Year in Review: Diversity, equity, and inclusion at Sharetribe in 2023

This report discusses the diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives Sharetribe's DEI Council took in 2023. We continued work on charitable giving and equitable benefits and led an initiative to publish a statement opposing an upcoming immigration reform in Finland, where Sharetribe is based.

A key source for DEI projects at Sharetribe has been a yearly survey we give to the team. For example, earlier work on salary fairness and transparency was inspired by the survey results of 2021. No similar bigger themes came to light in the 2022 survey. In fact, the survey results in 2022 didn’t yield any new big opportunities for improvement for the current team.

It’s important to note that the team composition has stayed relatively the same in 2022 and 2023. After a year without hiring and some team members leaving to follow other pursuits, Sharetribe has 22 team members with over ten nationalities. It stands to reason that long-term team members have already brought up issues and suggestions, and once those have been addressed, new ones don’t necessarily arise.

Charitable giving

In 2022, we created a charitable giving process. In 2023, we implemented our first charitable giving round, using CoBudget to collectively determine the causes we want to support. In the spring of 2023, we donated 1% of our profits to organizations dealing with climate justice and climate change prevention, nature preservation, and poverty reduction, as voted for by the team. We’ll conduct the same charitable giving process in 2024.

Opposition to Finnish immigration reform

Sharetribe published a statement on the Finnish government’s proposed immigration reform, which would severely impact immigration and the lives of immigrants in Finland. We oppose the reform. 

At the time of writing this post, the reform has not come into effect but is still planned as a part of the current government’s four-year term. We still hold that the reform is discriminatory and ill-advised. Key proposed changes are a maximum of three months of unemployment before deportation and increased requirements for permanent residency and citizenship.

The government says it wants to “strengthen work-based immigration of highly educated people”. A report by Specialists in Finland from September 2023 suggests the reform may have the opposite effect. The report surveyed members of the international workforce in Finland. According to the report, 69.5% of respondents have considered moving away from Finland if the reform came into effect. The biggest concerns were the three-month unemployment limit and the increase in years of residency before being eligible for citizenship. 

The majority of the survey respondents were highly educated and high-earning, but the reform will likely impact immigrants with low income and education levels even more severely.  

Immigrants are a vital and important part of Finnish society on every level. If put into effect, the reform will make Finland an unwelcome place for all immigrants. It expects immigrants to invest in Finland without Finland investing in them in return. Our uncontroversial opinion is that the reform is unreasonable, misguided, and discriminatory. 

Equitable benefits

Last year, we started a project to research and add more equitable benefits to Sharetribe team members. 

One such project was adjusting our learning budget to be more equitable, most importantly by making it easier to calculate the value of time spent on learning. This means employees with lower salaries can spend a bigger share of their time on learning compared to higher-salaried teammates. 

Our research revealed other opportunities as well. In 2023, we included a small dental care budget in our health care plan. Typically, workplace health care in Finland doesn’t include dental care. At the same time, there’s limited availability and long queues in the public dental sector, leaving the expensive private sector as the most viable option for dental care for many. 

The DEI Council recommended the addition because it benefits the entire team but is most impactful for team members with lower salaries or working part-time, who tend to have less disposable income to spend on non-urgent health services. Dental care is health care. In our opinion, offering dental checkups as a part of workplace health care should be the norm.

Sharetribe also made gynecology appointments available without a referral. Regular gynecological exams are recommended for preventative health care but are rarely included in companies’ health care plans.

We also added a public transportation ticket to our benefits. Team members can claim the ticket and deduct its price directly from their salary, resulting in a lower amount of paid tax on income.

Moving forward to 2024

In Sharetribe’s DEI report of 2022, we mentioned the trend of businesses scaling back or even ending their diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. The economy is in a downturn, and cutting costs is often the cited explanation. 

But this is just the surface-level explanation. Companies are divesting from DEI for a multitude of reasons. For many of them, the commitment was not real, so lasting change was never really possible.

We recognize that working on DEI in a majority-white, small to medium-sized organization that aims to grow sustainably has a limited impact. We have plenty of work to do to become a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive company. Still, we’re proud of our work so far.

At the beginning of Sharetribe’s DEI work in 2020 and 2021, we worked on big initiatives like setting up structures for ongoing DEI work, anonymous hiring, salary transparency, and more. Recently, we’ve focused on upholding and continuing this work. For example, we have our yearly DEI survey, work on equitable benefits, and anonymous recruitment process, now key parts of how Sharetribe operates.

Our larger aim is to normalize companies taking concrete steps towards diversity, equity, and inclusion. While we celebrate the initiatives we’ve completed, we also think they should be the norm. A company does not necessarily need a dedicated DEI Council to build a more inclusive and equitable workplace – but it does help.

Sharetribe will keep the DEI effort ongoing. We’re always happy to learn about resources on how we can improve – or to share our own experiences. If you want to chat with us about these topics, please get in touch with us at hello@sharetribe.com!