How Multiverse uses Career Mobility as the foundation for DEI

We spoke with the People team at Multiverse, a company providing equitable access to economic opportunity for everyone. It is clear that they believe good hiring is diverse hiring. And that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives should neither start nor stop with recruitment.

Instead, Multiverse looks at DEI across the entire employee experience, from application and onboarding to performance and progression.

This all-encompassing approach has led to the development of the company’s Career Mobility Strategy. This is a DEI-centred approach to recruiting and developing talent, that also ensures people have the resources and support they need to succeed.

In this article, we look at this strategy, where it came from and how it enables Multiverse to support internal mobility and DEI across the business.

Why “Career mobility”?

Multiverse chose this approach because they wanted a strategy that helps every employee to mobilise their career. They didn’t want to launch initiatives that only worked for some people, but rather support their whole team to reach their full potential.

The mobility they want to encourage could be upwards or sideways, with an emphasis on internal movement between teams and roles. It is inevitable that business priorities change over time, but Multiverse doesn’t want that to come with losing exceptional talent. 

“We want people to have sustained careers at Multiverse… We don’t want to lose great talent. They were hired for a reason,” admits Freddie Pascoe, part of the People Team at Multiverse

The Framework

Career mobility at Multiverse is based on three pillars called Find, Grow and Thrive:

• Find looks at recruitment, including things like reaching underrepresented talent and ensuring fair assessments

• Grow covers the implementation of infrastructure to support career mobility within the organisation

• Thrive looks at transparency and building a sense of belonging for all employees

Defining and referencing these pillars allows Multiverse to build a cohesive system where people and teams know how their responsibilities and personal goals align with the wider strategy.

It has also allowed them to break down their roadmap into actionable changes that support each pillar. This way, everyone knows what their priorities are and which pillar they are contributing to.

However, this wasn’t always the case.

When scale gets in the way of a good plan

Because DEI is built into Multiverse’s mission, and they like to hire mission-aligned people, they were already aware of the basics of inclusion and its importance.

This meant that they did not have to deal with the usual steps of getting everyone on board. Instead they ran ahead with ambitious change programmes such as the Multiverse Leadership Accelerator to bring to life their mobility initiative

Although they had success with this, they realised that starting with such big projects meant they were trying to do things without the processes and infrastructure to support them.

People were working on different things in silos, rather than strategically. This led to a feeling across the board that - although they were doing great things - few felt a connection between the initiatives and the part they could play.

It was clear to the People team that they should refer back to, and re-align their efforts with, the Harvard Business Review’s maturation model for DEI, which they had heavily leaned into when setting up their People processes initially.

This is a five-stage model that looks at how companies can advance their DEI initiatives sustainably.

It became clear that the organisation skipped over the Tactical stage, and this is why their efforts didn’t feel integrated. And why team members felt disconnected.

Freddie suggests, “It was because we didn’t have that tactical phase ticked off. Which is why we’ve gone back and re-assessed what the tactical part of things looks like.”

Re-aligning their efforts

Realising this, Multiverse put in the work to develop and build the connective tissue that would support and drive their inclusive ambitions.

Focusing on internal mobility, they started to refine processes that would support this, such as equitable development plans, clear performance indicators and robust assessment criteria. This is what became the “Grow” pillar in their model.

Multiverse wanted to really prioritise making these changes. So they did just that. The very first meeting of the year was used to align on the Career Mobility Strategy and the new model. This resulted in an ambitious roadmap the company can use to get from where they are to where they want to be. Freddie adds, “It’s great we know what the utopian view looks like, but we can’t rush ahead.”

Feedback for the future

Though it's early days for the new Career Mobility Strategy at Multiverse, the team is committed to making this strategy work. One thing they were missing was a strong feedback loop. They have been working to be transparent and include everyone in the process so they have a better chance to generate the insights they need.

One example of this is the launch of monthly CEO Roundtables where a randomly selected group sits in a room with the CEO and gives direct feedback surrounding DEI, ways of working and internal communications.

They have also been proactively getting upper management involved through “Listening Tours”. This is where a member of the C-suite listens and discusses a range of issues and themes with the intention to understand how different groups within the business feel about decisions and communications.

Both of these moves showcase the intentionality with which Multiverse is now enacting its strategy, as opposed to before they invested the time to develop the Find, Grow, Thrive model.

Freddie admits, “It's an important case study for a rapidly growing business… There’s obviously lessons to be learned but that’s the benefit of hindsight.”

Now, the company is moving ahead with the roadmap for the year. It has been transparent with plans internally, both to inform team members and to create accountability. 

The team is excited to move forward with intention, with a number of initiatives looking at broadening accessibility to internal career mobility. 

Once it has built this foundation of equity and inclusion across the business, Multiverse will be in a great position to re-investigate other ambitious DEI goals.

Want to learn more about DEI in hiring?

Multiverse’s diversity, equity and inclusion goals are a large part of their hiring ethos. And the team are great at bringing their culture to life on Welcome to the Jungle. 

We have cultivated a diverse community of mission-driven candidates who are looking to build their careers. And we make sure that people from underrepresented backgrounds are empowered to apply to the roles they are matched with.

If you want to read more about DEI in hiring, or find out how our platform and analytics can support you, learn more about DEI on Welcome to the Jungle.