Know your company’s cultural diversity

Use the barometer to draw up your diversity policy

You can use the Cultural Diversity Barometer (in Dutch) from Statistics Netherlands (CBS) when drawing up your diversity policy. It 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. Any organisation of 250 employees or more can use the service.

General and zoomed in barometers

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

• General (in Dutch). This barometer provides insight into the origin classification (in Dutch) across your entire company. For this, CBS uses the policy administration (polisadministratie, 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). This barometer examines the origin classification for self-selected subgroups within your businesss. For example, department, salary scale, or age group. To do this, you need to provide CBS with your employees' details.

No personal information about individual employees

To protect your employees’ privacy, the barometer can only be used by businesses with more than 250 employees. In the zoomed-in version of the Barometer, each subgroup 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 this data. This ensures that your employees’ privacy is protected.

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.

You can then compare your data with national figures for:

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

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

More information about the Cultural Diversity Barometer

You can find more information in the FAQ about the Cultural Diversity Barometer. Or contact CBS at barometer.culturele.diversiteit@cbs.nl.