Over the past few months, our team has been working on something, both prudent and special, that we are excited to officially share with the world – The DIVERSE Commitment at Keyfactor. Diversity and inclusion is something Keyfactor has always supported across our global team and communities. In a recent interview, our CEO, Jordan Rackie, was asked, “If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the greatest amount of people, what would that be?” His response – “…it would be the broad embrace of the value of diversity in people and opinions. I’ve always focused on collecting a variety of opinions from a variety of people and believe that having an eclectic approach for reaching decisions is important to achieving success…” With all the warranted attention D&I has received in 2020, we felt that while we already expressly promote diversity as part of our core values and in our actions, that creating a deeper and broader program and commitment tied to diversity was the appropriate next-level step.
With this, we’re excited to introduce The DIVERSE Commitment, our holistic strategy to continually improve upon diversity in our current business, in our future business, and in society. At Keyfactor, we have laid out a triangular – three prong approach, illustrated in the diagram below, to support this mission. Our commitment title, DIVERSE, is an acronym that stands for: Diversity Internally Valued, Expansive Recruitment and Societal Education – envisioned by our CEO, Jordan Rackie.
The three pieces to our triangular approach and commitment have different action items supporting them and will continue to evolve over time. The first, Diversity Internally Valued, focuses on promoting an environment and culture that fosters innovative thinking and a broader range of ideas. We have implemented a number of opportunities internally to accomplish this:
- Keyfactor Alliance Program (Women’s Network, LGBQT+ Group, VITAL: Veterans in Leadership and Technology)
- Keyfactor Content Club which the employees have the opportunity to nominate one piece of diversity-related content per quarter to read, watch, or listen to then discuss collectively as a group
- Recurring reviews of the diversity of our staff at each level of the business as it relates to seniority, earnings, and responsibility on an annual (or semi-annual) basis.
- Educational workshops
- Certain dates indicated on our calendar: Juneteenth (June 19), International Diversity Day (May 21) or International Women’s day (March 8), dates on which we celebrate our Diversity with different events and activities
Expansive Recruitment, will bolster our recruiting effort to provide us with a more diverse pool of candidates. Being in talent acquisition the majority of my career, I believe that this has always been one of the most important pieces to diversity and inclusion. If you don’t start taking action from the point of recruitment, when you are trying to build your workforce, you will likely not have the best outcome in doing so. The idea is to cast your net as wide as possible. In this area, we have implemented specific initiatives geared towards recruiting students, recruiting postgraduates, training employees and hiring managers from many candidate pools. In addition, we plan to put in place strategic marketing tactics which will display what we have to offer at Keyfactor on a global scale.
Finally, Societal Education aims broadly to help others understand that there is an imbalance in the demographics of society and even more so in the tech talent pool. Keyfactor is committed to supporting high-tech education for the overlooked, yet highly motivated. We recently started a partnership with Per Scholas, who has a similar mission, which allows us to mentor students and prepare them for the real world. This is a partnership that we are very excited about, and we can’t wait to continue building relationships and assisting students in any way possible.
Implementing The DIVERSE Commitment in our business solidifies the pledge Keyfactor has made to do our part to promote diversity and inclusion within our four walls, as well as in the marketplace. Our action plan will evolve and grow as time goes on, but it is crucial, as any plan or initiative that we launch, to ensure that it’s manageable and maintainable. Here at Keyfactor, we are confident that we can execute our commitment to make our company and the tech world a more inclusive, innovative and successful place, with the support of our leadership team and all Keyfactor employees.
