An Update to our Community About Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging

 

Last June, the Black Lives Matter movement awakened us to how deeply rooted institutional racism remains in our society. For our team at ClassPass, it mobilized us to take action and commit to structural change within our company and within the health and wellness industry at large. We rallied as a team and committed to several initiatives and programs in June 2020 which we plan to pursue for the long term. Since then, we’ve gotten to work, leaning into discomfort, taking a hard look at our own shortcomings and evaluating where we are best poised to make a meaningful impact. 

We owe it to our community to follow up on our commitments and to be transparent with our progress — and to recognize where we still have work to do.

• Showcasing Black-owned fitness and wellness businesses
  • To help us better amplify underrepresented businesses, partners can now self-identify as Black-owned, Woman-owned, Hispanic/Latinx-owned, Indigenous-owned, Asian-owned, and LGBTQ-owned. We are using this data to more regularly spotlight and support our partners across our app and community channels.

• Investing in Black-owned businesses and communities
  • In June, we announced a $500,000 Empowerment fund to support the expansion of BIPOC-owned businesses and make fitness and wellness more equitable. We researched community fund organizations, connected with social justice nonprofits and launched a survey to better understand the experience of BIPOC entrepreneurs in the industry. Using those insights, we’re excited to announce a new partnership with Fit For Us, a leading organization that advocates for, empowers and serves Black fitness professionals and underserved communities. We look forward to sharing more details about the progress of these efforts but working together, we aim to amplify insights of the BIPOC fitness and wellness community and reduce the barriers to success by providing:
    
    1. Access to knowledge sharing, high-impact industry resources and a network of leaders to support entrepreneurial success
    2. Growth capital to support the expansion of new and existing BIPOC-owned fitness and wellness businesses

• Encouraging activism from employees and customers
  • Juneteenth (June 19th) has been designated an annual company-wide day of social activism. Last year, ClassPass employees engaged in activities focused on personal education, community activism and support of the Black Lives Matter movement. In August, we hosted Together We Sweat, a series of free, live workouts broadcast around the globe in partnership with Black-owned studios. We also launched a new in-app feature that surfaces panels, webinars and discussions in support of causes like social and racial justice, women’s rights, civic engagement and LGBTQ+ rights, and will continue to highlight these conversations moving forward.

•  Ensuring diverse representation within our brand
  • We audited our current policies and materials to ensure our brand continues to uphold our commitment to amplify the diverse voices of our community and to identify our blindspots. We updated our Brand Guidelines to champion diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging and revisited our policies around casting and photo selection to ensure greater representation.

• Championing diversity and inclusion
  • In August we funded a full-time position to lead our Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) efforts. Early initiatives focused on supporting our employees, gathering feedback and developing our overall program strategy, including both short-term and long-term initiatives. We also partnered with Collective, a Black-owned and woman-owned diversity, equity and inclusion consultancy and research lab, to lead a series of company-wide workshops to foster critical thinking around identity, unconscious bias, privilege and belonging. We recently launched an inaugural Industry Inclusion Workshop, a company-wide event where any employee can propose ideas for how ClassPass can drive meaningful change within the fitness & wellness industry.

Real change occurs when we examine the structures around us and we realize it is not only important to launch new initiatives, but also equally critical to evaluate our existing team, processes and relationships. The efforts below have been essential in ensuring equitable access and growth for all employees and will continue to be cornerstones of our DEIB program going forward:

• Reinvigorated our Employee Resource Groups: We equipped our 5 employee resource groups, CP Mamas, Black Employee Network, LGBTeammates, Women at ClassPass and Women in Engineering, with toolkits and resources to develop programming supportive of each group’s goals. We also increased each group’s membership, fostering connection among even more of our team members from around the globe.

• Established an inaugural DEIB Council: The DEIB Council is a paid employee-led steering committee consisting of diverse members of our team. The Council, which will rotate twice per year, measures our company DEIB initiatives, builds action plans for improvements, partners with leadership to amplify feedback and champions inclusion for all employees.

• Completed a company-wide Inclusion survey: In the spirit of transparency and accountability, we launched our first global inclusion survey. With these insights, we aim to create a more comprehensive strategy to champion DEIB across teams and to further amplify feedback from underrepresented groups. In the coming weeks, we’ll partner with the newly formed DEIB Council to distill survey feedback into action plans that will inform our strategies in 2021.

• Launched a DEIB Learning and Development program: We’re reimagining our approach to training by optimizing for behavior-based learning opportunities, investing in the expertise of external training partners and leveraging internal knowledge along the way. Each quarter, workshops will focus on cultivating shared language and inclusive behaviors through topics like mitigating unconscious bias, psychological safety, leading with empathy, anti-racism and allyship in action. 

• Audited global recruiting processes: Increasing representation of employees from underrepresented groups is an ongoing priority. We audited our structured hiring process for inclusivity and to identify areas for improvement. With these learnings, we documented new best practices for inclusion, expanded our recruiting efforts to reach more diverse talent networks and created mandatory inclusive interviewing training for all hiring teams. While hiring was largely paused due to the ongoing impact of COVID, we have seen early progress from these improvements and plan to achieve meaningful change in 2021. Within our current team, 24% of employees identify as BIPOC (3.5% Black, 20.5% People of Color), 54% of our senior leadership identify as women, 18% of employees are parents or legal guardians and 10% of employees identify as members of the LGBTQ+ community. We are committed to regularly auditing our practices to ensure that representation continues to be a priority at ClassPass.

There is no doubt – our work is far from done. Our focus for 2020 was to make structural changes to build a foundation for DEIB at ClassPass. This year, we’ll focus our efforts on driving impact by:

• Building a sustainable program for BIPOC talent to support more equitable early career pathways into tech through mentorship, apprenticeship and/or educational resources

• Exploring new product ideas and partnerships to make ClassPass more accessible to everyone in every community

• Publishing an annual Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging report to continue sharing our commitments as an organization 

By holding ourselves accountable, we believe that we can set a clear strategy for sustainable change. We’ll continue to share our progress with our community as we build a more equitable future for all.

Team ClassPass