Diversity and Inclusion Starter Kit

[Music] diversity is the mix and inclusion is making of the mixed work who here thinks that we need to improve on our diversity and inclusion in the games industry lovely this is not a talk on defining diversity and inclusion and in order to convince you that we need diversity and inclusion in the game industry I'd refer you to the GDC vault or ask the neighbor who raised their hands what this talk is one studios how for starting a DNI this will be a comprehensive talk and I will use all my 30 minutes questions will be answered after the talk across this hall and I would appreciate you filling out an ad the evaluation form I'm sure you've heard that already this talk is

about chairing the DNI journey of Avalanche Studios New York from 2016 to 2018 I will share lessons we learn challenges we continue to face best practices we discovered and successes we've had this is intended to be a starter kit for you to have a sustainable and active DNI initiative in your company like we did in New York in the New York studio since this is a grassroot initiative this talk is specific to the New York studio in this talk I won't offer any shortcuts nor magic pill or bullets it's not to vilify white males who are still the majority of this industry rather this highlights the importance of white males to be an active ally in this DNI journey there's a lot of heart required to starting a DNI initiative before embarking on this journey find out what's your with them

your what's in it for me your why for doing DNI it could be global competitiveness increasing your bottom line being an ally and advocate avoiding lawsuits and bad publicity or like me you've been unlucky in the lottery of birth and would like to make things better for you and others who are also marginalized my with him is this I grew up thinking that discrimination is just a part of life and that you don't have a choice but to accept that those who are fair-skinned rich tall and white are get all the opportunities in the world and those that are not are just unlucky I grew up in the Philippines born and raised in the Philippines and at a young age I've seen the inequality of life I moved to Singapore and was treated at like a second class because of my color which is brown I moved to

the US and I'm an immigrant and I experienced the microaggressions but it was only here that I got woke I could actually try to do something about the inequality and make things better for me and folks like me heads up not everything that I'll share today may be applicable to your team however the answer is within your team it'll make you ask questions after this I am incredibly excited to be here and share with you our ongoing journey with DNI the more we explore the more we find out there's still a lot of work to be done we are a work in progress here's some background and Avalanche Studios the company was founded in Stockholm Sweden 15 years ago New York is the only studio outside of Sweden and open in 2011 Avalanche Studios develop Mad Max the Just Cause series the Hunter series

Rage 2 and generation zero I was hired for Avalanche Studios three years ago and I would I was ecstatic that part of my marching orders was to do something about DNI like most small to medium videogame companies it's a struggle to have time budget and resources DNI is like ah that's nice but nobody really gives time and prioritize it so it easily gets deprioritized i am an HR department of one of a triple a studio so I do have an alibi of being swamped so in 2016 I kick-started our DNI initiative by hiring an external trainer to teach us about DNI unfortunately the training was not satisfactory for the one-day event we were grouped and asked to complete tasks around New York City draw on the street duct tape a tree copy a tattoo of a

stranger eat something we haven't eaten before at Chinatown invade a store to take a picture climb to a rooftop to take a picture it was funny when we were doing it but the training ended and we realized we didn't learn anything about DNI I felt personally responsible for that failed training we did get some of our money back the harder part was to gain the trust of employees that they will not be misled again it was fun because it turned out to be a team bonding again we didn't learn anything about do you know this is not to discredit external trainers a failed training is actually common according to the Society of diversity where I recently got certified to be a diversity practitioner why the training it trainings are the go-to for starting a DNI initiative and it almost always fails because it tries to address a huge

and complicated topic which is DNI in a one-day event the more fatal reason why DNI training fails is most companies just stop any initiative after a failed training so the overarching lesson for starting a DNI initiative it's slow and consistent steps so like this baby they eat they have male first before they move on to solid food my first immediate lesson for when I started in 2016 after the V that DNI failed training is humility partnered with curiosity humility to accept that this is not a problem that can be solved by one person alone and curiosity to start asking questions of what will so I did one I did one in once Google form surveys focus groups to find out what our

employees need what are the pressing issues and what are the long-term goals the second lesson is commitment to transform by the leadership this is done through creating and modeling a psychologically safe environment where people are comfortable to give feedback I'm gonna say it again comfortable to give feedback we haven't perfected this and this is a never-ending effort a few steps that we started where we updated the handbook communicated the updates to our employees called out behavior through one and once that to not support this initiative and leadership also started implementing changes suggested by employees the third lesson is establishing internal and external partners after admitting that the first attempt was a failure I partnered with the leadership team our employees and specific external groups to boost our agenda I'll give examples in the next slides the second overarching lesson is

diversity and inclusion go hand-in-hand one cannot work without the other so you can't just hire a bunch of diverse folks and say good luck because they will not thrive so our two goals are foster inclusivity in the company and increase diversity representation in the demographics of our employee so what are our actions to foster inclusivity if I could stop sum it up in one word it's called its partnership or creating partnership we have three ongoing internal partners number one is the full support of a leadership who listens having DNI considered in our events was a good start for example in representing the company externally one small easy step is to make sure that there's diverse in the representatives we send out in video game development the industry is notoriously known for crunch you don't like crunch do right or overtime no admittedly this is a little

easier for us because the company already is established to be a huge advocate of work-life balance we have seven weeks of paid time off and our health dental vision insurances are hundred-percent paid by the company for employee plus dependents including domestic partners updating policies are also vital an easy win for us was changing one of our company paid holidays Good Friday holiday which is a holiday for Christians to a floating holiday so that others who don't observe Lent can observe their own holidays establishing our business resource group or brg is the heart of our DNI team how did we start the team I scheduled a one-on-one to those who emailed me and spoke to me about the failed training I asked them if they were willing to do voluntary work for D&I employees who get it and want to do something about it

instructions where project will remain a priority we will meet two or three times a month and we would plan for activities they will not be policing employees we started out with eight volunteers and three studio management as time went on there were attrition and addition within the team I would like you to be mindful of the word diversity fatigue it is a real issue where people get tired and impatient to see immediate changes as of this writing there are six D&I team members I'm giving a shout-out to our remaining OGC third and important partners are every one of us or employees who turn out to be our allies creating awareness for ourselves and employees about microaggressions educating employees of interruptions during meetings and discussions and implementing zero tolerance for harassment plus educating them and how to be an ally foster an environment

ready for more diversity I heard comment today on if you're a white male and you want to be an ally what do you do ask that question to the person you want to be an ally to in 2017 we started partnering with following external allies the academia nonprofit organizations and local New York groups we've hired incredible talent talents from our partner universities these employees also help out with school outreach since there are not a lot of guides and materials out there to help us make DNI work partnering with nonprofit organizations have been extremely helpful to our cause tapping on their specialities our vital and time plus cost-efficient for us lastly our local New York video game groups New York is home to talented indie game developers are being at events show our support and oneness we provide resources through talks by our

developers and we also share our expertise it has been a struggle and a balancing act to find thoughtful activities that make our DNI initiative sustainable and efficient a few of our favorite and successful activities are awareness activities these are high impact educational and the cost is minimal here are some examples round tables are made of a panel they are volunteers depending on the topic who have stories to tell and there's a moderator we've had good success with our roundtables but they require a lot of preparation one learning experience from for me from a roundtable is I had I have an employee who I have difficulty talking to because at times he has difficulty understanding at that roundtable he shared that Spanish is his second language and he felt really bad that his parents didn't speak English that he wished that they did so that he won't be in this predicament him having

shared that really helped me in terms of communicating with him the next one is documentaries these are easy and high have a high impact we choose a documentary that's based on a monthly theme newsletters are a collection of research and it's pick that we would like for employees to know based on feedback we hired a trainer again geared to empowering women and the marginalized this time it was useful because it was targeted and it was specific more importantly our conversations are the soul of our DNI initiatives from management making sure all issues and concerns are listened to and resolved as much as we can for employees in cart encouraging difficult conversations help foster a good working relationship with their co-workers two key things to maintain an active DNI initiatives are planning a monthly theme as focus for the DNI initiatives this

helps immensely since the DNI team all have full-time jobs in the company next is sending a feedback form through Google Form that's free after every event to know real-time if the activity was effective or not I'm going to share and spend some time talking about our 2018 calendar so you would be able to picture what a DNI initiative may look like when you implement it I will also share selected feedback from some activities 2018 was our year two of our DNI journey in January our theme was global citizens we have diversity nationality being in New York and a majority of us relocated from somewhere to work there a roundtable activity was to understand the struggles our differences and challenges of relocating we had four volunteers who are immigrants relocate errs and people who have worked abroad and they've shared their personal stories and their struggles and their triumphs all to

create awareness my takeaway was those who have to get visas especially in the US have a lot to worry about versus someone who's local who don't have to worry about that on top of their work in February for Black History Month we sent out a newsletter educating our employees on why in the US this is celebrated we showed 13th a Netflix documentary at a bring your own lunch and had a debrief at a lunch the week after this thought-provoking documentary analyzed the criminal is a of african-americans and the US prison boom in March for women's month we send out a newsletter watch the documentary misrepresentation a film showcasing the horrifying realities of female media representation video games as a form of media is powerful and influencing our audience as creators knowing the misrepresentation of women is useful for being mindful on what we create we had for women as well participated from

Avalanche Studios at an external event in New York and a lot we're happily surprised that wow they're women in Avalanche Studios also the women in the company started ladies who pastry it's happened it's a half an hour get together bi-weekly of ladies to fika and chat fika is a Swedish tradition of a short break or downtime with coffee or snacks in April for Spanish American Heritage Month we taught our employees how to say the correct pronunciation of the Spanish words in our game just cost for is set in South America for May we sent out a newsletter on Asian Pacific Heritage Month one of my favorite activities is the privileged walk you can search this on YouTube I think it's the best way to talk about privilege without going into semantics but just share personal stories so there are 35 questions all of you start in one line and depending on the question you either step forward or step back and the

discussions after that was just priceless another thing that happened in May came from the feedback we got from women which was the need for a training for respect in the workplace and assertiveness this was in the height of the me2 movement and aside from enforcing a zero tolerance in the workplace we got a trainer to equip the women in marginalized with skills to face this issue my personal take away from this is that as women and minorities we tend to say sorry way too many times so at times just avoid saying sorry and say excuse me like sorry I got this room booked to say excuse me I have this room booked it it improves our assertiveness in June for pied month we had the roundtable where some lgbtq+ employees volunteered to share their stories our goal was to normalize lgbtq+ and hearing a familiar person story was vital to

this goal their comfort in coming out show that they trust the organization and that they felt that they have co-workers who are ready to listen we want we went on a three-month hiatus in July or studio closed for two weeks for our summer break tradition August in September we were extremely busy finishing the game we started in October for indigenous peoples month we had a presentation at the company meeting on what what and who are the indigenous people we mindfully look for ways to link our initiatives to be industry specific again info is not readily available so for indigenous people this month we looked for games that have Native Americans as protagonists and we made it available for employees to play during their break our final activity for 28:18 was disability in games and we partnered with the nonprofit organization AbleGamers to educate us on what we can do as developers to make games that are more accommodating to

disabled players they helped design the new Xbox adaptive controller we invited them to our studio in New York and we also hosted an event where we opened our studio to external folks so that they can spread the message of enhancing the disabled player experience so more people can play new york recently passed a law to require an interactive preventing harassment training for all employees we achieved hundred percent compliance and this educated our employees on preventing harassment I believe that loss can help the DNI initiative in that for instance you when you're requesting for more budget if it's for compliance issue or purposes then the budget is easy to get the other New York law that I like a lot is making it illegal to ask candidates their current salary this way employers just pay the market and not a previous salary which historically is lower for women and minorities and that was our mm 18 calendar thank you

I wasn't expecting that but you think you can do one activity from that list good our second goal was to improve our diversity hires improving our diversity numbers in the company is all good for creative creativity a common thing to hear from naysayers though is that they're colorblind and that DNI is not a problem and think that we lower the quality of hires when we start diversity hiring diversity hiring however is just to create a level playing field for all not empowering some while disenfranchising others it is just casting a wider net and still hire the best out of that pool to cast a wider net one of the first few things we reviewed where our initiatives in sourcing and recruiting first I conducted an internal interviewers training with tools and best practices for interviewing making hiring managers

aware of their biases was a goal of the training interviewers are instructed to focus on competencies and potential of a candidate versus hiring how they normally used to which is usually hiring someone who looks like them and are like them to expect change you must change our interviewing habits second is better sourcing process there's data to prove that updating the job descript descriptions to be gender-neutral providing a description of what the role is versus itemizing required qualifications increases the likelihood that females would apply best practices include avoiding ninja or bro language and painting a culture of just always partying and drinking discovering new job sites to pose our jobs that would have different reach was another thing we did we also increased our referral bonus we saved on recruitment fees and got quality candidates from referrals third we are aware that the first thing that candidates look at specifically in

the u.s. to find out about the company is Glassdoor they are known as the quote unquote enemy of the company most companies we partnered with them and to make sure that information and Glassdoor about Avalanche Studios is accurate a few of easy updates are correcting what our benefits are and sharing our activities and news candidates find out about our commitment to work-life balance and this is attractive to women and those with families we continue to work on what needs improvement based on reviews and increase our engagement by replying to reviews good or bad the next two actions are for long-term results we increased our studio visits we accommodated a request for more schools and students to come to the studio meet and greet the developers and know that making a video making video games is a real job that they can have same goal of take your kids to work day on a grander scale the visit includes basic information and what are the different roles that they can be on a triple-a

project and the tools or software that they can start learning and enhancing it is heartwarming to inspire and motivate young underprivileged diverse kids to pursue their passion and video games we believe that we can have a more diverse pool of candidates in the future when we start educating a more diverse group of youngsters that video game making is a wonderful possibility and career for everyone just two weeks ago there were 10 year olds who come to the studio who want to learn programming and it blew my mind because their questions are about C++ and I'm like what did I do when I was 10 v we extended our reach to minorities and marginalized groups by being present at their events examples are game devs of color Expo play NYC AbleGamers New York City video game Critics Circle and animation project we have improved our number of hits and minimize our misses in our activities as time goes on I would like you to be

aware and learn from our challenges as well the main thing is there not a lot of materials out there nor guides to help us knowing what works for your demographics is the most important part and knowing comes from conversations surveys asking questions being curious don't be afraid to look dumb we are didn't have production schedule conflict because we have a game to finish the DNI team has to be mindful of that when planning for activities in the beginning of this talk I share that DNI requires a lot of heart there will be discouragements from others primarily because of their hardwired biases and thoughtfully looking for activities is taxing because you won't we don't want to alienate others who are not yet our allies we are restricted with not having the biggest budget in the world to do grander things and we've also experienced members of our DNI team leave and since it's a voluntary work we don't hold them back

and it's never easy it is hard work time-consuming but I'm proud to share with you that this is one of the most fulfilling initiatives have been fortunate to be a part of and have learned so much I'm happy to report that in two years our different activities and partnerships resulted into the following we have nearly doubled our women hires our active and sustainable DNI initiatives made noticeable impact to the lives of all employees especially the marginalized by just casting a wider net we've hired our first woman programmer promoted from within a woman to senior producer we hired interns for three out of four women one of the women got hired as full-time employee our attention rates for women has also been very high true story we were having our Coney Island trip in June and one of the high tech companies there their names may have booked and face in it and

they challenged us to a tug of war they lost the first round and asked for a redo asking for more women from our team we still won the second round but I'm more happy that we have more than enough women to even participate in a tug of war we also have increased our people of color hires to half our activities have fostered a comfortable environment for employees to give feedback as to what we can improve in our games one african-american employee suggested to change the name of one of our characters because the original name was offensive to African American a Hispanic employee suggested the initiative to teach our employee how to pronounce the Spanish words in our game correctly this same comfortable environment led to lgbtq+ employees saying that they're comfortable to be themselves and comfortable coming out I haven't even mentioned the many ripple effect that we've had to everyone since we started the bright ideas that come

from our employees and connections we've made are priceless these are tangible changes that fuel our efforts 2019 and onwards we would like to continue on the journey to the ultimate goal of DNI affecting our games if you could only take three takeaways from today here's a summary of which can bring back to your organization's depending on your role immediately when you get back next week or unless you're on vacation next week for those in management humility is the way for DNI to start without your support DNI will not fly remain curious as to what would make your organization's better listen and commit to transform for the content developers and creators you are the most important part of the equation you're most needed to be an ally if you don't know how ask keep the feedback loop by continuing to care an advocate for equity and equality to my fellow HR our

people business needs a lot of heart our best ammunition is creating awareness exercising compassion and continued dialogue with our stakeholders easier said than done yeah worth it it will be why am i you why am I here today I'm not an expert I don't work for the perfect company newsflash there's none out there I haven't been working long in video games and in this industry it seems to matter the probability of being list listen to is directly proportional to how long you've been in games budget and resources are always scarce I am here to share that in spite and despite of what we're up against you can start an active and sustainable DNI initiative in your come I hope you go back to work and implement ideas from the starter kit no matter what your position is in the company you can be part of the solution it is an

uphill battle and some days are more challenging that it's easy to not do it there are days when we step back two times and we make mistakes or others we work with them with others who we work with make it harder there's a definite cost to doing nothing with globalization and changing demographics D&I is no longer on oh that's nice it is a business strategy and that every company whatever their sizes must have to be competitive bring this starter kit to someone who gets it and also wants to do something about it this can't be done alone who will you share this starter kit to together we can all be the change that we wish to see for improving DNI in games thanks for being here [Applause]