Employee Listening & DEI

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) strategy and programming are not one size fits all. It’s vital to consider a company's unique culture, values, size and stage, long- and short-term goals, and especially employee thoughts and opinions.? While there are many DEI best practices, what creates lasting, impactful change is building and executing a DEI strategy based on your company’s needs.

When I first joined Affirm, I wanted to learn more about Affirm’s DEI strategy and programming and met with stakeholders across the company. I talked to Employee Resource Group (ERG) Leads, People Business Partners, people managers, senior leaders, and people who previously worked on DEI initiatives at Affirm. In addition to these conversations, I also reviewed new data from Affirm’s most recent annual Engagement & DEI survey. I used the data from the survey and what I learned from my conversations with Affirmers to kick off my work. The DEI team has nearly quadrupled in size since I started, but we still take the same approach any time we launch a new program, process, or policy, it’s based on what we are hearing from Affirmers.? This strategy enables Affirmers to feel seen, heard, and valued.

To understand the impact of our work, we measure DEI sentiment among Affirmers and track our progress over time. In addition to conducting an annual Engagement & DEI survey (which we’ll be upping to twice a year starting in 2022), Affirm conducts just-in-time surveys that help us understand Afffimers’ pain points, like our 2020 survey centered around understanding how different demographics were experiencing the pandemic and our 2021 survey around remote work and mental wellbeing. These survey results provide us with invaluable information that drives our work. At Affirm, one of our core values is People Come First– by considering what matters to employees, we can build DEI goals and plans that resonate and affect Affirmer sentiment, engagement, wellness, and more.

Over the past two years, we’ve seen positive momentum in how employees feel about the state of DEI at Affirm. Every single DEI question has improved in sentiment over the past two years, many by double digits. Below are just a few of the highlights:

Since our strategy of listening first has been so effective, we want to keep the lines of communication open and make sure all Affirmers can share their thoughts and opinions as we grow.? At the end of 2021, we launched Suggestion Ox, an online feedback platform that allows for anonymous feedback from Affirmers on DEI topics at Affirm. It allows for two-way communication between Affirmers and the DEI Team while maintaining anonymity. Now that Affirm is much larger, remote-first, and has employees in 5 countries, Affirmers are less likely to know the DEI Team personally. Affirmers might not know who they should reach out to with their direct feedback, or they might not be as comfortable sharing their honest DEI feedback with people they don’t personally know. Suggestion Ox allows us to keep a pulse on the DEI sentiment within Affirm or external events affecting Affirmers.

We’ve already received over a dozen suggestions on actions Affirm can take to improve DEI. One of the suggestions was that Affirm should reconsider using the word “blackout” when referring to trade-restricted periods in our corporate communications. The word “black” is commonly associated with negative things, and the word “white” is commonly associated with positive things, as outlined in the article our submitter shared (read it here). At Affirm, we don’t want to perpetuate those associations. Our Equity team took the suggestion seriously, had a follow-up discussion with our Black@ members to hear their thoughts, and ultimately decided to stop using the phrase “blackout” going forward. Instead, we’ll be using terms like “trade-restricted period”.

Our surveys and Suggestion Ox together allow us to gain insight into the Affirmer experience and measure our progress over time. And I’m sure we will continue to add more programs and processes that allow us to hear directly from Affirmers and take action based on what they share with us.

We’re so proud of our progress in DEI thus far, but we also know that we have a lot more to achieve and that building and maintaining DEI at Affirm is a continuous and never-ending process, core to how we work and how we do business.? We’re excited to continue to be transparent and share our efforts and progress on our journey. Next up is our upcoming 2021 DEI Report, which we will release in March– stay tuned!