Access and belonging have always been at the heart of Onfido’s mission:from helping underbanked populations have greater access to the world’s economy, to building best-in-class identity verification solutions with accessibility and anti-bias in mind.
It’s no surprise that our dedicated Onfidoers organically came together to form our first ever Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) squad Together we Rise in 2020. Though the passion was evident, and the ideas were actionable, it was clear that the squad needed more support in order to truly thrive.
In 2024, It’s now been two years since Onfido embarked on a formal DEI journey. Though there’s much to celebrate and take pride in, there’s also much for us to improve and refine.
What we stand for
We’re always evolving, but what we stand for has not and will not change. Our Diversity & Impact practices are all anchored to Onfido’s Impact Statement, which was built by Onfidoers for Onfidoers.
Impact statement:
At Onfido, we’re all responsible for building a diverse, inclusive, and accountable environment where employees of all backgrounds, experiences, and lifestyles feel a sense of belonging, mutual respect, and kindness. We promote a company culture where all of us can be empowered to be ourselves, embrace our uniqueness, and rise together. In doing so, we aim to positively impact the world in which we live, work and play.
What we want to achieve
There are countless things that we still want to achieve in 2024 we will strive to take a more focused and deliberate approach around diversity and impact. We want to make it easy for people to operate inclusively and in an environmentally-conscious way every single day.
What we’ve accomplished
We’re refining, iterating, and embedding
Last year we started to take a critical look at our diversity and impact foundations for ways we could amplify overall impact. We’ve shifted from a ‘boil the ocean’ mentality to a more focused approach. Here are some of the ways we’ve refined, iterated, and embedded diversity and impact throughout Onfido.
We iterated on our website to ensure our commitment to diversity and impact was front and center, so that prospective candidates and clients could better understand our culture. We wanted to ensure that all types of people could envision bringing their true and authentic selves to work; and that all current and prospective customers could take pride in partnering with Onfido.
We’ve looked at existing processes to embed diversity & impact throughout our business.
We’ve implemented intentional checkpoints into the talent acquisition process. We now ask for voluntary and confidential information during the job application workflow, so we better understand candidate passthrough rates and trends by demographic. This helps us identify where interventions could be helpful. For example, a shortage of a particular candidate demographic at the top of the funnel could indicate a recruitment marketing issue, whereas a later stage fall through could signal a training or process need.
We’ve also shared tools and resources for our recruiters and hiring teams to keep DEI top of mind. We’ve implemented compulsory unconscious bias interview training for hiring teams and introduced a high-touch partnership from the DEI team and hiring for any leadership-level positions. We’ve also developed checklists that institutionalize an inclusive approach to the hiring lifecycle. We’ve maintained diversification in our recruitment by broadening our search channels. We’ve sponsored Colorintech’s Black Tech Fest Conference (Europe’s premiere event celebrating inclusion and equity) and posted vacancies on the Women in Identity job board.
We’ve created ways to evaluate inclusion as a core competency at the leadership level; we see it as being just as important as any other skill set. These inclusion competencies are codified and used during the hiring and promotion process.
We took a targeted and strategic approach to talent planning via organization and talent reviews. Diversity planning has been a key part of this process at the executive leadership level, touching all areas of the employee experience — focusing on recruitment, retention, development, and engagement.
We instated our second DEI Committee cohort and found ways to optimize and simplify their involvement over time, from workshopping key health metrics, to providing feedback on inclusivity programs.
We reorganized our Fido Resource Groups (FRGs) structure to reflect Onfidoer demand. We now have seven fully-functioning FRGs, where the leads are compensated for their efforts. We recognize the critical nature of employee resource groups and the harm caused to marginalized communities by placing unrecognized labor on top of regular responsibilities. Additional benefits of FRG leadership include visibility and development; FRGs present to our executive team on a quarterly basis and own core business capabilities such as creating goals and objectives, budgets, and business cases.
We’ve also continued to think critically about our products, championing accessibility in all that we do.
The way forward
We are incredibly proud of what Onfido has been able to achieve collectively for the community, environment, and our employees. It is clear that this work is not a flash in the pan, and requires dedication and discipline for the long haul. Our commitment is unwavering, and with the lessons learned over the last two years, we’re becoming even more focused and deliberate. Thank you for coming along on our journey, we’re in this together!
Read our 2024 DEI report to find out details about our Onfidoers' diverse backgrounds, our community activities, environmental commitments and governance guidelines.
