Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion at ClearlyRated

Building a business diverse in age, gender identity, race, sexual orientation, physical or mental ability, ethnicity, and perspective is not only good business, it’s the right thing to do.

At ClearlyRated we are committed to integrating this practice into all aspects of our business. We want our employees and customers to bring their whole selves to the table and feel empowered to use their unique voices to add to the discussion.

That’s why we’re up to the challenge to make sure those voices represent the world we live in.

Company Position on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Our DEI Journey

Here at ClearlyRated, we are proud to have built a company culture that's worth talking about. Our team has described our workplace as fun, open, and caring—to name just a few. All descriptions that we were (and still are!) proud of. But in early 2019, we began to come to terms with the systemic inequities that pervade the business world and the industries that we operate in. Beyond being a great place to work, we knew that ClearlyRated could be making an impact, both inside and outside of our organization, when it came to moving the needle on diversity, equity, and inclusion—and we knew that it was time to prioritize action.

Committees and Collaborative Efforts

Our DEI work began as, and continues to be managed as, a collaborative effort. At the outset of our DEI journey, we asked for ideas and feedback from anyone and everyone within the organization about how we might take our first steps towards developing a DEI initiative internally—and by the summer of 2019 we had 3 distinct committees, staffed by volunteers from across the organization, each targeting a specific opportunity that we saw as imperative and accessible to address and make progress with. That number has grown, and today ClearlyRated has 5 focused committees that are organizing and leading exciting initiatives to make progress on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion—both inside and outside of our organization.

  • Team Hire Better is a committee that is focused on improving ClearlyRated's hiring practices to make meaningful progress on our own diversity, equity, and inclusion goals. This committee works closely with hiring managers and leadership to examine and improve our recruiting, interviewing, and hiring practices to create the most equitable process possible.
  • The DEI Research Committee works closely with ClearlyRated's in-house market research team to build DEI questions and data points into our custom research projects. The goal of this committee is to build our understanding of the issues we face (and their scope) related to DEI, and to track trends so that we can be one more source of research-backed information on these top-of-mind issues with our clients and the industries that we serve.
  • The DEI External Awareness Committee takes those findings from the DEI Research Committee, and puts resources against making them available to the public and to the markets we serve. The goal of this committee is to ensure that every company that we interact with walks away with a new lens, a new data point, or a new understanding of the diversity, equity, and inclusion challenges that their business faces.
  • The Volunteer Committee organizes group volunteer outings to encourage ClearlyRated team members to get involved with a local initiative. The goal of this committee is to ensure that every single ClearlyRated employee utilizes their 18 hours of paid volunteer time per year to give back to their community in a meaningful way.
  • ClearlyRated for Good is a committee that organizes (and executes) a survey program for non-profits that provide services to underserved communities. These surveys are conducted free of charge, with the intention of improving the non-profit's ability to measure the effectiveness of the services they provide, and to provide them access to positive feedback in the form of testimonials and Shout Outs.
Progress We Are Proud Of

ClearlyRated was founded in 2003. We have a long history as an organization, but a relatively short history of prioritizing issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in our business goals. We are proud of the headway that we've made since focusing and prioritizing our efforts here, but we know that there is much more work ahead. Some of the progress that we've realized so far includes:

When it comes to DEI, we know that outcomes are important. But we also know that this road towards equity and inclusion for all people—regardless of their identity—does not end. We are committed to balancing these two realities, to acknowledging progress as it's made and continuing to train our sights on what's next, as we continue to grow and evolve as a business.

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The above are examples of a recent DEI training with Autentica Consulting. Autentica Consulting is a firm that specializes in transforming organizations by creating spaces for courageous conversations, drawing from lived experiences from each member of the organization, to build equitable, and inclusive workplaces with a sense of belongingness.

George Floyd, A Racial Justice Reckoning, and the City of Portland
Peaceful Protests in Portland, OR
Peaceful Protests in Portland, OR

We would be remiss to not share the impact that the summer of 2020 has had on our DEI efforts as an organization. While we were a year into this work when George Floyd was murdered on May 25th, 2020, the impact of that moment and the racial justice reckoning that rippled throughout the United States has been profound.

Never before had businesses been so clearly tasked with identifying our place in the ecosystem of anti-racism and anti-oppression. We witnessed (and many of our team participated) first-hand as residents in our city of Portland, Oregon engaged in weekly, even nightly events of political activism and protesting. This moment in time made it resoundingly clear that there is no neutral when it comes to anti-racism.

At ClearlyRated we are engaged at the company-level to explore and push our own boundaries of how we can show up and be a force for change in a white-dominant, systemically racist society. This of course starts from within, and as we continue on what what will be shared as a public adventure we must acknowledge that we will be challenged, we will stumble, and that it’s our job to stay engaged in these efforts for the long haul. We are committed to listening, to learning, to un-learning, to being uncomfortable, to being accountable, and to biasing towards action.

We will continue to update this page and share more information as we face new milestones and make progress in this endeavor. For now we simply want to clearly state: Black lives matter at ClearlyRated.