Our commitment to change

Over the last few weeks, the horrific deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery in the US have been the catalyst for worldwide protests and discussions about how we treat Black people in our communities and in our workplaces.

At TrueLayer, we state unequivocally that Black Lives Matter.

We support the worldwide calling for peaceful protests, police reform, and an acknowledgement of the systemic racism that infiltrates all aspects of life. We can’t assert our privilege and pretend racism doesn’t exist because it doesn’t affect us. We know systemic racism is prevalent in society closer to home too — our colleagues across TrueLayer have experienced it — in their lives, and in their past careers.

One of the ways all of us can do better is by actively ensuring that our company reflects our society. Today it doesn’t. This week at TrueLayer we’ve taken time to reflect on our practices as a business and how we can improve when it comes to building a truly inclusive and diverse organisation, both internally and externally as a voice in the tech community. It’s clear we’ve fallen short, our I&D metrics are not where they need to be. Today, we are making a commitment to change. It would be disingenuous to acknowledge that recent events haven’t prompted this call to action — it must not be that global events highlighting social injustice prompt us to act. We must be better than that.

One of TrueLayer's core principles is to value people:

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People matter at TrueLayer. We believe that we will win together as a team. We are not here to compete with one another but rather to support, collaborate and bring out the best in one another. We celebrate each other’s unique traits and value individual strengths while recognising that we all have weaknesses. This is a place where each person can be their authentic TRUEself.

And while words are important, actions matter more. So here are the actions we’re committed to taking:

1. Establish I&D reporting

We have tasked our Talent team to re-start collecting inclusion and diversity metrics across our organisation and hiring pipeline. When we know better, we do better.

2. Internal support, training, and education about inclusion, diversity, and anti-racism

We have tasked our People team to start rolling out unconscious bias training to everyone at TrueLayer. Acknowledging that we have behavioural differences, and actively calibrating to ensure those differences don’t impede togetherness, belonging, and community, are vital to our growth as our organisation.

We are going to roll out an education program involving a range of knowledgable speakers to talk to us about race, inequality, social bias and progressive affirmative action. Educating ourselves is the first step to speaking up about objectionable behaviour in our organisation, and our community.

3. Improving our hiring process and making I&D a key metric

I&D will be a key hiring metric and KPI for all Hiring Leads. Our People team will work on embedding this across our organisation. Part of leadership is acknowledging we have a problem and are doing something tangible about it — leadership must be held to account.

4. Helping to fund black charities and community groups

Over the next few weeks, we will add charities and NGOs that support the Black community in the U.K. through our app, DonateDirect. We’ll match donations up to £10,000 and waive all fees on donations to these organisations.

Our commitment to all of our colleagues and to our wider community is this: we start doing better today.