Diversity & Inclusion at Wattpad in 2021
By Seema Lakhani, Chief Product Officer at Wattpad & General Manager of Wattpad Labs
In 2021, progressive voices around the world continued to shine a light on issues of injustice and oppression. As marginalized groups everywhere struggle for recognition, respect, and dignity, it’s more important than ever that Wattpad - a storytelling technology platform that represents all voices - is conscious and intentional about our approach to inclusion.
With a platform that reaches over 94 million people around the world, Diversity & Inclusion isn’t just important in our offices: it’s also a key part of what we hope to foster in the global Wattpad community. Our goal is to weave D&I into everything we do, including building responsible products that can celebrate and elevate all our users. And importantly, we recognize that this has to start with how we build our teams.
Since launching in 2017, Wattpad’s annual Diversity & Inclusion survey aims to better understand our employees and their experience with the company. While there will always be room for improvement, we’re proud of the honest and open venue the survey has created, both for our teams and for our community. We share these results publicly because we understand the importance of holding ourselves accountable, giving people inside and outside of Wattpad insight into how well we’re doing, and where we have room to improve on. Over the years, our employees have shared their candid feedback which has been instrumental in the progress Wattpad has made towards its ultimate goal of being an inclusive workplace.
With our fifth Diversity & Inclusion survey, responses this year highlight where our efforts towards equality are trending positively, and areas we need to consider as we develop what our efforts for next year will look like.
The Wattpad Team in 2021
The gender ratio amongst our employees continues to be industry-leading: today, over half our staff are women. Slightly up from previous years, women account for 56% of our staff overall and 52% of our Leadership Team in 2021.
At the department level, many of our teams remain majority women, including Wattpad WEBTOON Studios (76%), Content & Creator Development (80%) and Marketing (73%). The exception to this continues to be within our Engineering Team, which is made up of just 26% women. While this is an improvement from 2020 when the team was 21% women, it’s still an area we need to improve on. Closing this gap has been a struggle for us over the years, and an area we are actively working to improve.
Today, BIPOC staff make up almost half (49%) of Wattpad. This represents an increase over 2020 and 2019, when BIPOC staff made up 47% and 44% respectively. Looking deeper at these stats, women of colour and men of colour both increased to 26% and 21% respectively. Additionally, people of colour on our leadership team increased to 48%, from 39% in 2020.
Today, 22% of our staff are part of the LGBTQIA+ community, including 3% of employees who are transgender.
Empowering All Voices
Building diverse teams isn’t an end in itself; it’s also critical that we understand how employees feel about our efforts to create a more equitable workplace. Everyone has a role in making Wattpad a safe and supportive workplace, so it’s reassuring to know that our employees remain positive about our Diversity & Inclusivity initiatives. Eighty-eight percent of staff agreed with the statement “Wattpad values diversity,” and 77% agreed that “Wattpad builds teams that are diverse.”
It’s also extremely important that all staff - regardless of background or identity - feel like they belong. When presented with the statement, “I feel respected at my company,” it was encouraging to see that 84% of employees agreed. A closer look at this insight shows that 87% who do not consider English their primary language agreed, 85% of LGBTQIA+ employees agreed and 81% of Women of Colour agreed.
When asked if “people from all backgrounds have equal opportunities to succeed at my company,” 74% of the company agreed, including a similar sentiment from Women of Colour (71%).
Seventy-four percent of employees overall also agreed when asked if they feel they can be their authentic self at work, and of those that answered, 81% of LGBTQIA+ employees agreed. However, this stat overall is down from 81% in 2020.
Areas for Improvement
This year's survey uncovered several gaps and areas for improvement, which will guide us as we plan Diversity & Inclusion efforts heading into 2022.
In a year of major activities and initiatives across Wattpad - including our acquisition and growth across all of our teams - we’re more mindful than ever about how much our teams are doing. When we asked staff whether they felt the company enabled them to balance their work and personal life we uncovered a gender gap: while 76% of employees agreed with this statement, only 72% of women agreed compared to 84% of men.
As we close off the second year of COVID-19, we all find ourselves balancing the same things we faced during the first year: continued remote work and pandemic anxieties and fears, along with juggling homelife, family, childcare and more. These are challenges faced by every business in every sector. But as we look to 2022, we are committed to bringing a strong D&I lens to help our staff navigate the pressures of this new reality.
What’s Next
Our Diversity & Inclusion survey is just one way we’re working to make Wattpad - and the technology industry - a more supportive, diverse, and inclusive place. It helps us better understand our employees' perspectives and the areas we need to address moving forward. Last year’s results informed our 2021 our Diversity & Inclusion efforts which included:
Adding two additional affinity groups for our teams, ensuring safe spaces for employees of shared identities to connect and support each other. These groups now include: Women of Colour, Women and Nonbinary Caregivers, LGBTIAQ+, Women in Tech, Living with Mental Health Conditions, and Neurodiversity.
Introducing more specialized D&I training for managers around mental health, so they can better understand how to support team members who may be struggling.
Introducing land acknowledgements at our weekly company All Hands meetings and using this full-company platform as an opportunity to educate staff on issues facing Indigenous communities.
Starting a mentorship program that aims to elevate women in Engineering & Data, helping to address the gender gap on our team.
Committing to hiring our first ever Head of Diversity & Inclusion. This will be a critical role for our company and a driving force in achieving our Diversity & Inclusion efforts across Wattpad.
We’re proud of the progress we’ve made this year, but our Diversity & Inclusion work isn’t finished. We’ll reflect on the feedback our teams shared this year and focus on finding meaningful ways to improve where we found gaps. While action is key, we will always listen first, because we want to truly understand how our efforts and actions are helping our teams as we build a more diverse and inclusive Wattpad.
For a full look at Wattpad’s reporting on Diversity & Inclusion to date, see our previous reports: 2020, 2019, 2018 and 2017.