Our DE&I journey to build belonging at Greenhouse
3 mins, 16 secs read time
Building belonging means creating a culture that doesn’t just tolerate differences, but embraces them. As Greenhouse’s Director of DE&I, I’m proud to be able to say that for all of us at Greenhouse, building belonging in the world drives everything we do. It’s why we infuse diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) into the way we work, so we can unlock the human potential that accelerates growth both here at Greenhouse and for all other companies. It also requires that all of us at Greenhouse take a serious look at our own successes and failures on this journey.
We understand the power we command in the market when it comes to moving the needle on workforce representation and DE&I work beyond just a product perspective. Building belonging represents the highest outcome of all of our cross-functional DE&I efforts. In acknowledging this power, we are also working to create the space for both internal and external accountability on our DE&I outcomes. As we prepare to close out one of the most tumultuous years in our Greenhouse journey, we remain committed to increasing workforce representation, amplifying the voices of our internal stakeholders and creating racial equity and social justice throughout all parts of our business, organization and internal processes, especially as this relates to the experience of our Black/African-American employees.
We are using data to help us measure our progress in workforce representation for ourselves. We’re specifically focusing in on race/ethnicity and gender for this first share-out, and we intend to share this information annually. We also recognize that diversity takes many forms. As we continue to build out our internal capabilities and reporting, we're looking forward to sharing our progress across other areas of diversity as well.
And by publishing our diversity data, we’re making a visible commitment to sharing our progress once a year for our own accountability and to encourage other companies to do the same.
What are our goals with belonging at Greenhouse?
Belonging, along with Entrepreneurship and Purpose, make up our company culture pillars at Greenhouse. And we know we have work to do to increase representation for underserved communities to support Belonging. Going into 2021, we are intentionally focusing on engaging our employees in creating a diverse, equitable and inclusive environment for all Greenhouse employees, recruiting and developing a robust and diverse talent pipeline, enhancing our product to help ourselves and other companies on their journeys of building belonging and sharing our story while practicing startup social responsibility. Even amidst the coronavirus pandemic and racial injustice, we’re continuing to make investments to strengthen diverse and underrepresented communities both within and outside of Greenhouse – an example of this comes to life in our recent partnership with the #TechforBlackFounders consortium.
Since I joined Greenhouse as Director of DE&I earlier this year, we’ve taken more concrete steps to amplify our work in the area of DE&I and hold ourselves accountable to building belonging here at Greenhouse. I’m excited to be able to share our updates and our goals with all of you.
Our early efforts in DE&I
Before we go into the data, we want to share a summary overview of our own DE&I journey to date. This timeline maps some of the key highlights of what we’ve done over the years, but isn’t a comprehensive list of every initiative and action.
Workforce representation
You'll see a summary below of our current demographic makeup by race/ethnicity and gender.
The gender and race/ethnicity categories shown below are based solely on self-reported EEOC data, collected through Greenhouse Onboarding at the time of hire. Please note that these limited categories may not match the actual experience of our employees. We are actively exploring new ways to collect quality data that will yield a more holistic and accurate view.
Leadership representation
Our people managers help impact the vision and goals we are setting and the decisions we are making. They are essential to inspiring a company culture of inclusion and belonging. We are excited to invest in leadership and underrepresented pipeline development (including sponsorship, promotion and succession planning initiatives and goals) over the coming months and years. Our goal is to provide opportunities and make Greenhouse an excellent place for underrepresented communities to work, grow and thrive.
What we’re doing with this data
We’ve looked at our data, and like many other tech companies, we know we have a lot of work to do when it comes to representation on the Greenhouse team. As we work toward continuously building belonging, we’re regularly iterating on structured hiring and sourcing goals, as well as rethinking our performance management metrics and educating our people managers and aspiring managers. We’re leaning into demonstrating how DE&I strengthens our teams and prepares us to stay adept and succeed in unsettling times.
Internal support
To support these efforts, we’ve launched an internal DE&I Council and Ethics Committee made up of representatives across the organization and across positions to help hold ourselves accountable internally to this important work. We’re also training our executives and managers in DE&I foundational principles that connect back to our work, and supporting the growth of our Employee Resource Groups and Virtual Realities facilitators.
DE&I hiring technology innovation
As a company that provides technology for other companies, we’re continuing to invest in DE&I-driving product enhancements and interventions. Some of these features include nudges, hiding prejudicial data, assessing algorithmic bias, enhancing our DE&I feature set metrics and creating an even more equitable and inclusive candidate experience via our candidate name pronunciation feature and pronouns projects.
Diversity hiring strategy
We’re also taking additional concrete steps like implementing a diversity sourcing strategy for every job search and setting dedicated DE&I KPIs for our Talent Acquisition team.
These are just a few of the many tactics we’re working on to ensure our entire organization focuses our efforts on fighting racism and increasing representation at Greenhouse.
We appreciate all our employees, customers and partners for joining us on this journey. All of us at Greenhouse are committed to creating a more diverse, just, equitable and inclusive environment where everyone feels like they belong and knows that they can thrive at Greenhouse.
You can learn more about our Greenhouse mission and our work around DE&I on our Mission page.
* White may also be interpreted as "White/Non-Hispanic or Latinx"
**American Indian or Alaska Native+ includes anyone identifying as American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander as a classification adhered to by the US Census Bureau.
Jamie Adasi
(pronouns: she, her, hers) is Greenhouse's Head of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity & Allyship. She’s focused on building an infrastructure that addresses the complex diversity needs of Greenhouse and its communities through actionable teachings. Outside of the office, you’ll find her hiking in the mountains, exploring and learning about new countries and cultures, spending time with her global family, and exploring her hometown in the DC metro area.