Our Ongoing Commitment to Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging

On June 3, 2020, we announced four commitments in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and took a stand against systemic racism. While I’m proud of our progress and the work our teams have done, I am resolute in acknowledging the fact that we still have a long way to go, as a company and as a global society. 

Racism, hate, and violence continue to severely impact individuals, families and communities around the world. The sharp increase in violent attacks against different communities and the ongoing fight for equality and justice shines a light on the reality we must address and overcome. Over the past year, we’ve been reminded time and again that we must work together—as individuals, leaders, companies, and communities—to fight back against hate and move forward towards a better future for all.

Agreeing to do better is not a one-time commitment or statement. It takes consistent effort, action and follow through. Below are a few high level updates on our commitments and some additional information on our aspirational goals to continue to hold ourselves accountable going forward. 

Commitment 1: Mandatory programs around bias and racial issues 

In September 2020, we launched our DocuSign Together initiative which includes a mandatory, three-hour training called Understanding Bias and Demonstrating Allyship. These ongoing workshops provide leaders and employees with a foundational understanding on what biases are and how they undermine diversity and inclusion, decision-making and collaboration. The sessions introduce a framework for building allyship skills and teach specific behaviours to help individuals be more inclusive colleagues. 

So far, over two-thirds of DocuSign employees have completed the workshop and it will be an ongoing requirement for new employees who join our team. With a majority of our employees having gone through these workshops, we are now planning the next phase in our allyship efforts so we can build upon this foundation. 

In addition to our workshops, we have held regular, virtual employee events to expand individual awareness on a variety of topics related to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. One of our greatest strengths in this work is that our employees are consistently showing up. A majority of our internal-only events have had well over 500 live attendees, a testament to the commitment our employees are making to learn and grow in this work, together.   

Commitment 2: Contributing £350,000 to support social justice causes

In 2020, our first donation of £70k went to support the NAACP’s work to support black-owned small businesses and to address race-based discrimination in education. In 2021, we are broadening the focus of these grants and have provided £70k in funding to our employee resource groups that are focused on addressing racial equity, including BOLD (Black Organisation for Leadership Development), PAVE (Pan Asian Voices for Equity), and Latinx (connecting employees that identify as Hispanic and/or Latinx).

Commitment 3: Triple-matching employee contributions to those causes

One of our greatest strengths as a company is our people. When we announced the triple match of employee contributions to social justice causes, the DocuSign team showed up in a big way. Over 800 employees donated to support these causes, making our overall contributions total over +£1M—our largest employee donation drive ever.

Commitment 4: Publicly sharing our diversity, equity and inclusion numbers

In June 2020, we published a dedicated page on our website with information about our diversity, inclusion and belonging efforts and metrics for the first time. Going forward, we will update this page annually with information as of January 31, the end of our fiscal year. 

While we have increased the representation of team members who self-identify as women, Black and/or African American and Hispanic and/or Latinx over the past year, we also realise that progress has been slower than we’d like in some areas. To hold ourselves accountable towards progress we are committing to the following aspirational goals by FY24 with support from our leadership and board:

• Increase global representation of women by 15%
• Increase global representation of women in leadership by 30%
• Increase global representation of women in tech roles by 20%
• Increase US representation of *under-represented racial and ethnic groups by 30%
• Increase US representation of under-represented racial and ethnic groups in *leadership by 30%
• Increase US representation of under-represented racial and ethnic groups in *tech roles by 25%

*Visit our diversity, inclusion and belonging page here for more information on our programmes, including our definitions of under-represented groups, leadership and tech roles. 

In addition to our company commitments, I have also made my own personal commitment by signing the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion pledge, the largest CEO driven business commitment to advance diversity and inclusion in the workplace. This gives me an opportunity to partner with over 2,000 other CEO’s to help drive progress and change through dialogue and action. 

One year in and our work continues.