2021 Equitable Design & Impact Report: Accountability and action at Culture Amp
At Culture Amp, we are on a mission to create a better world of work, and that starts with our “Campers,” as we call our employees. As part of this commitment, we are a certified B Corp, working to balance people, profit, and purpose through the highest social and environmental performance standards, public transparency, and legal accountability.
In 2021, Culture Amp’s Equitable Design & Impact (EDI) team focused on aligning the Culture Amp mission with the needs of our most marginalized Campers. This report will highlight our efforts as a company and show our progress over the last year in building a representative, equitable, and inclusive workplace.
Building a better world of work
While Culture Amp’s current EDI program began to focus on anti-racism in 2020, before evolving to have a broader scope with a specific emphasis on access and disability inclusion, the program has always been dedicated to building a better world of work for everyone. We know that when we focus on the most marginalized populations – and the intersectional identities within them – we make the greatest progress.
For this reason, we opened up access to Culture Amp products for organizations that are doing critical racial justice work. Today, we provide discounts of 38% (to recognize the wage gap between Black women and White men) to for-profit businesses that are Black- or Indigenous-owned, and we’ve given away more than $300,000 in free software to non-profit (NFP) organizations focused on racial justice through the Kevin Wiggins Racial Justice NFP Grant, which was named after our Special Advisor to the first phase of our anti-racism work.
Internally, we’ve also made significant investments in order to achieve our mission. This report shares what we've learned and accomplished on our journey towards creating a more equitable and inclusive world of work.
Representation data
Last year, we committed to sharing our employee demographic information annually. We will continue to add additional relevant data points as we progress in our work. While the following charts are easy to interpret, we want to highlight that we have Campers in Australia, New Zealand, the US, and EMEA. The geographic variation among our Campers influences the expected representation of our company, especially from a racial perspective. For more on that specifically, we encourage you to read the update on our 2020 anti-racism work, which offers a country-level breakdown of global Black and Indigenous populations.
In 2021, we collected the demographic information of 692 Campers, which we’ve shared as pie charts below. The data has been broken down into seven categories (Race & Ethnicity, Disability Status, Gender Identity, LGBTQIA* Status, Caregiver Responsibilities, Highest Level of Education of Parent(s) or Guardian(s), and Native English Speaker Status).
Compared to 2020: Central Asian is a new category | ⬆ Black, East Asian, Middle Eastern, Pacific Islander, South Asian, Southeast Asian | ⬇ Indigenous, Hispanic, White
Compared to 2020: ⬆ Physical disability and no disability | ⬇ Mental disability and mental & physical disability|
Compared to 2020: ⬆ Man, non-binary | ⬇ Woman
Compared to 2020: ⬆ LGBTQIA* and Non-LGBTQIA* Campers
Compared to 2020: ⬆ Adult caregivers | ⬇ Caregivers of children or both, non-caregivers
Compared to 2020: ⬆ Non-native English speaker | ⬇ Native English speaker
This is used as a proxy to determine socioeconomic status.
Compared to 2020: ⬆ High school, Elementary or primary, no formal education | ⬇ Undergraduate degree, graduate degree, trade school
Compared to 2020: ⬆ Non-veterans | ⬇ Reservist and veterans
Of the 692 Campers included in the data set above, 417 were new Campers hired in 2021. We are excited to share that in 2021, Culture Amp achieved full, population-level representation of BIPOC Campers (27.5%). We got this number by calculating the percentage of BIPOC representation overall in countries we operate in, weighted by our Camper representation in those countries. Today, Culture Amp’s BIPOC representation level is 31.5%.
Improving the Camper experience
The EDI team also works closely with Organizational Development, Talent Acquisition, and People Operations teams to maintain and improve the quality of the Camper experience. In 2021, Culture Amp:
- Improved Camper confidence in the performance and promotion cycle compared to 2020.
- Increased – quarter over quarter – the percentage of Campers living with disabilities who said their next steps would be at Culture Amp.
As we move into 2022, our focus is on the road ahead on sustaining the progress we’ve made and improving in areas where we are falling behind such as improving engagement for our Campers living disability.
Accountability & Investments
We believe building an anti-racist organization is a shared responsibility, so this year we expanded our commitments and efforts beyond the executive team to improve the representation and experiences of every Camper.
Expanding accountability and investing internally
Anti-racism training
In 2021, more than 40 leaders engaged in anti-racism education to ensure they can help Culture Amp evolve as an anti-racist organization. One example is “Managing Across Racial Dynamics,” a training we offer to Mentors (what we call managers) of BIPOC Campers. Senior leaders had access to an Equitable Leadership Coaching program, to help them perform critical racial analysis in the context of their business decisions. To continue to make progress in 2022, we will expand access to anti-racism training to additional leaders and mentors.
Mental health and wellbeing resources
To create opportunities for our BIPOC Campers to thrive, we partnered with Anthony Ware to offer mental health programs and wellbeing workshops. The program focused on helping BIPOC Campers struggling with anxiety, burnout, imposter syndrome, or mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion. The program was well received and we will be extending the program in 2022.
Equity audits
In 2021, we audited our core talent processes (i.e., performance management, promotions, pay) for equity from a race, gender, and disability perspective. We’ll continue these audits as part of “business as usual” in our EDI operations, and expand coverage to new populations in 2022, including audits for caregiver status.
Employee resource group (ERG) program support
A major part of our work to build an equitable culture includes investments into our employee resource groups (ERGs). We recognize the important role ERGs play in helping us cultivate a culture where every Camper feels a sense of belonging. Our investment this year included:
- Formalizing our ERGs: Our ERGs have a formal governance structure. ERG leaders develop strategies for their community based on insights gleaned from community-specific engagement survey results.
- Establishing an ERG Council: The chair of each of our ERGs and their executive sponsors meet quarterly to align on goals and strategies for each group.
- Developing our ERG Leaders: The Organizational Development team has provided ERG Leaders access to courses that were previously only available to managers and executives. Additionally, Culture Amp partnered with Rajkumari Neogy for a 12-week course on the epigenetics of belonging, and our ERG leaders have access to quarterly invite-only AMA sessions with our executives.
- Paying our ERG Leaders: Most importantly, we began paying our ERG Leaders in recognition of the important work that they contribute above and beyond their full-time roles. We are proud to be a part of the 6% of organizations that directly recognize the value and impact that ERG Leaders have on our culture in this way.
In addition, Culture Amp’s ERG programs don’t just focus on developing ERG members and cultivating culture internally – they also contribute to their communities externally through philanthropy work. For example, our LGBTQ* ERG, Camp Out, ran a Lip Sync event to engage Campers globally, raising over $9000 USD for local LGBTQ+ charities. Our ERG for Campers of Color, Camp Culture, led giving campaigns during Latinx Heritage Month and UK Black History Month. Our ERGs will continue to include contributions and connections to their external community as part of their programming.
Giving to the broader community
Last year, Culture Amp partnered with Raised By Us to enable our first employee giving program. In September, we held our first annual Impact Campaign, with 303 Campers (over 50% of all employees) collectively raising over $16,800 for 83 nonprofits.
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As we move into 2022, our focus is on sustaining the progress we’ve made and improving in areas where we are falling behind, such as engagement among Campers living with a disability.
Disability & access
A key focus of our 2022 work will be to embed theories of access into our day-to-day operations and EDI programs, extending the foundations we’ve laid during 2021. In 2021, we reinvigorated Camp ID, our ERG for inclusive disability.This year, we will be incorporating their leaders and communities into our ongoing ERG operations.
In addition, we plan to lay out a clearer accommodations and adjustments policy and process for Campers and candidates, with an emphasis on providing transparent guidelines on how people can get support. Culture Amp will also continue working with partners like Understood to help Campers to better understand how to build a better world of work, which is impossible without disability inclusion.
Laying the foundation for our sustainability practice
One of Culture Amp’s core values as a Culture First business is our commitment to sustainability, as reflected in our B Corp certification. We believe that how we make an impact as a business is just as important as the impact itself. While Culture Amp has focused extensively on our EDI efforts and other ethical business operations, we recognize that we haven’t yet invested as much as we’d like into improving the environmental impact of our business.
There is an exceptional group of Campers leading sustainability work from a grassroots perspective, and this year Culture Amp is making larger investments to ensure our equitable impact considerations include the planet. Our first steps on that journey are to formalize this group, Camp Climate Crisis, as an affinity group, meaning that they will have the same budgetary and governance support as our ERGs. We will also be conducting assessments and building out our plans to reduce the overall carbon footprint of our operations.
Accountability in 2022
In 2021, we committed to continuing to evolve as an anti-racist company and incorporating this work into our “business as usual.” Our team will extend this effort beyond the executive layer into our systems, processes, and practices in 2022. To share the responsibility of improving the representation and experiences of BIPOC Campers more widely, we are designating multiple EDI OKRs in our company-level goals.
In 2022, Culture Amp’s company-level goals for EDI are:
- Increasing BIPOC representation in senior leadership to 27.5%
- Increasing female representation in senior leadership to 45%
- Building a future leaders program that drives racial equity
- Refining and strengthening our EDI-Talent Acquisition partnership
These company-level goals will be supplemented and supported with specific goals owned by our CEO, People & Experience team, EDI team, and business leaders, and will also include goals around reducing our carbon footprint and expanding access to external racial justice programs. These goals will include growing our disability and access work, which is a critical piece for building a better world of work.
We have laid the foundation for the above goals by looking at both quantitative data (i.e. employee engagement survey data) and qualitative data (e.g., focus groups, interviews, etc.), and will continue to refine our goals, programs, and operations as we continue listening to and responding to our Campers and their lived experiences.
We are incredibly excited to continue driving Culture Amp forward to embody what it means to be a Culture First business, and we are grateful to be able to share our journey with you.
For questions or inquiries on our data, programs, or philosophies, please reach out to edi-inquiries@cultureamp.com. No solicitations, please.
