As we publish our third Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) report, we are kicking off a series that dives deeper into the commitments and initiatives we’re building to make Komodo Health™ an exemplar of the values we embrace.

Our mission to reduce the burden of disease is purposefully broad and inherently inclusive. Disease doesn’t discriminate. Just as we cannot begin to close gaps in care without examining the data behind those disparities, we cannot succeed in our mission to build a great company unless we examine our own metrics and provide an environment where our Dragons can do their best work, celebrate diverse perspectives, and bring our values to life. 

On the whole, the tech industry workforce sorely lacks diversity. Through concerted efforts, workforce composition has improved in the industry, but racial disparities and gender gaps still exist, particularly in leadership roles. Discrimination is widespread, and people of different backgrounds experience the workplace quite differently, which heavily influences their sense of belonging. The disparate impact of COVID-19 and recent racially motivated hate crimes bring the impacts of systemic racial disparities into even sharper focus. Given these industry-wide trends, we knew we needed to focus deliberately on creating and maintaining a diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture at Komodo Health.

DEI had always been a priority for the company, and in 2020, we completed our first DEI report, which established a baseline for what we wanted to measure and achieve, and how we would hold ourselves accountable in our efforts to reach those goals. The results of our report highlighted our spirit of growth and self-reflection but also acknowledged that, as a company and as a community, we still had work to do. 

With help from many of our Dragons and leaders across the company, multiple workstreams drove significant progress in our focus areas. In our 2021 DEI report, we reported marked improvements in pay parity, a positive response to reframing our job descriptions that attracted a more diverse applicant pool, robust career development opportunities, and new programs to ensure all Dragons feel like they belong at Komodo Health.

Over the last year, we reflected on how we can reaffirm our core values and deepen our commitment to working in ways that cultivate and celebrate diversity and inclusion. In our 2022 DEI report, we examined data across three themes: workforce and candidate representation, parity, and inclusion. We reflected on what we achieved in 2021, the gaps that persist, and the key priorities that will guide our ongoing commitment to making Komodo Health a workplace where people of all backgrounds can thrive.

What we learned

Diversity 
Increasing representation is our biggest challenge. We are often asked about our workforce representation goals. We find ourselves thinking about it the same way we approach healthcare’s biggest challenges: by transforming data into insights, and using those insights to build actionable strategies that take significant, measurable steps toward achieving a goal. Representation isn’t just quantifying where we are today, it’s creating the roadmap for where we want to be tomorrow. For Komodo, that’s a company consisting of Dragons at all levels who are as diverse as the populations we serve. While our DEI representation at Komodo Health is in line with, if not better than, other companies across the technology industry, our overall numbers of women and people of color decreased over the past year. This decrease was most notable in female tech leaders and Black and Hispanic/Latinx employees. While the percentage of female leaders in tech at Komodo is higher than 2019 pre-pandemic levels, we saw a decline in 2021 compared to gains achieved in 2020.  

Parity
We achieved pay parity in aggregate across all roles and teams at Komodo. Pay parity, or a measurement of identity-based pay gaps, is a foundational aspect of organizational inclusion, offering a clear way to demonstrate that we equally value the work and impact of each individual at Komodo Health. Over the past two years, we have made a conscious effort to address gender-based pay gaps and potential biases in our compensation processes. This began with a thorough evaluation of every individual’s role to ensure the work they were doing was reflected in their title and level and resulted in establishing a semi-annual Compensation Review process. This past year, we reached dollar-for-dollar parity across genders at Komodo Health overall. Parity is consistent on average across entry, mid-senior, and leadership levels, and within technical and non-technical roles. 

Growth and Career Opportunities
We continued investment in internal career development. In 2021, we established Komodo Health’s first Learning and Development (L&D) team and began to build formal training for first-time managers. We also strengthened our performance processes, building frameworks to drive consistency and mitigate bias in career and promotion decisions. We are starting to see results from these initiatives, including a record number of internal promotions. More than 20% of Dragons of color and 17% of women at Komodo received a promotion last year. We attribute these high promotion rates to multiple factors, including standardization and consistency in our performance, promotion, and retention processes.

Belonging
We maintained strong Belonging scores amid a year spent transitioning to hybrid work. As we began hiring more hybrid and remote team members in 2021, we risked losing the strong sense of belonging and community that Komodo had built in the past, anchored to office hubs. To counter this, we intentionally invested in the Dragon Experience through virtual and in-person events, support and expansion of our Affinity Groups, and even our first in-person, company-wide off-site in over two years, Komodo Week. In 2021, we saw consistently high belonging scores across Komodo, whether Dragons were based in hubs or remotely. Also important, we saw a nearly 10% increase in belonging scores for non-binary Dragons and were able to measure belonging across race/ethnicity for the first time, seeing only slight variances across racial identities.

Where do we go from here?
Creating a diverse and inclusive company is integral to our culture and business success. We remain committed to identifying tangible ways to make Komodo Health a more equitable place, and we know we make tremendous progress when all Dragons participate. With that in mind, and reflecting on our data, we’ve made some ambitious commitments to DEI at Komodo in 2022:

• Increase racial and gender representation across Komodo, with a specific focus on Black, Hispanic/Latinx, and women at all levels, and women in tech leadership roles. 
• Close gaps in belonging across racial identity while improving belonging scores company-wide.
• Expand our data measurement capabilities to be able to assess and report on more dimensions of identity. 

Diversity, equity, and inclusion are essential to our culture, our talent, and our ability to succeed and are emblematic of who we are as a company. The goals we’ve set forward reflect areas where we have measurable opportunities to create a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable environment. As a growing company with strong public health consciousness, we continue to seek ways to improve DEI, and our shared commitments are an important step in our journey to ensure Komodo Health is an organization where Dragons of all backgrounds can thrive. Our colleagues bring diversity in perspectives, backgrounds, education, and experiences, and we are incredibly fortunate to work alongside a team unified in achieving a singular goal: to reduce the burden of disease.

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