as businesses outside of entertainment are also exploring the concept.”
Here at the NLPA, we have long been proponents of greater inclusion, particularly in the area of supplier diversity best practices, which includes not just using diverse suppliers, but requiring suppliers to use diverse suppliers themselves and to have an inclusive workforce (a groundbreaking idea that I introduced in 2011 that still hasn’t hit the mainstream as hard as it will someday). So, it is now time for us in procurement to leverage the wave of new interest in inclusion and be leaders in our organizations in the push for greater inclusion.
Sometimes, momentum for great procurement initiatives can originate from outside of procurement. This is one of those times.
Recommended Reading
- Is Contract Management a Critical Process?
- Championship-Caliber Negotiation Preparation
- Contract Review Checklist
- How to Take Charge of Your Procurement Career
NLPA Learning: Looking for authoritative procurement templates, tools, webinars, and more? Stop trying to create resources from scratch and start taking advantage of having exactly what you need right at your fingertips in NLPA Learning.
