Part four: Culture, part 1

The first thing I usually recommend to people who want to get involved with diversity and inclusion is to develop a deeper understanding of the issues. And even for someone who is a woman in engineering, for example, like myself, there are a lot of other experiences I need to learn about. And so I think it's good for people before diving in to try to get up to speed on what's already being discussed, what experiences people are having, and what efforts are underway, just starting to amplify the voice of those people that may not get as much attention is a good first step. There are little things that every company can do that don't really have anything to do with the long-term change that you're trying to push in your workforce. So things like, are your facilities welcoming to everyone, including folks who are gender neutral or gender nonconforming? Is your careers page mistaking culture for ping pong, or are you talking about things like your generous parental leave benefits backup child care 401K matching, and the fact that you want people to feel authentic, not just that they have to go to happy hour. So thinking about the little practices in your culture and how you brand them and how you use them to sell your company can be huge levers to pull. The issues around getting buy-in don't actually come from whether people are pro or anti-diversity, but they need to understand why. Because any diversity and inclusion program that's just driven from HR, instead of inspiring the best out of your employees, is eventually going to fail. And that's because your head of diversity and inclusion should be an enabler, not a doer. When I started Craigslist, I wasn't thinking in high fashion terms like diversity and inclusion. I was thinking like a guy who came out of New Jersey. You got to give people a break. You got to be fair. You got to treat people like you want to be treated. The nature of Craigslist is such that it speaks for itself, and that carries the culture of fairness along with it. Now, Craigslist is about sometimes putting food on the table, getting a table, and then getting a roof under which to put the table. And when you're online like that, people don't care about your gender or ethnicity. It's kind of like the very old New Yorker cartoon on the Internet. No one knows you're a dog on the Internet unless you tell people your gender or whatever. No one knows and no one cares if you've got a good table to offer, people are going to show up taking a look at it. For people who are in roles of decision-making or leadership, they have much more opportunities to make sure that people are getting considered for opportunities that they might not be otherwise. Implementing more standardized practices, more calibration for things like promotion or project assignment is a good way to go on that. Oftentimes, when a new opportunity comes up, the short list of candidates considered will be the people who look like the people who've done that job in the past. But if there's some more standard practice around assigning people to those roles, so maybe it's being very disciplined about considering all possible candidates for roles, looking through everyone of a particular level that has the right technical experience, and then having a standard rubric to judge. That makes it a lot fairer, and to make sure that we're considering people that aren't always the top of mind. And that may be because they look most similar to the people who are there already. So people who are in these roles that can actually influence opportunities can do quite a bit to make sure that they're more evenly distributed. When I've seen pushback or questions, it's often because from people who work in really homogenous environments their entire career and don't actually understand the benefit that comes from working in a diverse team or why being an inclusive colleague actually improves their own experience in addition to the experience of their colleagues. The second thing is because I think sometimes we take a perfection or bust mentality to diversity and inclusion when the fact is it's a journey for everyone. It's not about being perfect tomorrow, it's about being a little bit better tomorrow than you were yesterday. And we need to have a little bit of empathy for those folks who are also learning. That ends up giving you a lot of buy-in. For us, I think we're very lucky and that we started investing at this when we were around a thousand people formally. And so that means that what we've learned is we've grown to 2300 worldwide. Our lessons that are going to serve us as we go through the next stage of growth. I think one thing that companies do, is perhaps in some cases counterproductive around diversity and inclusion, is that they will hire a diversity lead or a diversity manager, then not give them the authority of power to really create lasting change. Things that matter, right? So we talk about this a lot in the space around who owns diversity. Like is that a person that sits somewhere outside of the Executive Council, and they don't have any direct authority to make changes within the company, or is that the CEO themselves? And I think it's both. Right. It's about making sure whoever they set up in this role to lead diversity is actually powerful in terms of being able to enact change. And that may mean that they report to the CEO. That may mean that that's a second slash to the CEO's title, and that's what they're responsible for. But ensuring that the person can be successful by giving them some skin in the game to actually affect the changes that need to happen.