Seafood industry DEI initiatives showing staying power

Many U.S. companies across industries swiftly began adopting ambitious diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) goals in 2020, but work in the field has largely slowed as businesses grow wary of boycotts and other forms of backlash.

However, in the seafood industry, DEI remains integral to many companies’ sustainability goals, according to experts engaged in ensuring the sector supports these types of initiatives.

Portland, Oregon, U.S.A.-based Seafood and Gender Equality (SAGE) runs a Gender Equality Dialogues (GED) program that seeks to bring together corporate leadership to address issues of equality in the industry.

SAGE Director of Gender Strategies Becca Williams told SeafoodSource the companies SAGE has worked with in the GED program, which include Fortune Fish and Gourmet, Acme Smoked Fish, and Seattle Fish, are aware of the wider backlash facing DEI initiatives countrywide but “are still very open to embracing gender equality as a way to promote inclusivity in the workforce.”

In fact, Williams said, the overarching goal of the GED program is to gather enough data to make the case that gender equality in the workplace is good for profitability, instead of the risky proposition more and more companies have claimed it’s becoming.

The program was recently awarded two grants totaling USD 715,000 (EUR 643,000) from the Builders Initiative Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation to support its next cohort of partnering firms.

Adriana Sanchez, who runs seafood sustainability consultancy Seafood Ninja, agreed that providing evidence of profitability is crucial in proving DEI initiatives are worth taking on. 

“Everything is market-driven,” she said. “NGOs talk about the intersection between race and climate, and they use big words, which are very confusing, but nobody’s really connecting the dots. If you can leverage market requests around all these concepts, that ties it together.” 

SAGE Founder Julie Kuchepatov also emphasized that tying the benefits of DEI initiatives to changing market conditions has helped sway people toward supporting them, especially as many workers in the seafood industry are aging and several countries are having problems recruiting younger workers.

“How can we capture this moment and make sure that the new people who are coming in are welcomed and that their ideas are embraced?” she said.

For Gen Z workers in particular, Kuchepatov stressed that “business as usual is not going to fly.” 

“[The GED helps] executive leadership in the seafood industry think about how they are going to move forward with a workforce that is embraced, talented, capable, honest, and fulfilled,” she said.

Recruitment is one issue that DEI can help solve, according to Kuchepatov, but it can also help with the issue of retaining workers, Williams said.

“We’re demonstrating that in addition to promoting inclusivity, having something like gender equality be an integral part of a company’s operations also increases and boosts retention,” Williams said, “It makes the workplace more attractive for folks to want to work there. It increases engagement and innovation, and it reflects the communities in which the companies live, work, and serve.”

One reason why seafood companies have largely remained on board with DEI initiatives is because ...