A Berlin-based startup was certainly in good company as it landed a German Diversity Prize –Angela Merkel was also amongst the winners. Online marketplace twago was singled out as the country’s most diverse employer for small to medium businesses, while the German chancellor picked up the diversity personality of the year gong. Other winners on the night included Google and BASF.
It was a great night for twago, which matches experts and companies and targets startups and other small to medium businesses, at the gala event at the Langen Foundation in Neuss near Dusseldorf on Monday in front of 200 people from the worlds of business, politics and culture. The award, sponsored by McKinsey, Henkel and WirtschaftsWoche, was a coup for a company which was only founded in 2009.
Gunner Berning, co-founder and CEO of twago, said: “”We are very proud that we have won this prestigious award as a start-up.” The firm’s 36 employees come from 11 different countries. Both management and the workforce as a whole are made up of 50 percent women. “Diversity for us is not a quota, diversity makes us better. And we need the best people to maintain our rapid growth of 27 percent per month,” Berning added. “We do not talk about diversity, we live it.”
Roland Tichy, the editor of WirtschaftsWoche, said: “Promoting diversity is not (just) a nice gesture, but is in the clear self-interest of all companies.”
Founded in 2009, twago brings together clients with the experts they need in services ranging from programming, graphic and web design to translation and research – all services that can be provided from anywhere in the world. It was also the first European freelancer marketplace with an escrow service. “It is important to us to provide the possibility for our users to secure their co-operations when working online,” said Berning.