Diversity and a sense of belonging at Redox is a key contributor to our culture. We have other things that contribute to our culture, such as our Values, and our Code of Conduct. Beyond that base, Diversity and Belonging are two linked areas that we felt needed some focused attention in order to continue to create the kind of place future Redoxers wanted to join and to provide a company that current Redoxers felt was far and above other employers.
At Redox, as we took on significant new hiring this year, we also began asking ourselves these questions around building diversity:
- How do you build a company that attracts the best team members and provides an environment for them to do their best work?
- What steps can we take to ensure that the culture helps Redoxers of different backgrounds, beliefs, and orientations feel welcomed?
- How do you course correct when your company lacks diversity and might not feel welcoming to a wide range of candidates?
At the end of 2018, our gender balance was 23% non-male identifying, and 77% male-identifying. With Redox set to double its headcount in 2019, these questions have evolved from academic musings to some of our biggest challenges.
Today, in the spirit of transparency, we are making public our current diversity metrics and sharing with you the actions we are taking to make sure Redox is a company where everyone feels safe, appreciated, and capable of doing great work.
Why this matters to us.
Redox is working to eliminate healthcare’s interoperability problem and usher forth an era of healthcare where digital tools that meaningfully improve the lives of patients and providers are easily adopted and made available to the users that need them most.
Our vision is lofty. The problems we face are incredibly complex. If we are to be successful, we need to be able to attract bright, hard-working team members. To do this, we need to ensure that our pool of candidates is not limited. We need to be able to hire candidates that will make our team the strongest. That means working tirelessly to build a culture where everyone not only feels welcomed but supported.
At Redox, we ask for and receive ongoing feedback from our team. Recently, during small group discussions, we polled our current team to learn why they felt it was important that we ensure Redox is a diverse and inclusive organization. Here are a few of the responses about how the Redox culture and our Diversity/Belonging efforts impact them:
Safety in being myself.
Means that I can express myself and be who I am without feeling that will impede my work or how others view me.
Creating and fostering a space for people of different backgrounds focusing on shared goals.
We support and strive to create an atmosphere where everyone feels welcomed. And can contribute at their best.
Seeing people for their actions and attitudes versus their appearance.
What we are doing.
At the beginning of this year, we looked at the makeup of our team alongside our hiring plan and realized that if we didn’t do something now, we were at risk of becoming a homogenous organization. Our People Operations team was tasked with developing a plan that would address current deficiencies and ensure our hiring pipeline reflected the goals of our organization.
After a great deal of analysis, the decision was made to focus first on gender balance. We believe other measures of diversity like ethnicity, age, abilities, veteran status, etc. are important. Gender balance is simply where we are starting. Our goal is to create a culture where all people feel welcomed and supported. That goes far beyond gender identification.
To start, our stated goals are as follows.
- Redox will build a team that is 50% gender-balanced by 2021
- Our goal by the end of 2019 is 30% non-male identifying Redoxers for the overall team.
- Our goal for combined Engineering and Security teams is to increase from the 2018 YE result of 12% to 2019 YE result of 20%
(US Dept. of Labor Statics show female Software Developers, Applications and Systems Software at 19.3% for 2018.)
In order to reach these goals our People Operations team is working on numerous strategies to diversify our recruiting pipeline and is consistently reporting out and collaborating with the rest of the organization. We view this as an organization-wide initiative of the highest importance.
Where we stand today.
At the conclusion of 2018 Redox’s non-male identifying population made up 23% of the team.
At the end of Q2 this year, that number had risen to 36%.
While we still have a long way to go, and many other diversity measures to address, we are encouraged. We have shown in a short time that when we view diversity and inclusion as an organization-wide objective equal to the stability of our platform or the growth of our customer base, we have the ability to influence how we evolve.
It is our hope that by placing an emphasis and investing at this critical inflection point of our growth, we will be able to achieve our vision of an open and inclusive organization that not only attracts but supports and celebrates individuals of all backgrounds, abilities, and orientations.
Where we go from here.
Moving forward our team is working to continue diversifying our recruiting pipeline, engage with diversity experts and organizations, and continue to evolve what it means for Redox to be an organization that is inclusive and welcoming to all people.
In 2020, we’ll continue to focus on the gender balance goals, and add in ethnicity as our next challenge.
We plan to publish annual updates of our metrics as well as more periodic updates on the strategies we are implementing, where we are succeeding, and where we are struggling.
This journey is just beginning. We look forward to improving and sharing our experience with all of you.
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If you have ideas or suggestions that you think will help us achieve our goals or evolve how we think about diversity and inclusion, please email our Head of Talent Acquisition, Christine Norrander, at [email protected]. We are always looking for opportunities to learn and improve.
Oh, and if you’d like to join the team and help us evolve our organization, take a look at our current openings– we’re hiring!
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