Recently I’ve heard many people asking how much emphasis companies should put on diversity. This is a sign of the times: From the onslaught of headlines on pay discrimination and unhealthy business cultures, to growing national tensions around race and equality, diversity and inclusion (D&I) has quickly gone from an issue discussed in select circles to one of national prominence.
It’s easy to cast aside things like culture and diversity when you are still worrying about basic challenges like, oh...paying the bills, finding product-market fit and raising your next round. But today’s entrepreneurs would be remiss to not pay attention: 83 percent of tech workers agree D&I is important, and nearly half say the recent presidential election has made them care even more about it.
While building diversity into your startup’s DNA doesn’t guarantee you will have a perfectly egalitarian organization down the road, it certainly helps set you up for success by creating a shared values system based on respect and equality of opportunity.
Here’s why you shouldn’t wait to invest in an inclusive culture that fosters diversity — and how.
The case for laying an inclusive foundation
Startups are designed to grow quickly. For many, it’s feasible to go from a few employees to hundreds in a few years, or even a few months. Culture comes from the top but is sustained at the bottom. When you don’t have a strong core to build from, any initial faults usually worsen and are adopted by employees as the company grows.
D&I issues are no exception. A multi-thousand person company with a culture that tolerates sexism and racism or doesn’t challenge unfair hiring practices will face a steep uphill battle reversing its diversity debt — if it can change at all. Once a company reaches a certain size, not only will it have to reprogram its entire DNA to overcome the influences of a toxic culture (no small feat given culture guides every aspect of a business), but it will have to exert far more effort to overcome any imbalances in the makeup of its workforce. A positive change in representation for larger companies might mean a few percentage points each year, but that can mean adding literally hundreds (or thousands) of people. Early-stage startups, on the other hand, can make drastic changes with much less effort and fewer resources.
However, addressing diversity earlier is important not only because it’s easier, but because it helps futureproof your business: Research shows diverse teams perform better and are more innovative, and even lead to better financial performance. Not to mention, companies that support diversity are in a better position to retain employees and keep them happy: Eighty-five percent of workers say they’re likely to stay longer with employers who show a high level of social responsibility. And perhaps most critically, we are in the middle of technical talent shortage that is only getting worse. Companies that continue to hire from only a small set of demographics will feel this pain most acutely.
Making D&I part of your company’s DNA
So what’s the best way to build diversity into your DNA? Here are some suggestions:
Document your company values, and stick to them. Many early-stage startups focus almost entirely on product, pushing off issues like people management. They often leave “culture,” which tends to be poorly defined, up to individual interpretation and confuse having beer on tap and ping pong tables as a way to define good camaraderie and effective collaboration. Creating a combined set of values that define how your teams work keeps you honest, and allows your culture to grow organically around a foundation of mutual respect and shared understanding.
What do you want your company to stand for? What are the characteristics of your ideal employee? How do you make your decisions? Where does D&I fit into the picture? Having strong values at the beginning can be the difference between evolving into an organization with an award-winning culture or a caustic one. You can check out ours for inspiration here.
Design your hiring practices to support accuracy, not pattern matching. If you’re complaining about lack of available diverse talent, you may be contributing to your own scarcity problems. Despite startups being ground zero for data-driven decisions, many still rely on intuitions and pattern matching to make people decisions. “I have a really great feeling about that engineer,” we might say (and it turns out, we tend to say this about people who look like a stereotypical developer, regardless of their technical skill).
Instead of relying on intuition, look for ways to bring in empirical data to inform hiring decisions. This is not only a fairer approach, but ensures everyone—regardless of gender, race, or another identity—has the same chance to succeed. I recommend striving for (at minimum) market parity. If 20% of technical degrees in your community are given to women, you should strive for 20% of your technical workforce to be women as well (and so on for other marginalized groups).
Measure, measure, measure. As the saying goes, “what gets measured gets done.” You can’t change what you don’t measure. Set up a framework in the early days that makes sense for where your business is in its lifecycle, and be prepared to evolve it as you add more departments, roles and offices. As you grow, don’t assume company-level stats will be enough: once you cross about 50 employees, change your unit of analysis to where the work is really getting done: the team level. Employees want to see you measure too: Data shows the majority of tech workers whose companies don’t issue diversity reports wish they did. While diversity reporting does not equate to action, better measurement and analysis fosters a greater understanding of where gaps are and where to focus efforts next.
Creating an inclusive culture that begets diversity requires taking a proactive, intentional approach. Design your company to support true diversity from the start — it’ll help you avoid larger, systemic culture issues down the road, benefiting both your business and employees.
About the Author:
Aubrey Blanche is Global Head of Diversity & Inclusion at Atlassian. There, she works with teams across the business to enhance access to technical education, recruiting, retention and career mobility for underrepresented minorities. She believes that leading with empathy is the key to creating highly effective teams. She serves as an advisor to the SheStarts accelerator and is co-founder of Sycamore, a community aiming to close the funding gap for underrepresented founders. Follow her on Twitter at @adblanche.
