A Year Full of Diversity at Busbud

A year ago, we set out to become a more diverse organization. We launched the Omnibus Project, where I laid out the Busbud team’s vision of diversity.

We also laid our commitment to carry out 5 actions every quarter and publicly report on these actions quarterly. I am happy to announce that one year later, we have completed four consecutive quarters of actions to promote diversity.

I am very proud of our Busbud team, who has taken on the challenge, brought this initiative to life and made meaningful contributions. Practically every Busbud team member has participated or led a diversity-related project this year. We believe that diversity is everyone’s business, not just a selected few.

A pivotal year for diversity

Our initial decision to make diversity a priority at Busbud was in part related to our core mission: help move millions of travellers across the world to discover different places and cultures in a shared form of collective transport. It was also a reaction to some early news stories highlighting the need for greater diversity in the tech industry.

Little did we know that 2017 would be a pivotal year for diversity in the tech industry and beyond. The #metoo movement amplified the discussion mid-year and it cut across many industries such as tech, media, entertainmentat an international level. To end the year, Time magazine named the silence breakers as “person of the year,” featuring a group of women changemakers who spoke out against discrimination and harassment.

A look back at our contributions

We’ve published our results every quarter here.

For example, amongst other things this year, we’ve:

Conducted an internal survey on our own diversity inside Busbud and shared results in an internal town-hall team meeting.
Changed our open job postings to make them more inclusive and added an “immigration policy” section.
Highlighted the importance of diversity & inclusiveness in our new employee onboarding materials.
Offered an shared leadership training course to any interested team member.
Improved the accessibility of our website and mobile apps for vision impaired.
Created a welcome guide for international team members relocating to Montreal.
Volunteered at a local community centre for people in need.
Participated in diversity-focused events in our local community.

Reaffirming core beliefs

Building a diverse organization doesn’t just happen; like many things, it takes work. That said, while working on various projects this year, we realized that even small tasks could lead to big wins, whether for team morale, talent attraction, workplace happiness or even how we feel about our organization.

Doing this work has also reaffirmed some core beliefs and diversity tenets of high-performing organizations, such as pay equity between men and women, no tolerance for harassment of any kind, respect for different cultures, celebration of our differences, and the ability to have safe transparent communication around diversity issues.

Celebrating diversity in our office

As a constant reminder of the importance of diversity and inclusion in our workplace, we proudly fly/display the LGBT+ pride flag in our office. It serves as a constant reminder of the importance of diversity and inclusion in our workplace.

For 2018, we will continue to promote diversity within. We’ll undertake actions every quarter, as a way to continue the dialogue on diversity. Committing to a set number of projects last year helped get us moving, this year we will still accomplish a lot but with a focus on meaningfulness. Also, while our initial goal was to “start from within”, we want to extend more of our efforts in 2018 to our local community and our traveler community worldwide.

Of course, we have still a ways to go, both as an organization and as a society in general, but Busbud is proud to be making progress. Hopefully we can inspire folks to have these important conversations and do this meaningful work.

Onwards,

LP Maurice