Commitment 1: Building a Diverse and Inclusive Team
We are committed to building diverse and inclusive teams and in 2022, we continued to strive to attract diverse talent and promote inclusivity at Dropbox. We looked beyond traditional technical hubs and reached out to potential employees at conferences, events, and more.
Diversity in the workforce: We observed that the acceptance rate of offers for women and candidates from underrepresented minorities was about 10% higher than the offers made to non-diverse candidates. Our early work pipelines (interns and entry-level positions) saw an increase in female applicants and candidates from underrepresented minorities compared to the previous year, with female applicants increasing by 28% and applicants from underrepresented minorities increasing by 85%. For this group, the number of Black applicants more than doubled (growth of 116%) and the number of Latino applicants increased by 59%. The pass rate for women and candidates from underrepresented minorities (or the rate of candidates who progressed to later stages of the hiring process) was the same for women and candidates from underrepresented minorities as for non-diverse candidates, indicating a fair and equitable hiring process. Finally, Dropbox employees continue to express positive satisfaction with the company’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the semi-annual employee engagement survey exceeding industry benchmarks.
Expanding our reach through conferences, events, and partnerships: We are expanding our talent outreach by investing in diverse conferences and events and partnering with external partners who care about diversity. We also collaborate with Dropbox’s Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) to ensure we are actively engaging with potential talent at these conferences and events, such as the Grace Hopper Celebration, AfroTech, ColorStack, Latinas in Tech, and VetsinTech. For instance, at AfroTech 2022, we hosted Dropbox-sponsored events like the “Build The Future dinner,” where Black technology industry leaders could attend team-building and networking activities during the dinner. We also hosted over 760 participants at our first “The Drop” experience. This included an interactive in-person experience along with a panel “How We Built This,” featuring discussions about the experiences of Black Dropbox employees, the diversity and inclusion within Dropbox culture, and its impact on our products.
Additionally, we work with external recruiting partners such as Powertofly, NextPlay, and Seekout to enhance our ability to hire candidates from diverse backgrounds. Key achievements in this area include: partnering with VetsInTech to increase talent pipelines for veterans through virtual recruiting events. Through two events, we reached an audience of 1,300 veterans, and our pipelines increased by 200 individuals for positions at Dropbox. Launching a partnership with Edlyft, a program that supports underrepresented computer science students through mentoring and workshops. Students were paired with Dropbox engineers, who acted as professional mentors for them. Hiring 18 interns in the Dropbox Apprenticeship program (formerly known as IGNITE) and converting eight of them into full-time employees. Continuing our partnership with Next Chapter, a program that offers financial and professional mentoring support and re-entry services for formerly incarcerated individuals. In 2022, we hosted two interns. Continuing our partnership with YearUp, a program that helps young adults gain the skills and experience necessary to support their careers. We hired one YearUp intern in 2022 to assist our IT, services, and social impact teams.
Commitment 2: Fair Development and Advancement
In addition to the ongoing work of building a diverse and inclusive team, we are also committed to fostering a culture where everyone can grow and advance at Dropbox. We have a number of programs and initiatives focused on employee retention, development, and advancement.
Providing
Tools for Dropbox Employees to Succeed: In 2022, we launched the Dropbox Mentoring program, which connects mentors and mentees based on skills, experiences, interests, and career aspirations. Since its inception, we have seen nearly 25% of employees participate in the company. This program has also successfully connected employees across different teams—63% of mentoring connections include participants from various teams. Importantly, we have noticed higher retention rates for employees who participated in the Dropbox Mentoring program compared to those who did not.
Investing in Manager Effectiveness for a High-Impact Culture: Empowering Dropbox employees to work to their full potential paves the way for a high-impact culture—and manager effectiveness is a key factor. For this reason, we are committed to enhancing our talent programs and processes to support and invest in our managers in the best way possible. Existing programs have continued, and we have added new programs, bringing together managers from around the world more regularly to learn and discuss leadership with a high-impact focus. Last year, 83% of Dropbox leaders participated in these programs designed to support our high-impact culture.
Supporting Our External Community: In addition to supporting Dropbox employees, we are also committed to supporting our community outside of Dropbox. For example, in 2022, we continued to take steps to expand the diversity of our suppliers, including small businesses and companies owned by women, minorities, veterans, and members of the LGBTQ+ community. We trained our internal buyers at Dropbox on awareness and accessibility and updated our self-service tools to facilitate Dropboxers’ work with diverse suppliers. This increased our supplier diversity while providing us with more opportunities to support businesses led by underrepresented communities.
We have also engaged in several diversity, equity, and inclusion metrics to contribute to our progress in diversity, equity, and inclusion. These include the Black Equity Index (BEI) and the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index (HRC).
We are proud of the work we have done to support underrepresented communities both inside and outside Dropbox in 2022, and we will continue to seek ways to empower their advancement in the future.
Commitment 3: Engaging in Personal Growth
Helping our employees achieve personal growth is the foundation of our culture, and we have implemented several initiatives that support, empower, and recognize our employees’ achievements. We offer regular training and workshops on diversity, equity, and inclusion covering a variety of topics, such as creating an inclusive workplace and leading and developing teams fairly.
Building Community Through Employee Resource Groups (ERGs): Employee Resource Groups are a vital part of our diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. We currently have seven ERGs engaged in community building, professional development, and external partnerships. In 2022, our ERGs organized 53 events. We also celebrated seven heritage months throughout the year, with events such as a conversation with NASA astronaut Victor Glover for Black History Month, a session led by employees on the importance of pronouns for Pride Month, and an Iron Chef challenge for Veterans Day.
The current Dropbox employee base is more diverse than ever, and we want to ensure that our ERGs are well positioned to support their communities. In 2022, we focused on intensive strategic planning for the future of ERGs at Dropbox to achieve this goal. In the coming year, our ERGs will continue to focus on communication and engagement, with a tailored approach to the membership of each specific ERG. Importantly, we will be adding skills-based development workshops to help participants advance their careers.
Continuous Education: Our team on diversity, equity, and inclusion offers training and workshops focused on topics including how to create an inclusive workplace and how to lead and develop teams fairly, among much more. The majority of our people managers have completed our inclusive leadership workshop. Seventy-five percent of all employees completed an introduction course on diversity, equity, and inclusion concepts (a 13% increase from last year), and 66% of new employees took at least one training course on diversity, equity, and inclusion (an 8% increase from last year).
Recognition:
We also honored the new winners of the DEI Trailblazer Award in 2022, which recognizes employees who make extra efforts to make Dropbox a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive place to work. For example, this year we honored an engineer for mentoring an intern through our Next Chapter program. We also started recognizing the hard work of our ERG leaders by providing financial compensation for their efforts.
Looking Ahead to 2023 and Beyond
We are proud of the progress we made in 2022, and we will continue to focus on new and ongoing ways to enhance our commitments to diversity, inclusion, and equity. We have already made significant progress in 2023, including:
Launching “The Dropbox Way,” a new hiring philosophy developed through extensive research, including external benchmarks and employee focus groups. “The Dropbox Way” consists of six hiring principles that define who we are, how, and why we hire, and describes what candidates can expect from Dropbox. One of these principles is “Hire Fairly,” emphasizing our commitment to hiring candidates based on measurable and objective criteria while reducing bias at every step.
Providing on-demand workspaces for employees around the world through a partnership with a shared workspace provider. This has enabled us to open access for nearly every employee to work from hundreds of global locations, creating more flexibility.
We are excited to look to the future, focusing on investing in ERGs to expand their impact on engagement, belonging, and developing our skills-based education to capture best practices. We will continue to grow and expand our development programs, such as the Dropbox Mentoring Program, and enhance our hiring program to ensure we continue to meet the needs of all our employees.
We are proud of the progress we made in 2022, but we also recognize that there is more work to be done.
In 2023 and beyond, we will continue to invest in our diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and initiatives to help us fulfill our commitments to build a diverse and inclusive team and achieve equitable development and advancement while engaging in personal growth. We strongly believe that these commitments are essential to fulfilling our mission as a company in designing a more enlightened way of working, and we will continue to uphold our responsibility to these principles.
2022 Numbers
The percentages displayed here are close to the nearest whole number and may not add up to 100%.
Disclaimer on significance: Although Dropbox believes our diversity, equity, and inclusion goals and initiatives are important, we do not currently believe that such goals or initiatives or risks are material to our financial results and operational outcomes, except as referred to in our annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent 10-Q reports. This report also includes human capital metrics or goals that may be different from or in addition to the human capital metrics or goals that Dropbox is required to disclose in its reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. To discuss the human capital metrics or goals on which Dropbox focuses in managing its business, please see the “Human Capital” section in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K.
Footnotes:
1. At Dropbox, underrepresented minorities (URMs) are defined as Black/African American, Hispanic/Latinx, Native American, or Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander
2. Gender data is global, and race data is limited to the United States only; data refers to full-time employees only
3. “Managers” are defined as those with one or more direct reports (excluding contract workers), “leadership” is the managerial level and above, “technology” refers to employees in our engineering, product, and design roles
4.
The self-reported gender and race/ethnicity classification was submitted by employees
Source: https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/company/our-2022-diversity-report
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