Enter HR: Chapter 16 of Surviving DEI at Adyen N.V.
The sixteenth chapter of Surviving DEI at Adyen N.V. Marie-Anne Leuty (she/her) shares the experience of being allegedly invited into the fintech to do DEI work and The Study Group’s current legal fight to allegedly be recognised and paid for that culturally sensitive and important work.
Hi everyone,
My name’s Marie-Anne and you’re reading chapter 16 of 23 of an educational case study detailing The Study Group’s alleged experience doing specialist DEI work for fintech giant, Adyen N.V.
When I started to write this blog on 27 November 2023, I never envisaged it becoming a 30,000 (and counting) word research paper.
It just came pouring out.
A month later on 26 December 2023, we published this on The Quick + The Brave, our independent, BIPOC founded media platform, evoking the Dutch Whistleblower Protection Act of 18 February 2023.
It’s also available in full here on Medium.
In this chapter, The Study Group is introduced to members of Adyen N.V.’s HR team to allegedly develop more support for the [BRAND NAME REDACTED] program internally and to align with the fintech’s supposed DEI objectives.
Without alleged design support from Adyen N.V.’s Design Studio, we invest time building relationships and connections with designers from the community.
We’ll release chapters daily so follow us for notifications about the latest releases…
The full 30,000 word educational case study was first published on The Quick + The Brave. Visit the blog to read and see full image galleries.
Learn more about and support The Study Group Foundation.
Pre-sale for ‘mini maatje’ ‘Advocates and Allies’ issue soon available via The Quick + The Brave.
By publishing this blog, The Study Group evokes the Dutch Whistleblower Protection Act (Wet bescherming klokkenluiders) of 18 February 2023.
The full act from the Ministry of Interior and Kingdom Relations is available in Dutch and English.
Want to help amplify our story to other media? The Act protects all stakeholders who share it (clause 1a. Duty of confidentiality and data protection).
Chapter 16: Enter HR
The day after filming, we had our 20 week ultrasound scan at our local prenatal clinic.
Fortunately, baby was doing well.
My bump was starting to show.
We told our contacts a few weeks earlier that we were pregnant. Naturally, we wanted to share this news — it was important to keep our alleged collaborator informed so that the next stages of the program could be well managed as we made the transition into family life.
Everyone was supposedly happy to hear this news.
We were assured that Adyen N.V. would allegedly look after us as a new family and it was agreed that a formal contract would be drawn up in summer.
After the scan, we had our first video call with HR.
The Vice President of Creative said he was allegedly keen for the program to get more support internally.
HR seemed the natural fit — DEI initiatives were managed through their department so there was great potential for impact.
From my own experience working in tech, as an employee, the relationship you have with HR can be confusing.
Stephanie Crain, a leadership and management consultant explains that:
“HR works for the organisation, not for you. This creates some confusion because HR is typically who welcomes you into the organisation and they’re often the last people you speak to when you leave.
“HR’s primary role is regulatory but many people go into HR because they want to work with people. The challenge is when employees seek advocacy. HR has a duty to the organisation not the employee. This creates a conflict and a no-win situation for people in HR and employees themselves.
“What’s worse is that organisational leaders often look to HR to cultivate and sustain culture within the organisation making the lines even more blurred.”
– Stephanie Crain
On the video call, we were introduced to two members of HR.
We shared a little about ourselves and the background about the program.
They shared their roles with us.
It didn’t seem that they’d heard much about us or the program, but they said it sounded like an interesting project.
Were there any DEI goals of Adyen N.V.’s that we could contribute to?
The better we understood their supposed objectives, the better we could align our plans.
We were told that it would allegedly be best to tell HR what we want to do and from there, Adyen N.V. would let us know what they could support.
The call was kind of perplexing.
We were waiting on feedback for the proposal we’d sent a week prior on 14 February. Soon enough we’d be able to start on the next phase of the program.
We heard back the next day.
On 21 February, the invoice was rejected.
It wasn’t what we expected either but, as we saw it, if we needed to adapt the plans to better align with HR’s goals, we were happy to do so.
A week later we shared a revised proposal.
Things can take time to be signed off in large companies but generally speaking, in the first year we were granted the autonomy to allegedly develop creative incorporating the feedback from our face to face meetings.
There was supposed active listening about the creative process and a seemingly general enthusiasm to give input and think along.
Surely though, the process of adapting and finalising the plans would take a couple more weeks at most with supposed input from HR?
We were already in the second year…
The last invoices for 2022 had cleared and went straight to paying our team and creditors, the development of the program, and post production of the podcast interviews and introduction sequence.
Work also began on the design and communication program’s branding, logo and the accompanying publication to the podcast.
On the communication side, we started to work with a writer and content marketer. We came across their work on Afropean.com, an online journal exploring the interplay of Black and European cultures started by bestselling author, Johny Pitts.
Having previously worked at The Guardian, they moved over to the Netherlands from [COUNTRY REDACTED] to work on the program and explore opportunities with The Study Group and other initiatives serving the community in Amsterdam. They were incredibly excited at the potential the program could have.
Theirs was one of the testimonials shared in the proposal to HR:
“In my view, [BRAND NAME REDACTED] is a much-needed alternative to selective practices in the corporate world. Having witnessed organisational cultures based on domination rather than collaboration, I think today’s workforce really needs a new system which motivates and develops, while allowing space for individuality and creativity.
“My hope for this program is to help create foundations for a new blueprint that the industry and other sectors can follow when it comes to talent management.”
Adyen N.V. allegedly wasn’t able to support us with designers so time was dedicated throughout the development phase to find creatives.
This was obviously disappointing given that the design and communication program was based on the idea of mentorship and fostering the autonomy of emerging designers from the community.
Ever resourceful, we adapted.
For the program to keep moving forward, we went through the process.
To begin, we approached the best BIPOC designers in the Netherlands who we could find, people who have invested heavily in their craft and leadership skills to gain senior positions in their industry.
Like us, they’d dealt with their own share of bias over the course of their careers. They were excited about the program and the prospect of getting to be seen in the tech space.
Freelancers and entrepreneurs from historically excluded backgrounds fight to get work regularly. Their invoices reflect their experience and work so, if we were looking for someone to come on board as the equivalent of a Lead Designer, their invoice alone would have absorbed at least half the budget.
Salaries for these types of roles are typically six figures in the tech and creative industries.
When people hear a payment platform is allegedly supporting your initiative, they, obviously, are going to charge commercial rates.
Damn, I would too.
Though people generously offered time where they could, ultimately they couldn’t afford to make guarantees about how much of this they could give.
Paid work had to be the priority.
We communicated this to Adyen N.V. and asked for input and advice.
They supposedly could only tell us the going market rate for freelance designers and consultants which confirmed the kind of budget we would need to set aside for a senior creative.
We’d take another approach and look for up and coming talent in the community.
There are very talented designers and creatives in and around Amsterdam establishing names for themselves.
Unfortunately they haven’t yet had access to leadership opportunities so, while the prospect of getting or receiving mentorship was interesting for them, it wasn’t possible for us to work with them on the program’s brand development — our resource wouldn’t allow us.
From our side, we knew what we wanted to communicate (and had a couple of newspapers to demonstrate that) but we remained without design leadership.
We came across a creative duo, talented designers from the Bijlmer, who eventually worked with us on set during the podcast production.
We began working with them on mini maatje, our publication in development with The Black Archives.
Without the alleged design input we’d hoped for from Adyen N.V., we’d continue to work on the publication independently. To be more economical with time and labour, the designers were happy to use the basic design infrastructure of TQTB Journal 001 but they needed guarantees about budget.
When we couldn’t give them those guarantees… I’ll let you guess what happened there.
Next, chapter 17 of Surviving DEI at Adyen N.V.: Intention and authenticity.
By publishing this blog, The Study Group evokes the Dutch Whistleblower Protection Act (Wet bescherming klokkenluiders) of 18 February 2023.
The full act from the Ministry of Interior and Kingdom Relations is available in Dutch and English.
Want to help amplify our story to other media? The Act protects all stakeholders who share it (clause 1a. Duty of confidentiality and data protection).
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