Taking a stand to become an anti-racist company

In light of recent events I want to share where I, and 15Five as a company, stand in regards to the issues of racial equality and injustice facing our nation today. 

I didn’t want to rush out a knee-jerk statement without first being in deep consideration about what we could actually do that would make a real difference over the long term, so I’ve spent the past few weeks looking inward. To this end, I’ve invested many hours educating myself, having discussions with our Senior Leadership Team, and meeting with individual employees and our company as a whole.

Although the makeup of our employee base and leadership team is somewhat diverse, it is nowhere near what it could be. I want to make it clear that I take full responsibility for where we are as a company today.

For background, I’m not sure I’d even heard the term D&I (now Diversity, Equity & Inclusion - DEI) when I started this company in 2011, and it wasn’t until 2017/2018 that it was brought up at a Senior Leadership Team retreat where we started to have this conversation. 

Of the conversations we have had over the past 2-ish years, none of them were initiated by me. I certainly took interest out of my care for people feeling safe and included, and felt we should “do something about it,” but I will admit that I never fully “got” the breadth and severity of the situation. As a result, my stance was that DEI was something we should delegate to our People Team, however, I also never prioritized allocating additional resources to these efforts.

This was a massive blind spot and failing on my part, and while I feel a lot of regret and frankly shame, I am very much committed to using my platform of influence and leadership to be part of the solution going forward. I have made it clear to the team that I will be joining our DEI committee, and that the committee and I will be prioritizing actions and resources going forward. I have also begun to initiate and engage in conversations with other leaders outside of 15Five.

One of the big “ah-ha’s” I had in the past few weeks was how my unexamined view of myself, relating to myself as “a good person” and “not a racist,” shut down my curiosity and took me out of the conversation and away from a sense of responsibility for an inequitable system that I’ve clearly benefited from.

To this end, the distinction between “not racist” and “anti-racist” really hit home for me and I’ve been working with our team to understand what actions we can be taking to actively participate in creating a different future, both here at 15Five and in my other communities and networks. 

In a world where there is so much invested in maintaining the status quo, I now realize it’s only by becoming actively anti-racist that we have a chance to bring about change. 

I believe supporting a diverse employee population is important because representation matters, especially if we’re going to build an organization where every one of our employees feels psychologically safe - a true sense of belonging - and that meaningful opportunity exists at all levels across the organization.

Below are the actions we’ve taken and the commitments we’re making. In addition, we will publish an update to this list alongside our progress every 6 months.  

1. Improving our Leadership

• First and foremost, we’re prioritizing education to ensure that as leaders we have a thorough, shared understanding of the social/historical context surrounding these issues, and also are conscious of our impact on society given our roles and responsibilities as leaders (especially those of us who are white males and lack the direct experience of what it’s like to be a member of a historically marginalized group). To that end, I’ve personally committed to reading one book a month through the end of the year on the topics of DEI, social justice, and/or racism. Our Senior Leadership Team (SLT) are studying together with a minimum of at least once book per quarter, combined with follow-up conversations to help collectively evolve our perspectives and worldviews (although, some may choose to read/study much more). Our SLT is currently reading White Fragility and will be having a discussion in July.
• Our SLT will engage in intensive anti-racism and anti-discrimination training annually.
• We’re committed to actively listening to perspectives from both inside and outside of 15Five with focus, diligence, and empathy, especially from members of marginalized groups and our Black employees in particular.  This means taking a step back in conversations, sometimes being silent, providing a safe space for other people to have open and courageous discussions, and leaning into discomfort whenever it’s required of us.
• We’re further investing in building out an internal, rotating DEI committee, which as mentioned I will personally be involved in, as will other members of our SLT.
• As we come out of the current economic crisis and budgets normalize, we will prioritize further financial resources to better support our DEI initiatives.

1. Improving Representation, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging

• When we resume hiring, we will actively focus on building a diverse pool of candidates for all roles and support and enforce equitable hiring practices, which includes unconscious bias training for all hiring managers.
• I’m committed to further diversifying our SLT and leadership/management throughout the company.
• We are examining all of our cultural practices and norms to assess whether they’re truly inclusive to all. We recognize the possibility that we may have blind spots and that some of our current practices may be causing harm, unbeknownst to us.
• We are also examining all of our current policies, process and guidelines to assess whether they’re truly inclusive and promote equity throughout 15Five.
• We will maintain our attention, through surveys, active listening, and seeking feedback using 15Five, on how to best create and nurture a culture of inclusivity and create a company where everyone has the opportunity to feel both psychologically safe and a deep sense of belonging.
• Finally, we chose to celebrate Juneteenth as an official holiday this year (and will be continue celebrating it moving forward), to provide space for both our Black and non-Black employees to honor the memory of the lives risked and lost in the pursuit of freedom from American slavery, and recognize how far we have to go for equality and freedom.

1. Providing education, exposure and meaningful conversations for all of our employees

• We’re implementing ongoing education on how we can practice allyship and be accomplices. We brought in the team from ReadySet last week to deliver their Ally Skills workshop to our entire company and are looking into partnering with them and other DEI facilitators and consultants to ensure our journey towards being anti-racist and anti-discriminatory is ongoing. We’ll also be regularly bringing in speakers from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives to help expose us all to both the nuances of history, racism, inequality, and systems of oppression, to help us navigate how we can all begin to shift.
• We’re exploring the possibility of using the 15Five Best-Self Academy, which offers training to managers, as a platform to help spread important education about DEI from leading experts.

I recognize that these are all small steps towards making big changes in our society. I am VERY humbly open to your feedback and evolving my/our stance on what we can and should do. I hope you will join us in taking a stand for a future that’s fair, just and inclusive of everyone, where everyone has the opportunity to become their best selves. 

David Hassell

CEO and co-founder, 15Five