How Moves is Creating a Culture Based on Diversity, Equity, Belonging and Inclusion
By Sarah Sheikh
Diversity and inclusion at the workplace is no longer a “nice to have” but an essential and expected part of any organization’s strategic plan to attract top talent. Look at (almost) any job description or career pages and you will see something that alludes to that company’s commitment to a diverse workforce.
What you don’t generally see is a company’s own journey to finding the right initiatives that work for them. Every company is different and a “one size fits all” solution isn’t the answer. At Moves, it’s an ongoing process, and we are happy to share our roadmap so far to showcase what makes us a great place to work.
At Moves, we celebrate our inclusive work environment and welcome members of all backgrounds and perspectives. Wanting to put our beliefs into practise and create an inclusive environment for everyone, we asked our colleagues their opinion via an inclusion survey in January 2021. The survey was anonymous, and no identifying data was collected. Employees were asked a series of questions to get a sense of the state of inclusion at Moves.
Following the survey, three areas of improvement were identified:
- Make recruitment more inclusive
- Give employees a voice
- Internal culture changes
Inclusive recruitment:
The Careers page is usually the first interaction that prospective candidates have with a company, and we wanted to reflect our welcoming and friendly nature by adding a video about who we are and the culture at Moves. This was very well received, as many candidates mentioned the video during interviews.
All of our job descriptions are put through an inclusive language decoder, such as Dover, Katmatfield and Jobvite, to ensure the language used is neutral; we want to avoid any terms or phrasing that appeals to certain groups. In addition, a list of diverse job boards, such as Women Who Design, Diversity Jobs and Job Board LGBT+, was put together and new positions are advertised on non-traditional websites to attract a more diverse audience. We have seen a significant number of applicants coming through non-traditional job boards.
Give employees a voice:
A new committee was launched to give employees the chance to voice their ideas and suggestions for the company in the form of the DEBI Committee (diversity, equity, belonging and inclusion), launched in January 2021.
The goal of the committee is to:
- Encourage microlearning for all employees (see below)
- Organize cultural events in line with employee suggestions
- Set recommendations for recruitment to promote diversity
- Recommend good practices for internal use
The DEBI Committee has organized a series of cultural events and microlearning so far for 2021:
- Lunar New Year lunch with three colleagues sharing how they celebrate this event in their culture
- Nowruz microlearning and celebration with two colleagues sharing what it is and how they celebrate Iranian new year
- Learnt to sign in ASL to “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” with Deafinitely Dope
We also joined the Black North Pledge, committing to increase our efforts to make our workplaces a safe space for anti-Black systemic racism and ensure that no barriers exist to prevent Black employees from advancing within the company. Moves joined the pledge in March 2021 and are working with a volunteer account manager to achieve our commitments.
Internal culture changes:
Employees who celebrate holidays that do not feature in the Ontario calendar (for example: Passover, Nowruz, etc.) are given the opportunity to take a paid personal day off instead of using a vacation day.
Employees can add their pronouns to our HRIS and have them displayed on their profile in Slack. This past month, we challenged everyone to stop using the word “guys’’ and replace it with more inclusive language (folks, y’all, peeps, etc). To ensure our meetings are more accessible, we upgraded our Zoom account to include auto-transcription.
Another fun addition to the company culture is the creation of the “Movers World Map,’’ which pinpoints where colleagues were born. We also introduced water cooler questions on every other Tuesday; we ask colleagues to share such things as favorite meals, cute GIFs, book recommendations, etc. These initiatives are a fun way to learn about our colleagues and share personal stories.
In March 2021, we launched a new round of research by creating a survey for gig workers; this was an important survey as it helped inform a major iteration of our product.
As part of this survey, we felt it was important to include some diversity questions. We clearly separated these questions from the core content of the survey and emphasized they are optional. The goal was to understand representation among our users and to prevent research samples from becoming distorted, consciously or not. From the results of the survey, we started a project to advertise our product in more diverse and targeted platforms.
So what does this mean for Moves?
We have already seen positive results from our initiatives. Candidates at the interview stage mention our video, we have more diversity in the people who apply to our roles and an appetite from colleagues to get more involved.
Our efforts also led us to win the Inclusive Business Awards at the Global Inclusion Online Forum in May 2021. Winning this award got us access to some great initiatives and we have met with a few great people we would never have the opportunity to meet otherwise.
We’re not perfect — we know there’s lots more we could do, and we love getting feedback internally and externally on how we can strive to do better. Let us know any other resources we should take a look at or anything we’ve missed!
