Building beyond bias: how Taxfix Design Team is harnessing diversity

‘Diversity’ is a word we hear flying around a lot — in team meetings, in mission statements, in work sessions — but, if we’re honest with ourselves, have we let it become a bit of a buzzword? Have we forgotten to take the time to truly understand and actively find meaningful ways to incorporate it into our busy professional lives? For lots of us, the answer is a resounding ‘yes’. Recently we interviewed Senior Design Manager Shaleah Dawnyel about the importance of diversity and its benefits for everyone.

So, why are we talking about the topic of diversity in Taxfix at this point in time?

Shaleah: Taxfix is in a hugely exciting position right now: we’re growing rapidly and deciding what our future is going to be. In my over two years here, we’ve tripled in size; yet, still I’m one of the only women of colour in leadership. So, if Taxfix’s core intention is that we are serving everybody, then that means we absolutely must include everybody in creating the services that we’re offering — both now and in the future.

Taxfix already accomplishes a lot here: we’ve got people from all over the world on our teams. But the majority of people in leadership are still white; they’re still cis men*, they’re still non-Disabled, they’re still middle class. So, when I look around and I see more diverse skin colours, ethnicities, and gender expressions visible in the (Zoom) room — and there are more and more all the time — I’m really heartened by the fact that we are trying, to live out that core intention of serving everyone.

Onward momentum is what it’s all about! How does this play out in the Design team you co-lead?

Shaleah: From my perspective, the best design keeps the user at the centre of the work. And that user comes with their own colourful and complex set of needs, problems, questions, feelings, and experiences, so we need to avoid applying too many of our own biases to the work that we do.

What I mean by ‘biases’ is that we each bring our own (usually subconscious) preconceptions to every interview, to every conversation, to every interaction. However, if we leave our biases unchallenged, we risk cutting a lot out. For instance, I’ve been in meetings where what I’ve said has been overlooked, only to be taken up when repeated, just about verbatim, by a white male colleague directly afterwards. This is due to our cultural bias towards viewing white voices and male voices as the most credible sources of authority. So I can’t help but ask: what (and who) are we missing by getting stuck in our own biases?

Do you think there are ways that we can challenge our biases in professional settings?

Shaleah: There’s only one real way to push back against our individual biases, and that’s to have a range of different people with different biases in the same room. The truth is that we all have our biases. They exist. So, to offset them, we need a greater diversity of people in the room to look at the same information, pool our innovation, empathy, and intellect, then hash out design solutions.

Plus, frankly, diversity makes for far more interesting work and outcomes! Over my time at Taxfix so far, I’ve witnessed it becoming a more diverse company in real-time, and that’s been the key driver in really pushing at what we’re able to imagine, what we’re able to set a course towards, and what we’re able to do here.

So diversity isn’t some sort of add-on; rather, it’s mandatory. What would you say we all stand to gain from (re-)centring diversity in this deeper way?

Shaleah: It means that we gain more sustainable, more meaningful, more reciprocal access to the resources and insights that are present right here in the diverse world that we all live in. In fact, this goes back to the after-work Activating Privilege workshop that we facilitated online last year. The privilege-checking exercises, plus all of the enthusiastic questions and conversations that unfolded so freely in that space, really clearly demonstrated the kind of energy that we can tap into when we take the time to learn about and appreciate the diversities that we are already part of. And that session helped a lot of us to realise that we have to be honest with ourselves and recognise the deep, deep privilege present in even being able to think that diversity exists as an optional extra, a checklist to take or leave.

Then recognising our privileges and — even more importantly — activating them is where life starts to get much richer, more interesting, and more rewarding. How do we go about doing that work of recognising and activating?

Shaleah: First of all, activating privilege isn’t about hating on people — including ourselves — for not having seen something before. It’s about being willing to discover, being humble and making space for real empathy and connection. On a practical level, this might mean being ready to witness and react sensitively to the struggles that others face. This is something that my co-leader in the Design department, Ashley Youett — a cis, white, non-Disabled man — is really excellent at. When he sees unconscious bias used at my or others’ disadvantage, he activates his capacity to act as a powerful, supportive ally. He regularly reaches out to me with questions like:

• Would you like to talk about this right now, or would you prefer not to?
• Do you want me to stay out of it?
• How can I support you at this point?
• Is there anything I can do/say next time?

After asking, it’s vital to really wait and listen for the answer — we can’t impose what we imagine the answer to our question might be. A recent example of exactly this type of openness in our Taxfix community came out of an inclusive language project: it was being driven by a white man. But what’s great about the culture here at Taxfix was that he was doing enough self-reflection to realise that, although his heart was in the topic and he had a good intellectual grasp of it, he wasn’t necessarily the person (or people) best placed to govern the whole thing. I thought that was impressive. In a dialogue with a female manager, they arrived at the conclusion that this was a project best driven by me — and I feel grateful that I work at a company that can and will act with that kind of accountability and dynamism.

So, what comes next? Where does Taxfix go from here?

As arguably one of the most promising Fintechs in Europe, Taxfix is growing and expanding internationally all the time. This means that we have so many choices available to us inside of these new contexts regarding who we bring in as experts. When it comes to hiring new people, as I explained earlier, this absolutely isn’t just about ticking off a ‘diversity’ checklist by hiring people who have technically lived somewhere else; instead, it’s about hiring people with not only excellent professional credentials and expertise, but who have a rich range of different backgrounds, different lived experiences, and different long term realities.

And this is already beginning to happen more and more, so we’re in a great place to build from. One of my favourite things about my content design team is the fact that they’re all from different places, have different accents, speak multiple languages, and are highly empathetic individuals deeply sensitive to each other and the wider world.

Recently they were given a ballot choice based on a deep-dive survey of issues to address in our team: realign salary brackets or focus on an inclusivity project? Unanimously, they chose the inclusivity project. And this gives me so much hope about the community and culture that we’ve created — and are creating — in the Design team here at Taxfix. My team proves that diversity isn’t a single checkpoint to reach and look back on, but a whole philosophy, a way of working, a way of being. And, ultimately, harnessing diversity is what makes our teamwork, outcomes, and relationships richer — for everyone.

Learn more about our commitment to improving gender diversity at Taxfix.

Special thanks to Aileen McKay for helping us bring this story to life.