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Know your company’s cultural diversity

Published by:
Statistics Netherlands, CBS

Would you like to gain more insight into the cultural diversity in your company? The CBS Cultural Diversity Barometer shows large organisations how diverse their organisation is. You can use this information when developing your personnel policy.

Use the barometer to draw up your diversity policy

The Cultural Diversity Barometer (in Dutch) 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. Any organisation of 250 employees or more can use the service.

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

  • General (in Dutch) 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 (UWV). You only need to provide CBS with your company's payroll tax numbers (loonheffingsnummers).
  • Zoomed in(in Dutch) In addition, the origin classification for self-selected subgroups, such as department, salary scale, or age group, is also determined within your business. To do this, you need to provide data about your employees to CBS.

No personal information about individual employees

To safeguard your employees’ privacy, the barometer can only be used by businesses with more than 250 employees. The barometer only provides information for businesses with more than 250 employees, without identifying individuals in the numbers. In the zoomed-in version of the Barometer, each subgroup (for example salary scale category) must consist of at least 250 employees.

CBS is obliged to publish your company's barometer on its website. If a cultural group within your organisation is too small, CBS will not publish these data, to ensure your employees’ privacy.

Compare your diversity to national data

Use the CBS dashboard (in Dutch) to compare your company's cultural diversity to national data. To do so, you can use the results from the barometer you received from CBS for this purpose. 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 European country, Netherlands not inluded;
  • employees with a migration background from a non-European 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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Questions relating to this article?

Please contact Statistics Netherlands, CBS

Know your company’s cultural diversity | Business.gov.nl