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Know your company’s cultural diversity

This information is provided by:Business.gov.nlBusiness.gov.nlNederlandse versie

Would you like to gain more insight into the cultural diversity in your company? If you run a business in the Netherlands with more than 250 employees, you can make use of the CBS Cultural Diversity Barometer. It will provide you with anonymised information, that you can use when setting up or evaluating your human resources policy.

Use the barometer to draw up your diversity policy

The Cultural Diversity Barometer tells you which percentage of your employees has a migration background, and what their origins are. The CBS (Statistics Netherlands) barometer gives you the opportunity to set up and review your diversity policy.

The Cultural Diversity Barometer from Statistics Netherlands (CBS) tells you what percentage of your employees come from the Netherlands, another country in Europe or a country outside Europe. This gives you insight into cultural diversity in the workplace. You can use the barometer when drawing up your diversity policy.

There are 2 types of barometers to measure cultural diversity in the workplace:

The origin classification (in Dutch) is determined for your entire company. For this, CBS uses the policy administration (in Dutch) of the Employee Insurance Agency (Uitvoeringsinstituut Werknemersverzekeringen, UWV). You only need to provide CBS with your company's payroll tax numbers.

The origin classification is determined for a component within your company. For example only a department, salary scale or age group. To do this, you need to provide data about your employees to CBS.

No information about individual employees

The Cultural Diversity Barometer can be used by companies with 250 employees or more. You only receive compiled information about your entire staff. To safeguard your employees’ privacy, the barometer can only be used by businesses with more than 250 employees. If a cultural group within your organisation is too small, CBS will not publish these data, to ensure your employees’ privacy. You can ask CBS to sort out the data according to specifics, such as job title and number of years in employment, on condition that the data cannot be traced back to individuals.

Compare your figures to national data

Use the dashboard desgined by Statistics Netherlands (in Dutch) to compare your company's cultural diversity to national figures. To do so, you can use the anonymised data you received when you applied for the barometer. You can fill in your employees' origin in the barometer, giving a percentage for:

  • employees with a Dutch background;
  • employees with a migration background from a Western country;
  • employees with a migration background from a non-Western country.

The tool enables you to compare the diversity data you have submitted to national data on diversity:

  • the total working population
  • employees in your business sector
  • registered jobseekers
  • graduates

You can also compare these data to statistics from your region, business sector or occupational group.

Apply for participation in the Cultural Diversity Barometer

You can apply to CBS for participation in the Cultural Diversity Barometer at cost price. To participate, send an email to barometer.culturele.diversiteit@cbs.nl.

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