For the past three years, DockYard has elected to publicly share our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) goals and progress. It started with our 2021 DE&I report that debuted our efforts to demonstrate transparency and accountability in setting and meeting DE&I goals, and continued with our 2022 report.
This year we’re once again publishing our findings to maintain our commitment to transparency and accountability, but you’ll notice some differences in our 2023 report. Primarily, we’ve moved from DE&I to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEI&B). Read on for more on that as well as our highlights from 2023, report data, and a look ahead.
Current State
Our DEI&B goals in 2023 largely focused on maintaining the foundation we built over the two years prior, and steadily expanding our goals to create a welcoming, inclusive community within DockYard.
2023 Year in Review
Adding Belonging to Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
Notably, this year we added belonging as a fourth pillar of our efforts to foster an open and inclusive community.
Diversity recognizes the unique value of each individual, equity seeks to create a level playing field for all team members, and inclusion creates an environment where everyone feels welcome and valued. Adding belonging recognizes an additional facet: a focus on creating a sense of connection and acceptance within the broader group.
To use an example adapted from Verna Myers, diversity is being invited to the party, inclusion is being asked to dance, and belonging is how you feel about being asked to dance. Adding belonging to our other DE&I pillars was an important step toward creating the type of workplace we want to see at DockYard and throughout the tech community.
Walking the Walk: Internal DEI&B at DockYard
One of the tangible ways we supported DEI&B within DockYard was with the launch of our wage calculator in June 2023. The calculator was the culmination of years of work to develop equitable roles and competencies and craft compensation bands to match.
This is an initiative that not only offers DockYarders transparency about their pay but also, we hope, encourages others in our community to adopt equally transparent approaches that help address equitable wage gaps. We also supported DEI&B efforts elsewhere in the tech community: We sponsored the Harvard WeCode conference, the largest student-run women in tech conference, and we continued our annual sponsorship of underrepresented Elixirists to attend ElixirConf 2023.
Last year we also launched an internal “wellness” channel in our company Slack. This gives DockYarders a place to share tips, discuss various wellness topics, and generally connect to improve their overall well-being.
Finally, we updated our internal company handbook to make it clear to DockYarders that their sick time can be used for chronic health conditions, mental health needs, and more.
Station UI: Out-of-the-Box Design Accessibility
One of the ways we’re helping encourage DEI&B throughout the broader community is with a design project we kicked off in 2023 called Station UI. This project is broken into two parts: a Figma design system for product and UX designers and a component library for engineering and UXD teams. Together, they’ll create an easy-to-use set of tools that put accessibility at the forefront of digital product design and UXD work.
At DockYard, we bake accessibility into all our design and UXD work. It’s fundamental to ensuring that our clients can reach as many users as possible. But it also supports our broader goals to make the tech community as inclusive as possible. And with Station UI we’re making those same standards readily available and easy to use for others building digital products.
The Figma design system is available and ready to use. Stay tuned to see more from this project.
Celebrating DEI&B Year-Round
Our internal DEI&B Guild led several events throughout 2023 to educate and uplift DockYarders from a range of backgrounds.
In March we marked International Women’s Day with “The Resilience of Iranian Women”, a discussion led by DockYard product designer Safoora Fakhri. Later that month we recognized Trans Day of Visibility with another roundtable discussion among DockYarders.
In May we highlighted some of the neurodivergent DockYarders on our team with a “Neurospicy Roundtable” to give them an opportunity to discuss topics related to their experience on the neurodivergent spectrum. In June we celebrated Pride Month with our third annual “Queery This” panel discussion, and later in the year we continued our annual celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month with a focus on Latin American music and history.
Elixir Oasis
Another highlight of 2023 was the creation and launch of Elixir Oasis, a Discord community centering DEI&B as a fundamental foundation for the group. Although the Elixir Oasis community is not run or monitored by DockYard, several DockYarders were integral in launching the Discord-based community and fostering its growth over the past several months.
They planned and executed the group’s first panel discussion during ElixirConf 2023, “Women in Elixir”, and have continued encouraging Elixirists from all backgrounds to grow their skills and engage with the wider Elixir community.
The Data
2022 Data
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2023 Data
Conclusion
Over the past three years, we’ve continued to uphold our belief that DEI&B is not just a “nice-to-have,” but a fundamental element of how we operate at DockYard. And we have more planned: In 2024 in addition to our ongoing DEI&B efforts, we’ll undertake unconscious bias training, have added new DEI&B holidays to honor throughout the year, and will generally focus on building a sense of community and psychological safety at DockYard.
Even in a difficult year that saw a reduction in the size of the DockYard team, we continued to center DEI&B with projects, events, and initiatives to create a welcoming space for all DockYarders.
