Diversity & Inclusion at Wattpad in 2020 - Listening and Learning Together

By Seema Lakhani, Chief Product Officer at Wattpad & General Manager of Wattpad Labs 

2020 will be remembered as the year Diversity & Inclusion became more urgent than ever. Spurred by the most important movements for equality in a generation, people around the world have demanded that governments, corporations, and entire industries make a more robust and dedicated commitment to addressing systemic injustice. 

At Wattpad, Diversity & Inclusion have always been fundamental principles of who we are. Founded by two immigrants in Toronto — the most diverse city in the world — Wattpad strives to be one of the safest spaces online for marginalized communities. Today, our commitment to Diversity & Inclusion is part of how we create products, build teams, and work together. And as part of this commitment, we believe it's important to hold ourselves accountable to continuous improvement.

Our products reach more than 90 million people around the world every day, so it’s vital that we build those products in a responsible, conscientious way. This means paying close attention to the human and ethical implications of our work, and ensuring the people who build our products are representative of all our users. In 2020, this has become a more pressing issue than ever before. Confined to our homes for much of the year, technology has taken on a bigger role in how people experience the world in 2020. 

Wattpad’s annual Diversity & Inclusion survey was launched in 2017 with a simple goal: to understand who we are and how people experience working at Wattpad. In 2020, those goals continue to animate our survey; when we talk and think about Diversity & Inclusion at Wattpad, it’s crucial for us to check in with our staff on a regular basis, to see what’s working — and what isn’t. 

While there will always be room to improve, we’re proud that our Diversity & Inclusion survey has created an honest and thoughtful way of understanding how employees feel today. Do all of our employees feel like they belong? Have People of Colour felt supported in every part of their job? Does every employee feel equally safe and heard expressing themselves in meetings? These are all questions we asked our employees this year.  

2020 marks our fourth Diversity & Inclusion survey, and the responses show that although our journey is ongoing, we’ve continued to learn and make progress this year.

Our Team: Wattpad in 2020

Wattpad has been at gender parity or better since 2017: since that time half of our staff or more have been women. In 2020, women account for 54% of our staff overall and 50% of our Leadership Team. These numbers are similar to our 2019 results, with marginal changes company-wide and for our Leadership Team. 

At the department level, many of our teams remain majority women. Today, women make up 82% of our Product Team, 73% of Wattpad WEBTOON Studios, and 82% of Marketing. The most notable exception remains our Engineering Team, with less than a quarter women at 21%. This is a small improvement from 2019, when the team was 18% women, but it’s still a disappointing result and one we need to improve. This has been a persistent struggle for us and our teams need to develop a new approach to create a more balanced Engineering Team.  

Looking at racial identity, we increased representation for both men and women of colour in 2020. People of Colour currently account for nearly half of Wattpad staff at 47%, an increase from 44% in 2019. Looking at our Leadership Team, People of Colour currently make up 39%. 

Intersectional analysis shows increases in a number of marginalized identities this year: women of colour and men of colour both increased to 24% and 20% respectively. 

Today, 20% of our staff currently identify as LGBTQIAP+, up from 17% in 2019. 

Supporting Teams and Empowering Everyone’s Voice  

Diversity & Inclusion can’t be done in a vacuum, and building diverse teams would be meaningless without understanding how people--particularly the most marginalized members of our teams--feel about our efforts to build a more inclusive workplace. 

Wattpad employees know that we are committed to making our workplace safe and equitable for everyone. As with 2019, employees remain positive about our efforts to increase diversity and inclusivity at Wattpad. Ninety percent of Wattpad staff agreed with the statement “Wattpad values diversity,” and 72% agreed that “Wattpad builds teams that are diverse.” Company-wide, 81% of our staff agreed with the statement, "I can be my authentic self at work,” an increase from 78% in 2019. 

At the same time, these numbers demonstrate the importance of taking an intersectional perspective. When we look at Woman of Colour at Wattpad, these statements reveal room for improvement and further investigation. Women of Colour rated each of these statements lower than any other group at Wattpad, a challenge we also saw in 2019. 

Supporting teams and staff means ensuring everyone feels safe speaking up in group settings. When asked if staff “feel heard in group meetings,” 80% of Wattpad staff agreed. We’re excited to see this sentiment has improved this year among women of colour and people for whom English is not their first language: 79% of women of colour agreed, up from 66% in 2019, and 88% of people for whom English is not their first language agreed, up from 78% in 2019. 

It’s also critical that staff, regardless of background or identity, feel like they belong at Wattpad. When presented with the statement “I feel valued as a member of my team,” 91% of Wattpad staff agreed — up from 86% in 2019. Perceived managerial support has also improved since 2019, when just 75% of staff said they feel that their manager “actively supports me and is invested in my career growth.” This year, 81% of staff said they agree. There was a huge increase in this sentiment among women of colour — from 62% in 2019 to 83% in 2020.

What’s Next? 

Like all of our Diversity & Inclusion surveys, these results are just the beginning of a process we are engaged in throughout the year. In 2019, we rolled out a number of important new programs focused on Diversity & Inclusion at Wattpad, including mandatory anti-oppression training for all staff, introducing gender-neutral bathrooms at Wattpad HQ, launching affinity groups, and unveiling salary bands for employment at every level in the company. 

We’ve continued to apply our Diversity & Inclusion survey data to plan, roll-out, or experiment with new policies for our teams in 2020. This year, we started a pilot program to provide mental health sensitivity training for managers; we’ve rolled out an inclusive meetings kit to help meeting facilitators ensure all voices are heard, with clear agenda planning and inclusive facilitation techniques; and we’ve formalized a Diversity & Inclusion Leadership Team to bring together the various teams that are passionate about supportive Diversity & Inclusion at Wattpad HQ and throughout our global community. 

Wattpad is a safe space online where marginalized voices feel empowered to share their stories and voices with the world. That’s why Diversity & Inclusion is so important for us: in order to create inclusive products for a global user-base, we need to build a diverse team with a wide range of perspectives. At the same time, we’re not here to congratulate ourselves. We’re here to listen, learn, and do the work to make Wattpad better for everyone, whether it’s employees at HQ or the Wattpad community on the platform. 

Our Diversity & Inclusion survey allows us to reflect on what has improved — and on what hasn’t — each year. We are by no means perfect, but we want to be a leader in the fight to make the tech industry a more welcoming and inclusive place. With our annual survey, we hope to inspire other companies in the tech industry to do the same. 

This data helps us understand what is working and what isn’t at Wattpad. It’s used to develop new policies that will make Wattpad a more equal place for everyone. We’ll be taking a hard look at why we’ve struggled to make our Engineering Team a more balanced and welcoming place for women. We’ll also spend a lot more time listening: we want to know more about why marginalized groups at Wattpad answered the way they did, good or bad. We look forward to sharing results from the next stage in our journey in 2021.

For a full look at Wattpad’s reporting on Diversity & Inclusion to date, see our 2019 report here, our 2018 report here, and our 2017 report here.