HopSkipDrive’s brand mission is to ‘Create opportunity for all through mobility.’
The work that we do helping children who are experiencing homelessness or in the foster care system access school and other opportunities highlights our commitment to this purpose. Doing meaningful and fulfilling work, and seeing a difference in children’s lives is what drives our work.
Two of our core values are ‘own it’ and ‘feel it’. It’s crucial we also do the work within our organization to stay in line with our values. We want to make this same commitment to opportunity internally, and empower underrepresented communities in our hiring and promotion practices. We want to be transparent with ourselves and the public about our efforts toward diversity and inclusion. By analyzing and sharing our data with the public, we are being honest and holding ourselves accountable.
To take a closer look at diversity at HopSkipDrive, we focused on the active workforce at different snapshots in time, as well as hiring and separation trends. This analysis uses the data from our HR software platform; the data is self-reported and collected during new hire orientation. Anyone can opt out of self-reporting, so we do not have data on 100% of employees.
In this report, we’ll share our diversity data, what we’ve learned, where we are doing well, where we need to work to improve, and how we’re committing to get better.
A note on the terms we use: We use the term BIPOC to refer to individuals who identify as Asian, Black/African American, Latinx, Native American, Pacific Islander, or two or more races.
HopSkipDrive: Current Team
What we learned:
- We have done a great job with gender representation at all levels, with a high representation of women in senior positions.
- We have been working to support underrepresented groups in Los Angeles by hiring interns from alternative programs like Year Up, which matches community college students with internships.
- While our workforce representation of underrepresented groups is better than many in the tech sector, that is not the bar we’re setting for ourselves. We have more work to do to increase underrepresented talent representation at all levels.
- When it comes to diversity, we want to look at the communities we are in. We do not reflect the U.S. labor force, nor do we reflect the Los Angeles labor force. We have work to do to reflect our own community’s ethnic diversity.
Our board is not yet representative. With only one woman and no people of color, we need to do more to create diversity at the board of directors level, and we will by September of 2021 through our participation in the Board Challenge.
Ethnicity / Race
HopSkipDrive Workforce by Ethnicity / Race
HopSkipDrive Workforce by Ethnicity / Race Compared to Benchmarks
Around 36% of HopSkipDrive’s team identifies as BIPOC; while the tech industry average for BIPOC employees is 31%, the U.S. labor force is 37% and the L.A. labor force as a whole is 71% BIPOC.
BIPOC Representation Across Management Levels
BIPOC representation is below where we would like across all departments and management levels.
Gender
HopSkipDrive Workforce by Gender
HopSkipDrive Workforce by Gender Compared to Benchmarks
HopSkipDrive is proud of our gender representation. We are above the tech industry, U.S. labor force, and L.A. labor force when it comes to gender representation.
Female Representation Across Levels
Women are strongly represented in senior management positions as well, with more than half of our executive team composed of women. We are also woman-founded and led.
Age
HopSkipDrive Workforce by Age
Ageism in the workplace, particularly in the tech industry, is a less-talked about form of bias. HopSkipDrive is more balanced than the tech industry, but behind the L.A. job market at large.
What we’re proud of:
- Our gender representation is higher than the U.S. labor force and L.A. labor force.
- Our gender representation far surpasses the technology industry as a whole.
- We have equal representation of women in senior positions.
- Our commitment to hiring interns from the Year Up program, which matches community college students, many of whom identify as part of an underrepresented group and/or come from low-income communities, with internships. We have since hired the majority of these interns into full time positions.
- A diverse Safety Advisory Board — out of six members, five are women and two are women of color.
Where we need work:
- Hiring, retaining and developing underrepresented groups. We have a foundation in place, but we do not accept the low bar set by the overall tech industry as our measure for success. We are committed to making HopSkipDrive a more diverse place.
- Creating a team which better reflects the communities we serve, and the Los Angeles workforce where most of our team resides.
- Diversifying our Board of Directors.
What we’re committed to doing:
- We joined the 1,000 Intern Initiative, which commits Los Angeles tech companies to hiring 1,000 underprivileged students of color for internships in the next two years.
- We are committed to revisiting this data often and performing an audit every performance review cycle.
- We will publish this data to hold ourselves accountable.
- Our newly formed Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee will audit all hiring practices and retention, with a particular focus across underrepresented groups.
- We are a Founding Pledge Partner on the Board Challenge and have committed to adding one black board member in the next 12 months.
- We have committed to grow the number of BIPOC employees at HopSkipDrive at least 10% faster than the growth in total number of employees.
Really looking at this data, putting it in front of the public for transparency and accountability and committing to new actions is just step one of this process. We acknowledge that we’re going to have to continue to look at hard truths, stay passionate and keep our commitment to promote greater equity at HopSkipDrive.
Sources include: Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation (Institute for Applied Economics), U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission
