Building an inclusive Android Chapter at Babylon

Photo by RhondaK Native Florida Folk Artist on Unsplash

Our Chapter currently has 37 android engineers from 13 countries across four time zones, most of which work in mission-focused cross-functional squads. We interact regularly, from reviewing each others’ pull requests to meeting up for pizza-fuelled lunch & learns. As the team more than tripled in size in 10 months over the past year (from 12 to 37) it was important for us to maintain the close-knit nature of the group and make sure everyone feels happy and included.

What does it mean to be inclusive and what does it mean to be diverse?

First a note on terminology — it is rare to hear people talk about inclusivity without mentioning diversity. This is because the two are invariably linked; in the context of companies, diversity focuses on the makeup of your team and inclusion is a measure of culture that enables the diversity. Although linked, you should not make the mistake of thinking that improving one will automatically improve the other. You could aim to make up quotas and create a diverse team but without the right culture, inclusive of everyone, the people who feel excluded are likely to leave, leaving you exactly where you started.

Why bother?

Diversity and inclusion enable you to capture the differing viewpoints and ideas from folks of all walks of life. Now, unless your business only targets narrowly defined niches of people, having workers that represent your customers — i.e. everyone, is a huge benefit. After all, the world is diverse, all of us are different, perceive the world differently, think differently and create differently, and the more your workforce can imitate the real world — the better suited you will be to solving its problems.

I won’t go into too much detail, as many an article have already been written on this topic, but some of the most clear cut examples of big companies letting down their users due to a lack of diversity include Microsoft Kinect only working on white kids or Facebook refusing to accept native American names for its users.

Tips for inclusivity

How do we start? First it’s important to realise that we are all different. It’s easy to think of diversity and inclusion as only covering minorities but even two people of the same gender, skin colour, nationality, sexual orientation and education will have led two distinct lives and will have had differing experiences. The key to inclusivity is to not make assumptions and put in the extra effort to include those that are different to you.

With those cores in mind — here are some techniques we use at Babylon to make sure everyone feels included.

Remote team members

This is a big one for us as eight of our team are full time remote workers and the rest of the team is split across three offices. We maintain some internal guidelines on how to make sure people working remotely don’t feel excluded but the main brunt of it is to make sure each meeting you hold makes it possible for everyone to contribute equally.

• Don’t have meetings with no remote options (you’re excluding people by default)
• Ensure each meeting room has a correct remote setup (try not to have meetings from shared spaces like the kitchen — the background noise is killer)
• Any materials you share should be shared digitally rather than physically, e.g. opt for Trello instead of post-its
• Maintain all materials online so that everything the team is doing is accessible to them
• Ensure remote engineers visit at least a few times a year to facilitate the formation of strong team bonds
• Be aware of time zone differences when scheduling meetings!

People have different workstyles

Some people are larks, more productive in the mornings, others night owls, typing away in the night. Some like to work all hours of the day, others have hobbies or commitments that they prefer to fit work around.

Babylon as a company already recognises and supports this with flexible working hours and work from home policies. Additionally we make sure to schedule our meetings in the mid hours of the work day when most of the team is in (usually in the afternoon for our US colleagues to be able to join), and make sure to record all meetings so that team members who can’t make it for whatever reason can still catch up on what was said whenever best suits them.

Introvert/Extrovert

Some people thrive on the company of others and human interactions, others need to recharge their batteries afterwards. Some relish the idea of presenting to a room full of people, for others that’s their idea of a personal hell. Some folks may not feel comfortable interrupting others, others might need prompting to give up the floor. Care needs to be taken when all these people come together in a meeting to ensure everyone has a chance to contribute.

For us, this means giving explicit prompts for folks to add anything in discussions, especially when coming to decisions. In smaller meetings, it is quite clear who hasn’t said anything and easy to ask them explicitly what they think. In larger meetings, asking “Does anyone have any other thoughts?” “Does this sound ok to everyone?” can create opportunities for those who have not spoken yet to contribute.

And with the recent team growth, it became obvious that meetings were not the best places to have fully fledged discussions and come to complex decisions. Considering the team size, some folks also found it quite intimidating to speak up in front of everyone. We have now moved the majority of our technical discussions and decision making to Threads, a collaboration tool we’ll write about more soon.

Protected categories

In the UK this covers gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, relationship status, disability, age, gender reassignment and pregnancy/maternity. Naturally it is illegal to discriminate against people based on those qualities, but make sure you also don’t unintentionally make them feel excluded. Below is a list of things we discussed and try to ensure within our team;

• Don’t assume people’s gender identity — ask and then address them as such
• Steer clear of gender stereotyping e.g. for us this is using the pronoun “he” when describing a doctor or “she” when speaking about a nurse, remember not everyone is male or female.
• Don’t know someone’s gender? Use the pronoun “they”, perfectly grammatically correct even for the singular case.
• Avoid addressing a group of people as “guys”, this can make people feel excluded, much safer to stick to gender neutral terms like “everyone”, “folks” or the American “y’all”
• Don’t assume people’s sexual orientation, (e.g. when they speak of their partner do not assume that means “girlfriend” for a guy or “boyfriend” for a woman)
• Don’t assume someone’s knowledge or experience based on their age! Your junior engineers might have fantastic ideas, hear them out. Your older engineers may have just come across something for the first time today, don’t assume they should’ve already mastered it. On the flip side, just because something is a new technology, don’t immediately launch into detailed explanations on the assumption they don’t know it.
• Be respectful of people’s religions, beliefs and choices. Just because you may not share them, does not give you the right to attack or criticise them.
• Be mindful that people may have dietary restrictions or may choose not to drink — make sure any meeting or get together you plan accommodates these!
• When interacting with people with disabilities — do not “help” without being asked, don’t call them “brave” or “inspirational” — they’re just living their lives
• Remember that not all disabilities are visible!

A lot to remember, isn’t it? Don’t get me wrong, we don’t do this perfectly and we do make mistakes, but when that does happen we understand that we’re all human. When one of us makes a mistake that doesn’t mean they are a bad person or not trying. It’s important to acknowledge, apologise and move on.

We try to remember we’re all different and do our best to accommodate those differences. Just because some things are more common, we don’t assume everyone is like that.

At Babylon we believe it’s possible to put an accessible and affordable health service in the hands of every person on earth. The technology we use is at the heart and soul of that mission. Babylon is a Healthcare Platform, currently providing online consultations via in-app video and phone calls, AI-assisted Triage and Predictive Health Assistance.

If you are interested in helping us build the future of healthcare, please find our open roles here.

Follow us on Twitter @Babylon_Eng