The HiMama team consists of over 90 dedicated people who come from all walks of life. As a Certified B Corp, we have been recognized as an organization that is committed to making the world a better place. With our product, we do this by creating easy-to-use software that educators and families love. But there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes to promote positive change within our own family of employees.
We’re very lucky at HiMama to have leaders and employees who are dedicated to sharing, learning, and growing our Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) commitments. We have certainly taken many steps that we’re really proud of as an organization, and commit to continuing to find better, more meaningful ways to invest in D&I at HiMama.
Something that we keep top of mind is the idea that Diversity and Inclusion is not static. Similarly to our product, our culture, and our team, Diversity and Inclusion needs to be nurtured. Outlined below is HiMama’s conscious investment in Diversity and Inclusion:
How We Celebrate Diversity & Inclusion
- Creation of our Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging (DIBS) committee open to all current employees of HiMama.
- Creation of our DIBS Slack community (open to all current employees of HiMama) where members share posts, thoughts, reflections, highlight BIPOC folks in a variety of spaces (i.e literature, music, history, tech space, etc). This is also a space to share information about various social issues and give employees the knowledge and tools to be better allies to the BIPOC community within HiMama and beyond.
- Ongoing DIBS discussions. These discussions are bi-weekly and open for any current employee of HiMama. Oftentimes they will consist of an educational talk presented by experts around various topics including but not limited to: mental health stigmas, activism, discriminations and biases, inclusion, allyship, culture and language to name a few. This is followed by a healthy discussion facilitated by a different member of the HiMama team. Topics have ranged from embracing neuro-diversity, how to support Black women at work, the importance of therapy, using correct pronouns, fatphobia, and embracing emotions at work.
- Creation of our DIBS reference library, whereby all previous discussions are documented with important links, slide decks and key takeaways for reference/for folks who weren’t able to attend our discussions.
- Invest in an external workshop/speaker once per quarter. Previous topics and guests included experts on gender identity, 2SLGBTQIA representation and inclusion, race & microaggressions, and managing mental health.
- Promoting the specification of personal pronouns.
- Ongoing surveys measuring sense of belonging and support at work, ongoing feedback collection on external workshops and internal DIBS discussions, using these to inform future topics or speakers .
- Investing in inclusive management training.
- Non-gendered bathrooms in our office.
- Donations or donation-matching to various local organizations. Most recently have included Casey House, Fort York Food Bank and the Ontario Black Legal Action Fund.
Core Values to Stand Behind
In addition to our ongoing work with our diversity and inclusion committee, we are strong believers in not only having core values as a company but living by these values.
HiMama’s 3 core values are:
1. Be a good person
2. Work hard and win
3. Own positive change
We work hard to ensure that all of our employees adhere to our core values and recognize when teammates go above and beyond. Without clearly outlined core values, we would not have support for our vision as a company, to our employees, our customers and our community.
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