Hello! 
One of the things I love about this community is how passionate and curious everyone is and that respectful and genuine intent discussions can take place. But I want to highlight the risk that this thread could derail into a discussion that doesn’t help enhance understanding or bring new ideas.
If we take a step back to think: what is all of this for? All of this is to ensure that we are able to attract and engage the best people in order to create products that our customers will love. This means better outcomes for our customers and ultimately better business outcomes for Monzo.
As I said in an earlier message, there are multiple studies that show diverse teams are more high performing teams. So, we use data points like census data to understand whether we do have a diverse team for the areas we live and work in and the industry we’re a part of. We use this as a benchmark, not a rule. We use diversity data to understand who is applying for our roles. And if people aren’t, we try to understand why and make our roles and ways of working more attractive.
While we may introduce something with a specific group in mind, it’s rare that these actions don’t benefit everyone at Monzo e.g recently we enhanced our caregiver leave to better serve different groups of people.
All this means we’re able to cast the widest possible net to be able to have our pick of the best people available at any one time.
This is why I think the line of questioning may not be productive as our approach isn’t ‘hit this % and maintain it at all costs’. Instead, we’re trying to do different things to understand: how do you create a safe, inclusive work environment that attracts people from all walks of life and keeps them engaged and motivated?
We believe any actions that make Monzo a more safe, inclusive and engaging place benefit everyone. So while there may be focus at the moment on women in tech, for example, because we know there are many barriers to entry and there is a role we can play in solving those - the number isn’t the goal, the environment is.
It’s common for people to tell us that part of the reason they apply for roles at Monzo is our commitment to D&I which means that in some cases, people who otherwise might not feel included elsewhere may choose Monzo over other places. We always hire the person who is best for the role so the representation data wouldn’t change our hiring decisions, but if we saw that different groups (like men or white people or neurotypical people) were no longer applying or staying at Monzo this is something we would look at and address. But to date that’s not something we’ve seen.
Apologies for the long answer but hopefully that answers the question!
