Celebrating Global Diversity Awareness Month

October is Global Diversity Awareness Month:

At Gem, diversity is one of our core values, it is important for us to highlight what we are doing as a company to celebrate the multiplicity of our employees and support their diverse needs. We believe that the best way to build great products that help us deliver on our mission is to build teams that are more representative of our diverse customer base and the global workforce.

We also strive to cultivate a more inclusive and equitable environment where Gems can show up as their authentic selves and do the best work of their careers. As a part of this, we’re giving our diversity commitments a name refresh from DEI&B to ARISE: Allyship, Representation, Inclusion, Safety, and Equity.

Why the change?

We recognize that allyship is quintessential to creating a more inclusive culture, so ARISE is a call-to-action for every Gem to own diversity, equity, safety, and inclusion at work. We want to set a new standard with our product and practices, and the name change signals that it’s time to do things differently. It also emphasizes the important, yet often taken-for-granted, role that safety plays in driving change.

Here’s how we’re bringing ARISE to life:

• Building more representative teams through more inclusive job descriptions, values interviews, diversity in our interview panels, structured interviews and debriefs, and representation goals at various hiring stages

• Holding inclusive language workshops to discuss the origin of commonly used words and phrases, and ways to increase inclusion and belonging at Gem through our communications and daily interactions

• Providing leadership training and support resources for the leaders of our six ERGs to recognize their contributions and enable success in their ERG leadership roles

• Hosting company-wide quarterly learning forums where Gems have designated time and space to engage in honest conversations, build connections, and deepen learning around DE&I topics

• Cultivating ownership of ARISE through employee feedback sessions and a values ambassador program that empowers our employees to uphold our values and disrupt bias across our culture

As a testament to Gem’s commitment to living out our core values and investing in our inclusive culture, we are happy to share that the proportion of Gems from underrepresented groups (URG) outpaces companies of all sizes across the tech industry. Nearly 25% of Gems identify as Black, Latinx, Multiracial, and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander. Just over 50% of Gems identify as women — and we’ve recently been recognized by Fortune as a Best Workplaces for Women!

While we are shining a special spotlight on the importance of celebrating diversity and supporting inclusion and equity this month, we’d love to invite the greater Gem community to join us in creating more inclusive and equitable experiences all year long.

For more information check out our resource center for DE&I whitepapers, webinars, and more.