As a company, we strive to build balanced teams that reflect the communities that surround us and aim to foster an environment that makes everyone feel they belong at ustwo.
This is the kind of work that can never be considered “done.” We are committed to listening to the views of everyone at ustwo, and working together to create a truly inclusive workplace.
In 2019, we launched our first Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) survey. Between the pandemic and making sure all ustwobies had a smooth transition to being fully remote, we weren’t able to launch a D&I survey in 2020. We dropped the ball, but that didn’t stop us from making some progress in 2020.
- We successfully raised $15,750 for the Black Lives Matter movement
- We hired Abadesi Osunsade as our D&I consultant
- We continued learning, including running a session on transgender awareness
As 2021 comes to a close we’d like to share anonymised results from our latest D&I survey, alongside what we’re doing to make things better.
Here are some highlights from our 2021 survey
Notes on the data:
- 84% of us gave answers to the survey, which are anonymous - the percentages below are of the people who responded
- Every question gave the option not to answer/opt-out. The percentages below represent questions that were answered.
Gender: 40% of us identify as women compared to 43% in 2019
Ethnicity: 70% of us consider ourselves to be of white ethnicity, compared to 72% of us in 2019. We know that our diversity is low at leadership level
Disability: 72% of us do not have a mental or physical disability, compared with 81% of us in 2019
Sexual orientation: 89% of us identify as hetrosexual compared with 81% in 2019
Age: 34% are aged 25 to 34, 48% are 35 to 44 and 10% are over 45
Education: 75% of us have a Bachelor's degree or higher compared with 78% in 2019
Carers: 88% of ustwobies are not caregivers and 56% of us have no children to look after. This compares to 90% and 61% in 2019
Belonging
Diversity is critical, but it’s just a starting point. As well as striving for balance and representing the local communities that surround our studios, we know we have to work on nurturing a workplace where everyone feels they belong, as their whole, authentic selves. This is why we also ask questions that relate to feelings of inclusion as part of our survey.
The results of those that answered showed that 81% of us feel we can be our authentic selves at ustwo and 84% feel comfortable sharing their personal background and experiences.
When we asked questions about people from all backgrounds being able to succeed at ustwo, we scored lower with 63%, so that’s an area we need to focus on. When we looked more deeply into our team’s answers, we discovered that those of us in underrepresented groups have a different experience of life at ustwo than those who sit in majority groupings.
The upshot is we have work to do to improve the issues leading to some ustwobies feeling less inclusion than others. Each studio will work on the areas of inclusion we know need the most focus based on survey results.
What we’re doing
Our hiring practices
Our ambition is that next year 50% of all our candidates will come from underrepresented groups.
One of the important parts of hiring is to ensure that all managers are sufficiently trained in best hiring practices, as well as cultural sensitivity and inclusivity and bias training. This year every hiring manager attended a global hiring training programme, which we will now offer on a quarterly basis. This means that our interviewers are following the ustwo process and using the correct hiring tools and systems to create an inclusive interviewing process for all candidates.
Balance & belonging champions
Every studio has a local D&I group and one member meets the global D&I committee monthly. These individuals work closely with our D&I consultant Abadesi Osunsade. She uses her knowledge and experience to provide practical solutions to help us create a more equitable workplace. Abadesi has looked at how we run our D&I survey, how we share the results and how we create goals with the Board. Abadesi also helped us update our older less inclusive manifesto, the new version can be found here.
Learning and support
We are focused on giving every ustwobie the tools to create a fostering and safe environment.
In 2021, we trained 16 ustwobies to become Mental Health First Aiders, including our CEO, Managing Director, members of the leadership team and every member of our People Team. All managers and ustwobies also received mental health and awareness training.
This year, we also ran three intercultural workshops in Europe, to encourage conversations and learning around our different cultures, helping us to share our own perspectives and broaden our understanding of each other.
Fairness of opportunity
All managers have attended managerial training to ensure that every ustwobie receives a consistent experience throughout our studios.
We’re also playing an active role in breaking down barriers to entry in the industry. For the third consecutive year, we’ve partnered with Flipside, an organisation that helps unemployed or underemployed young people in east London to become digital pioneers. Since 2019, we’ve brought in 18-24 year olds to join ustwo as Junior Product Designers and receive mentorship from ustwobies.
In January 2022, we’ll be sponsoring an event in Malmö organised by Pink Programming — a non-profit organisation and Sweden’s largest network for female developers. Pink Programming aims to create a gender equal tech industry by supporting more women to become developers while increasing their influence in the tech world.
Celebration and awareness
We’ve created a cultural calendar to celebrate events important to specific demographics, so that we learn more about the things that matter to each other. For instance, we organised a series of events for PRIDE in June this year, including a lunch session with LGBTQ+ comedians, screenings of relevant movies and documentaries, and a Q&A session with Leila Navabi who shared her journey as a young gay writer, producer and comedian. We also made it possible for all ustwobies to add their preferred pronouns to their email signature and Slack if they felt comfortable doing so.
October 2021 was a special month as we celebrated Black History Month in Europe (BHM) and championed mental health awareness globally. We invited mental health speakers to share more about bipolar disorder, digital wellbeing and a sleep coach. For BHM, we organised movie screenings, photo exhibitions, and a workshop on power, privilege and bias.
We are proud of our strong tradition of learning from each other, which will continue with our regular “lunch and learn” sessions, focused on a variety of topics that reinforce our work towards balance and belonging.
To wrap up
We’ve made progress with Diversity and Inclusion across ustwo and the journey is definitely underway. We recognise that D&I should never just be a box we’ve ticked, or a task we’ve completed, there will always be work to be done.
The data we gathered in 2021 is helping us to focus on:
- Helping our underrepresented ustwobies succeed and feel included
- Ensuring that 50% of all our candidates will come from underrepresented groups
- Delivering D&I training for all ustwobies in each of our studios to provide the tools needed to practice inclusivity on a daily basis in January 2022
By publicly sharing the details of our commitment we remain focused and accountable. It also allows us to bring you on the journey and hopefully inspires you to make change.