A look into how we support our LGTBQIA+ community at Dropbox
At Dropbox, we’re committed to ensuring that the teams building our products reflect the diversity of our customers. Read on to see how LGTBQIA+ employees are supported across various departments at Dropbox!
What perks or benefits do you offer your LGBTQIA+ employees at Dropbox?
At Dropbox, we celebrate and support all of our employees. We’re proud to offer a number of programs and policies for our employees in the LGBTQIA+ community, including:
- Our global adoption and surrogacy policy provides financial support for Dropbox employees exploring adoptions and surrogacies. Employees on our Anthem plan also have access to comprehensive fertility benefits. Whether an individual wants to freeze their eggs or sperm for future use, or explore IVF, we support all employees who want to start a family.
- Dropbox also offers a Global Survivor Benefit. This benefit provides compassionate support to an employee’s beneficiary in the event of a death or suicide, so the family can focus on grieving and healing.
- We also offer gender affirmation coverage with Anthem. To ensure that there are no barriers to accessing care, we do not require mental health certifications for any services related to gender affirmation surgeries. Dropbox has also implemented a travel benefit of up to $10,000 for those who must travel more than 75 miles to obtain care that is not available in their home state, including gender affirmation surgery.
- Dropbox provides global mental health services through Modern Health for all employees and their dependents. The program offers employees 8 therapy and 8 coaching sessions, as well as community-specific educational sessions on topics such as allyship and supporting LGBTQIA+ parents.
- Last but not least, we provide employees a quarterly allowance that we call Perks Allowance. Whether it’s wellness, caregiver support, nutrition, productivity, ergonomics, or learning, the Perks Allowance aims to support the unique needs of every Dropbox employee.
-Wendy Macias, Director of Global Benefits at Dropbox
What programs and initiatives do you offer for the LGBTQIA+ community at Dropbox?
At Dropbox, we believe diversity in terms of who we are, how we think, and how we work makes us more powerful than the sum of our parts. Diversity is always our top priority as we seek to help our Dropboxers find support and create community,
One way we help foster DEI is through our Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). Pridebox is our ERG focused on supporting our LGBTQIA+ employees, which aims to build community, facilitate learning and discussion, and celebrate key milestones like Pride for our LGBTQIA+ community at Dropbox. To reach our distributed workforce across the world, the group engages in these efforts on a global scale.
To make sure our programs and initiatives are inclusive, we apply annually to the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index. This is a national benchmarking tool measuring policies, practices, and benefits pertinent to LGBTQIA+ employees and reflects the implementation of LGBTQIA+ inclusive policies and practices in the workplace. We are proud to have scored 100% for the past eight years!
-Danny Guillory, Chief Diversity Officer at Dropbox
How does Dropbox support the LGTBQIA+ community outside of the organization?
In addition to supporting our LGBTQIA+ employees here at Dropbox, we also invest time and resources in supporting the community at large. We look to advocate for laws and partner with organizations that uplift LGBTQIA+ people all around the world.
Dropbox is a member of the Human Rights Council’s Business Coalition for Equality Act, a group of leading U.S. employers that support the Equality Act, and Out Leadership, the oldest and largest coalition of global companies working to improve LGBTQIA+ equality in the world. Through the Dropbox Foundation, we partner with OutRight Action International, Belong To, and Larkin Street Youth Services. Dropbox also hosts Impact Days for employees to volunteer with these Foundation partners. Outside of the Foundation, our community partners include The Trevor Project, OutYouth, and Trans Lifeline.
-Tina Lee, Head of Social Impact at Dropbox
What efforts does Dropbox employ to attract and retain LGBTQIA+ talent?
It is critically important for every future and current Dropboxer to be evaluated and recognized based on their merit and the impact they have on making our customers successful. In order to truly do this, we have a responsibility to make every candidate and employee feel safe living their lives with authenticity.
To stay accountable to this, we have three multi-year diversity commitments that all Dropbox employees contribute to:
- Hire a diverse team
- Develop and advance equitably
- Engage in personal growth
These commitments are intentionally specific and action-oriented, so that all employees can play a role in promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion at Dropbox.
Our first commitment is to hire a diverse team. We’re focused on expanding our applicant pools and making our talent acquisition efforts even more equitable. Since launching our Virtual First remote work strategy in October 2020, we’ve removed most geographic barriers to hiring within the U.S., giving us access to more diverse talent pools. Compared to 2019, we’ve seen a 2.4x increase in gender diverse applicants per role and a 2.8x increase of URM diverse applicants per role.
Our second commitment is to develop and advance employees equitably. In 2020, we launched an initiative focused on retaining women, LGBTQIA+ and URMs at Dropbox called Project Maia. This program identifies those employees who may be at risk of leaving Dropbox and equipping managers with tools and resources to better understand how to retain them. Beyond retention, we’ve also developed programming to ensure that women, LGTBQIA+, and URMs advance equitably at Dropbox. Launched in 2020, Dropbox LEAD is a professional growth program designed for early career high-performing women and URMs at Dropbox.
Our final commitment is engage in personal growth. Our DEI team provides trainings and workshops that focus on topics such as unconscious bias, how to create an inclusive workplace, how to lead and develop teams equitably, and much more. In 2021, we launched the DEI Trailblazer Award, which recognizes employees who have worked to make Dropbox a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive place to work. We incorporate DEI efforts into employees’ performance review cycles, and provide monetary compensation for employees who lead our ERGs.
-Eric Trickett, VP of Talent Acquisition at Dropbox
