Diverse and inclusive values, reported annually

Envato’s inclusion and diversity story of 2021 is the tale of resilience through connectedness. 

We drew on the strengths of our unique culture and ability to work from anywhere to ensure everyone felt like it’s a place they belonged – even if we were separated by the pandemic. 

Like everyone, we hoped the worst was behind us at the end of 2020 so we continued to pivot our planned inclusion initiatives and refocused on the wellbeing of our global team. 

While the world was still very much in limbo, our people pulled together – for each other and our community. The key inclusion efforts remained focussed on our Out@Envato and Mental health inclusion groups, making further improvements in the gender balance across roles within the organisation and partnerships that supported working parents.

Want to look back at the 2020 Diversity & Inclusion report? 

Overall our gender balance has continued to improve with 20% more women being promoted to a manager position since last year, making up 59% of all promotions at Envato. 

And we’re particularly proud to see out the year by celebrating two more women graduates from apprentice to Junior Developers and welcoming two more women into the Envato Apprentice Developer Program for the next year. Progress over perfection!

As a solid commitment to improving gender equity at Envato, we now include data on our inclusion related engagement factors. This will keep us accountable so we have focussed, ongoing efforts in bringing our gender equity strategy to life. This year was dedicated to improving talent acquisition and promotion processes.

As part of our focus on diversity and inclusion, we’re committed to using inclusive gender demographics. This means our language might change slightly from year to year to stay in line with what’s considered best practice for inclusive data collection.

We track our inclusion measures and benchmark annually against the Australian Workplace Equality Index (AWEI) – this is to see how we compare to other organisations in relation to LGBTI+ inclusion. 

We also hold ourselves accountable to WGEA standards who promote and improve gender equality in Australian workplaces. 

And internally, our Have Your Say employee survey measures engagement sentiments such as “I feel like I belong at Envato”,  which is up 4% on last year in comparison to other tech companies. It also measures overall engagement which was consistently higher for women at Envato this year.

This year we expanded our employee benefits to support the wellbeing of our people after the pressure of multiple lockdowns and generally making our already established remote work-life more coordinated.

This year we celebrated our 15th birthday as a business and employees received 15 hours off work – another example of time being one of the most valuable gifts. Alongside this, employees were provided with an additional volunteer day which they could contribute to the communities that meant the most to them.

Through #YourWayIsOurWay, we introduced a nine-day fortnight for the last quarter of the calendar year and provided employees with three extra leave days between Christmas and New Year.  

Employee benefits were focused on being inclusive as possible for our people’s circumstances:

We have a long-standing business-wide sponsorship with Code Like a Girl which continued for another year. With female-dominated industries facing job insecurity due to the pandemic, Code Like a Girl’s reduces gender inequity through tailored education, supporting absolute beginners through industry-led 10 week coding courses. We’re proud to support Code Like a Girl to continue to improve its efforts to empower and enable women and girls to be equal creators in building for the future. 

This year we sponsored Women in Digital, a global community dedicated to connecting, educating and empowering women in digital. The event champions top talents in our industry to highlight role models and celebrate industry leaders. 

Our Envato Foundation is working towards a future where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have equal opportunity in achieving success through education and employment.

To support this vision, the Foundation partners with charitable organisations that focus on creating opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. 

While charitable giving is deeply rooted in the Envato ethos, the effects of the pandemic made our usual support harder than we would have liked to fulfill – we look forward to a renewed focus in hopefully better times next year.

Grace Papers

Grace Papers is Envato’s partner for supporting parents on their parental leave journey. It is a coaching platform where employees and their managers can find support to care for themselves, their family and for their careers.

Pride in Diversity 

Pride in Diversity’s employer support program guides us through LGBTQ+ workplace inclusion. We are able to offer our employee’s ally training and awareness training being reinstated in 2022 after recent COVID-19 restrictions prevented the normal cycle of our program. 

Despite the disruption of moving in and out of a fully remote work environment, it didn’t stop us from acknowledging and celebrating important days of inclusion throughout the year – even if they were virtual. 

Some of the highlights were:

Improving inclusion and diversity efforts is a journey that is never “finished”, but we’re proud of the work we’ve accomplished so far – in particular the support we’ve provided all employees through yet another unpredictable year of unique challenges.

We’re excited to continue focusing on diversity and inclusion in 2022. And as we keep refining our practices and comfort levels around fully remote work, we will continue to embrace new ways of fulfilling our diversity and inclusion needs.