2019 and 2020 ezCater Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion survey
- Amaia Arruabarrena
- •
- 3 Min Read
- •
This is our fifth year surveying and publishing diversity and inclusion data since signing the Tech Inclusion Pledge in 2016. We typically publish our results annually, however in 2020, COVID-19 hit us hard. Since we see great value in publishing our results, we are now publishing 2019 and 2020 together.
What does Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion mean to us?
We define Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion as the efforts to:
- create an environment where everyone feels comfortable bringing their full selves to work and knows the importance of their contributions
- treat all employees equitably with regard to pay, promotions, support, and opportunities to succeed
- build an employee population that reflects the diversity of our community and our customers.
Starting in 2019, we used a new survey tool, Culture Amp, to give us a deeper look into responses while maintaining anonymity. Also, the 2019 & 2020 data now include our Vancouver office.
Here are some key results from our 2019 & 2020 Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion surveys. The “Tech” category includes our product, design, research and engineering teams:
What did we do in 2019 & 2020 to support Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion?
We improved the survey. We used more inclusive language and iterated on our questions to prompt a list of actionable recommendations.
We connected more with our community. We cultivated new partnerships with community organizations, including Per Scholas and Lesbians Who Tech, and continued to host meetups and events (before COVID) with She+GeeksOut, Out in Tech, and Black Girls Code. We donated laptops to Apprenti and The Last Mile to support access to technology and opportunities for underrepresented communities and donated a significant portion of our charitable budget to Fresh Truck.
We published Community Standards. We created these standards to clarify how we engage with our Catering Partners and customers. With these community standards, we extend our commitment to inclusion and diversity beyond our own walls, to the ecosystem in which we operate.
We committed to learning and doing better. We launched our first ever Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training program for managers at every level of ezCater. We also created internal allyship groups dedicated to antiracism and continued learning.
We established new metrics to hold ourselves accountable to. We recognize that increasing representation of racially underrepresented groups is one of our biggest opportunities for improvement. We’ve set specific metrics that are now part of our annual OKRs and issue internal monthly reports on our progress.
We established Juneteenth as an official ezCater holiday starting in 2020.
We opened 10 new talent sources for employment candidates from underrepresented groups.
What did we learn?
2020 was a challenging year. In March 2020, the world seemingly tilted on its axis and we at ezCater, along with most of the U.S., moved to working remotely and evaluating how we’d make it through the COVID-19 pandemic professionally and personally.
The pandemic brought increased violence and hate crimes against the AAPI community, which has continued over the last year and a half. In addition to these tragedies, the murder of George Floyd put a spotlight on systemic racism and continued violence against Black Americans in the US.
The violence, hate crimes, and murders ignited a nationwide racial reckoning and forced us at ezCater, along with most Americans, to take a thorough look at what we were doing to address systemic racism and inequality. The answer: we needed to do better.
We spent the rest of 2020 figuring out what “better” meant for us and then taking action to be exactly that. We’re not perfect but we’ve committed to being better than yesterday, every day.
The work of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is important and it is challenging; this is a process and there is no finish line. We are continuing our commitment to this process in 2021 and beyond.