Exclusive Interview with Annie Lin, VP of People, Lever

How To Build An Effective Diverse, Equal and Inclusive Culture

 

“Leadership buy-in is key to building a diverse and inclusive culture in an organization. We strongly believe that for DE&I to be successful, it needs to become a core part of our processes, programs, and operations, and not a separate set of programs. In order for that to happen, leadership buy-in is 100% necessary as leaders will need to set examples and enforce norms,” says Annie Lin, VP of People, Lever.

In an exclusive interaction with HR.com, Annie talks about the key elements of an effective DE&I policy, why most DE&I efforts fail, and her experience with regards to the implementation of DE&I programs at her company, among others.

Excerpts from the interview:

Q: How can you reduce bias in hiring and enact fair chance hiring practices, including new approaches to screening resumes and conducting interviews (even in a remote world)?

Annie: At Lever, we don’t have job descriptions, we have “impact descriptions” that focus less on background qualifications and more on the impact someone can expect to have within 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, etc. 

With this, we provide more clarity on what the role entails and reduce bias at the top of the funnel for hiring. Studies have shown that women are much less likely to apply for a job unless they feel they meet 100% of the qualifications listed. 
 

By refocusing from qualifications to impact, we get a more diverse top of funnel, which is of course necessary to have more diverse hires. 
 
The Lever product itself does not include any photos. This is very intentional - photos can activate a lot of unconscious biases in the screening process. 
 
Similarly, the Lever solution allows hiring teams to customize role permissions such that an interview cannot view other interviewers’ feedback on a candidate until they’ve submitted their own feedback. This mitigates against group-think, and helps with not only a more honest but more diverse set of perspectives in the vetting process.

Q: How do you effectively discuss DE&I with candidates during the interview process and what they expect from the companies that hire them?

Annie: At Lever, we’ve taken care to make sure DE&I is a core part of how we operate and not using it as a “splashy” set of activities separated from core processes. This includes how we approach job descriptions, how we go about our performance and compensation reviews, support we provide to Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), and seemingly small, but very important, actions like encouraging employees to put their pronouns in their email signature and Slack profile. 

We talk about these initiatives, why we do them, and our remaining gaps with candidates openly, not only to convey how deeply DE&I is rooted in our culture, but also to make sure that our candidates are aligned with these values. 

Q: How important is it that leadership embraces D&I for the success of such efforts?

Annie: Leadership buy-in is key to building a diverse and inclusive culture in an organization. We strongly believe that for DE&I to be successful, it needs to become a core part of our processes, programs, and operations, and not a separate set of programs. In order for that to happen, leadership buy-in is 100% necessary as leaders will need to set examples and enforce norms. 

Q: How often do people understand the meaning of diversity, equity and inclusion?

Annie: I think DE&I has become a buzzword, with pros and cons. On the “pros” side, it’s brought more attention to the topic, and put more pressure on companies to act. On the “cons” side, I think many companies are engaging with it only as a PR stunt - prioritizing “splashy” activities instead of doing the hard (and often behind-the-scenes) work of building it into the company’s core processes - for example how they hire, how they decide who to promote and who to give raises to, etc.

Q: What are the key elements of an effective DE&I policy?

Annie: The only way for DE&I to become infused into the everyday fabric of the organization is if every program, process, policy, and decision you make pays attention to being inclusive. Our strategy to ensure diversity is 3 simple steps:
 

• Think of DE&I as a key criterion for every decision you make, 
• Pay just as much attention to the small daily moments, and
• Be equally intentional about what you aren’t inclusive toward.

Q: What has been your experience with regards to DE&I? What were the challenges and what changes have you brought to your company?

Annie: DE&I has been a part of Lever since the very beginning. Specifically, in the past year, we’ve followed through on a range of actions to ensure diversity at Lever, often in partnership with our ERGs. We’ve matched employee donations to nonprofits that focus on lifting up the Black community, blocked out a whole workday for our employees to contribute to the community around us (including providing concrete resources and recommendations), and worked with our partners to compile and publish resources and organize digital events on creating diverse and inclusive work environments. 

We also increased the diversity of our own executive team, and instated specific recruiting pipeline diversity goals as hiring picked up. Stats on our progress on these efforts can also be seen here: https://www.lever.co/diversity-and-inclusion/.

Q: Google has only 33% female workforce, and Facebook’s technical workforce was only 23% female in 2020. The situation is not much different in other companies. What do you think is lacking in companies' current DE&I policies? What should they be improving?

Annie: One of the things lacking in DE&I programs is measurement. A common trend is when companies fail to apply the same analytical and goal-setting frameworks that they apply to other business metrics to DEI-related work. Some goals to consider on the hiring front, for example, can be: 
 

• Number/percentage of candidates from underrepresented groups; 
• Percentage of candidates who are from underrepresented backgrounds, at particular stages of the interview process;
• Conversion rates from stage to stage during the interview process, for candidates from different demographic groups; and
• Number/percentage of job descriptions rewritten to be more focused on impact than qualifications.

 
We’re proud to say that at Lever, 44% of our product and engineering organization identify as female.

Q: When Adidas’ (former) HR head, Karen Parkin, stepped down in 2020, it brought to the fore the lack of female diversity in leading corporate positions. Women make up just 7.4% of the leaders running Fortune 500 companies. What is lacking in the current system that is causing it? What more needs to be done?

Annie: It’s about making sure your hiring and promotion processes are fair and equitable, and providing support for employees struggling with different challenges. For example, working mothers having to juggle work and home responsibilities - like homeschooling - made particularly worse by the pandemic. 

At Lever, we announced a slew of new benefits this year to be mindful of the unique experiences each of our employees is experiencing, such as a “Home Setup Stipend,” that employees can use for a variety of working-from-home needs ranging from the more “typical” (like ergonomic setup) to childcare. 
 

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