A more diverse and inclusive Etsy

Guiding principles

Diversity is a priority at Etsy, owned by everyone
A diverse workforce is critical to Etsy’s success—it makes us a stronger, better, more resilient, and more relevant company. We have an inclusive culture and each of us actively creates opportunities for underrepresented groups to join, thrive, and advance at Etsy.

We welcome all perspectives
As individuals, we invite a variety of viewpoints and experiences—especially when they conflict with our own. We encourage questions more than statements, and provide a safe environment in which all employees can surface and discuss concerns.

We measure and share openly
We contribute to broader progress by evaluating, iterating, and transparently communicating our successes and failures internally and externally.

How we measure ourselves

We’ve made two key changes to how we measure the demographic composition of our staff since we first publicly released these statistics (2014).

In order to benchmark ourselves against other technology companies, we used a broad measurement of “technical roles” that echoed other diversity reports, including functions like product management and product design. While we still want to benchmark ourselves, we are now releasing additional statistics that are specific to our Engineering organization, where there is a particular need for greater diversity and stronger inclusion strategies. Our “technical” category will now include analysts who sit in business and operations organizations but who do highly technical work.

Additionally, we now measure gender in a non-binary way. We recognize that gender lies on a spectrum, and we give employees an optional way to self-report their gender identity from a list of more than 60 options, specifically for diversity and inclusion reporting.

*Gender diversity (global)**

Ethnic diversity (US) ||

* We acknowledge that gender is not binary. Employees are given the option to voluntarily self-report their gender identity from a list of more than 60 options. We aggregated responses that were not cis/male/man or cis/female/woman into a third category.

†“Tech” includes engineering and product organizations as well as technical analysts.

‡“Engineering” refers to all employees in our engineering organization.

§“Leadership” refers to employees at the Director level or above.

||We are using racial and ethnic identifications from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Spotlight: Gender-inclusive bathrooms

We are constantly examining our internal culture and practices, with a focus on fostering an inclusive, comfortable environment for everyone. A group of employees reached out to our People and Workplace teams asking how our restrooms could better accommodate people who are transgender or gender-nonconforming. We believe that gender is not binary and that individuals should use the restroom that feels most comfortable for them. Inspired by the concept of universal design and guided by consistent feedback from employee advocates, we devised a plan to make restrooms in our Brooklyn headquarters more inclusive within the legal constraints. In New York City, local building codes require gender binary signs on multi-stall restroom doors.

First, we increased restroom privacy, which benefits all employees. We lengthened stall doors and partitions and installed privacy strips along the gaps between doors and partitions, decreasing visibility into the stalls. We included new occupancy indicator locks to clearly mark if a stall is in use. We installed white noise machines to provide a soothing soundscape. We now store feminine hygiene products in all stalls in restrooms.

Next, we clearly communicated our position that everyone should feel comfortable and safe using the restrooms where they work. Our leaders communicated their support for the changes and we encouraged additional conversation and feedback from every stakeholder. The outcome? Our employees expressed a collective cheer of support and welcomed the updates. While we’re proud that we made our restrooms more comfortable for all, we recognize that the practical limitations in our design have fallen short of the best practices in some ways. Advocates like Human Rights Campaign and Transgender Law Center and government agencies like OSHA advise including access to single-occupancy all-gender restrooms. Where possible we provide these options in our offices outside of Brooklyn.

More on inclusivity at Etsy

In 2016, we announced a new family leave policy, designed to support gender equity in the workplace. To learn more, check out our blog post Strong Families, Strong Business: A Step Forward in Parental Leave at Etsy.