Women in leadership: Why (and how) we’re making ourselves accountable
Head of People and Organisation, Marie Toby, and CPO and co-founder, Lino Teuteberg, explain our gender balance commitments, progress thus far, and how we’re building more inclusive practices across the board.
Even in our startup infancy, we’ve believed in the importance of Diversity and Inclusion at Taxfix. With grassroots initiatives like our Diversity Guild, we’ve strived to create a workplace where everyone is enabled to grow and contribute. Why? Because, beyond being a savvy business decision, we think having a diverse workforce opens the door to a wealth of perspectives, discussions, and — ultimately — a better culture.
Of course, incredible cultures like that don’t just happen — they take careful planning and support on all levels. And, as we continue to grow, we recognise that it’s time to put our money where our mouth is. At the start of 2021, we made an internal commitment to advance gender diversity across all leadership levels. In two years’ time, we pledged to increase women in management by seven percentage points and women in senior leadership by 23 percentage points.
Here’s a look at our leadership gender balance at the start of this year and where we want to be by 2023:
We know that this is just one lever in a holistic approach to creating an even more diverse and inclusive environment for our Berlin and Madrid teams — but it’s an important one. We caught up with the masterminds behind this initiative, Head of People & Organisation, Marie Toby, and CPO and co-founder, Lino Teuteberg, to learn more:
Why did we decide to set gender balance goals?
Although we embedded D&I into Taxfix culture early on, Marie explains that our approach has become more deliberate in recent months. “As we’re growing so quickly, we realised we had to actively steer our organisation. We needed to become more strategic in how we’re building and supporting an environment where everyone can thrive.” She adds that setting data-driven targets are an integral part of achieving any goal at Taxfix. “We have a very metrical, target-oriented way to drive our business. Approaching challenges this way enables us to keep focus and be accountable for what we want to achieve. So, for me, it was equally important to have a similar approach to our long term diversity goals.”
Additionally, Lino notes global systemic barriers as a motive for setting these leadership commitments. “There are many underlying societal issues that unfortunately still limit the number of women in high-ranking leadership positions,” Lino argues. “For my co-founder, Mathis, and me, this is not the environment we want to work in. We want to work in an environment that is equal.” He adds that investing in talent acquisition initiatives, like sourcing and targeted job boards, is a necessary way to even the playing field. “If you look at a natural recruitment funnel for senior leadership, we will see more male applicants. That’s why we’re choosing to distort the top of the recruitment funnel in some cases to make it more equal from the start.”
How did we go about defining these goals?
Working with core women leaders in the organisation and Head of Talent Acquisition, Rob Krzyzaniak, Marie and Lino gathered benchmark data to establish our initial commitments. “As our HQ is in Berlin, we first investigated gender representation in larger corporations in Germany,” Marie notes. “Shockingly, women hold only 11.5% of senior leadership positions and 29.5% of management positions in Germany’s top 200 companies,” she adds. “We also looked at the tech giants like Google and Apple, who have leadership teams that are roughly 28% female.” Armed with external and internal data — and taking into account projected hiring needs and internal mobility opportunities — the team hashed out our first commitments to increasing our leadership gender balance. Despite this progressive move, Marie and Lino agree that this is just one aspect of a broader commitment to diversity and inclusion. “Setting a goal of 30% women in senior leadership is the first step,” Lino admits, “Obviously, it should be 50% — but it’s a start.”
What does this mean for current and future Taxfixers?
Considering the sensitive nature of these commitments, Lino and Marie decided to discuss the topic openly with the organisation. “This undertaking is a team effort,” Marie explains, “everyone has a role to play. So gathering feedback from across departments was essential.” Via a company-wide update, Marie and Lino walked the team through our diversity commitment and how we hoped to reach these ambitious goals sustainably. “We didn’t want anyone to feel like they were hired as a quota or that their credibility was questioned,” Lino states. “That’s why it was fundamental to explain to the team why we chose this approach and the countermeasures we put in place to make sure we keep hiring, developing, and retaining great people.” Marie adds that establishing guiding principles for this undertaking was a vital way to avoid potential pitfalls. “We will never hire, fire, or promote for the sake of gender. The ultimate goal is to make sure that everyone feels included and recognised and legitimate,” she emphasises.
How are we doing so far?
Both Marie and Lino report that the team has embraced this commitment with open arms. “There’s a lot of buy-in across the company,” Lino explains, “every hiring manager I speak with is fully committed to enabling their team and building a great environment.” And this passionate dedication is already starting to pay off. We’re happy to share that women make up nearly 40% of our total workforce — a percentage on par with many startups and above average in the tech and fintech industries. On top of that, we’ve made incredible progress towards our leadership goals:
How are we supporting this shift internally?
Building a more balanced team is just one piece of the puzzle, however. Marie and Lino explain that strengthening internal support is critical for long-term success. “We didn’t want a patch solution,” Marie notes. “We never thought, ‘let’s hire all these women and then we’re good to go.’ There has to be a structural process,” she states. “Equality is so much more than numbers,” Lino adds, “It’s about having equal opportunities to build and progress in your career. To feel respected and empowered to speak up and equally contribute to solving challenges.”
As part of their comprehensive approach to fostering gender equality, Marie and Lino explored internal data on promotions within Taxfix. This research found that promotions were historically balanced between male and female employees. “That was very important to me,” Lino acknowledges, “it was good to confirm that we reward people based on merit and nothing else and that we look at performance in a non-biased way. Additionally, this data showed we’re moving in the right direction. When more women succeed in their career, we contribute to solving a larger societal problem in the long run.”
Marie and the People Team also set out to further boost internal support from three angles — career growth, community building, and confronting biases. “Career development is very relevant for everyone within the company. We’re putting a lot of effort into being better sponsors for our entire team now and in their future careers,” Marie says. She further explains how we’re driving this forward. “There has been a push to enable all Taxfixers across the organisation to build development plans and take advantage of their development budgets. We’re also helping all people managers upskill their coaching and feedback tool kit.”
Additionally, the company is prioritising internal networking and mentorship. Women and men in the organisation recently got together for a round table discussion with interim VP of Brand, Claire Davidson, to hear about her career journey. “We hope to create a space for women where they can inspire each other and share best practices and experiences,” Marie states. “It’s about looking up and looking further than where we are now.” She adds that plans for future round table discussions are already in the works. On including men in those conversations, Lino notes the value of shared responsibility. “We can only solve this together. There needs to be as much awareness and commitment from the men in the organisation as the women.”
What’s next?
Although we’ve made some great strides, we’re just getting started. Like anything worthwhile, fostering an inclusive environment is a practice, not a one-time action. And as we continue to grow, we plan to continue raising the bar on our commitment to diversity. Marie and Lino share just a few of our goals for the next few months:
Building awareness across the board
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to equality. “Creating an environment where everyone feels included is very much influenced by individuals,” Lino states. “Some people are more aware than others. That’s why we want to provide more in-depth and actionable training across the team.” Marie notes, “we also want to look into how to better support development talks for everyone.” She goes on to explain that we all have unconscious biases that we need to mitigate. “People tend to give feedback in a certain way or to value certain attributes in the various genders differently. We’re all human, and we’re all gender-biased in a way. Taking the time for training and discussion around that will bring a lot of awareness to this issue.”
Working parent support
Further support for all working parents is also on the agenda. Marie explains that although working parents only account for roughly 12% of the Taxfix employee population, this is a crucial moment to start planning. “We want to prepare for the future because we know there are more to come,” Marie states. “We have our first mothers going on maternity leave now, so we don’t want to wait to start setting up these structures.” Lino adds that eliminating barriers for parents coming back to work is a must. “When I speak with our recent parents, they are all very ambitious. And I think, for us as a company, it’s a question of how can we support that ambition beyond what is provided by governments?”
Marie shares that although we offer flexible working hours and supplemental childcare support, there is more we want to accomplish. “It would be a fantastic win if we can provide more tools and information in an accessible, people-centric way. We want to offer even more flexibility in a way that embraces being a parent, not only a mom. For example, policies around coming back to work at reduced capacity or scheduling meetings only during core working hours.”
Promoting societal change
In the long term, we also hope to contribute beyond Taxfix. “I’ve come to understand that, as a founder, I can make a change,” Lino reflects. “I can make a positive difference for everyone working here and everyone who thinks about joining. But also, hopefully, through that, we can be a role model as a company. Big corporations are often terrible role models in that regard. And that needs to change. There need to be more companies that can drive societal change that’s bigger than themselves.”
What can women leaders expect at Taxfix?
“There’s a lot of humaneness and care and sympathy in the ways that we are dealing with one another,” Marie explains. “It’s not easy to put oneself in another’s shoes. But there is definitely an intention across the organisation to become more aware and to discuss how to do better to help any individual — not just women — feel great,” Marie adds. “Here, there is a lot of room to take on responsibilities, be ambitious, and achieve things together. For me, it’s a place where I can fail, learn, and innovate with supportive and passionate people.”
Interested in joining our team? Explore our open positions.
