In Conversation with Tom Staff: On Diversity and Inclusion at Street Group

A couple of weeks ago, our D&I Manager, Tzeitel Degiovanni, had the pleasure of interviewing Tom Staff - Co-Founder of Manchester-based PropTech company Street Group. Tzeitel and Tom spoke about what Street Group, as a tech start-up, is doing to address inequalities in the workplace and why it is so important to them to embed diversity, inclusion, and accountability in their culture rather than in performative exercises. Read on to meet Tom and learn more about Street Group...

Hi Tom! Please introduce yourself and tell us a little about Street Group's D&I

Hi there, I'm Tom, one of the co-founders of Street Group. I run the company with my sister, so both of us are shareholders and co-founders. Consistently, we have been very intentional regarding the diverse composition of the team; however, just recently, we've recruited Johnny to one of our talent departments, and now we've had two dedicated stars in that one since it's fantastic. We've also told them to focus on the growth and diversity of the workforce.

That’s awesome, especially to hear how you are growing your team and expanding this year; congrats!

Your website says Street Group believes in leading through innovation, reflected in your people, their talents, and how you develop technology. This is a great ethos and a fantastic way to lead, especially in tech. Has there ever been a time, in Street Group or otherwise, when someone on your team has come up with an idea, a solution, or developed something informed by their specific background or lived experience, and it was something that you probably never would have thought of?

I can't think of a particular, singular example that springs to mind, but we've consistently hired talent first and 'industry' experience second. And that's naturally led to us having quite a diverse team. The first person we hired into our sales team was a historian and a history podcaster with absolutely zero sales experience. And he has been an exceptional asset to the team. But yeah, he comes with a different point of view, and we've got people on the team like him who come from a historical background. Then, when we hire into the engineering department, we have a real mix of people who come from huge companies, small companies, start-ups, or people who have never worked anywhere before. Having diverse professional backgrounds lends itself to creating a diverse group of people, as no one has to fit any cookie-cutter mode, which often writes people off at the door. They approach problems very differently, so we tend to get a lot of different inputs from various backgrounds, creating not just fantastic company output but also a great environment in which to work.

You're right in that. So much of where we're going wrong in recruitment is looking for this kind of tick-box, cookie-cutter ideas of what we want instead of opening that out. Bringing in those transferable skills and diverse backgrounds brings such a rich perspective.

Yeah, I've done quite a lot of reading over the years about building teams and diversity, and I think a lot of people see diversity as an external signal that, you know, it's good to have diversity because people externally looking in will judge you based on that diversity. But what many people miss, which is why we've always emphasised, is the intrinsic value of diversity within your team. And so, the famous example, which you will probably know, is the experiment with the Japanese and American teams looking at fish in reverse.

They had a challenge: watching this video of fish in a river. And then you'll be shown the same video, but things have changed, and you have forgotten what has changed. The American teams would always identify if there had been a change in the object (i.e., the fishes) within the video. In contrast, the Japanese teams would always get it right and identify a change in the environment.  So, if you took a team of both and mixed them, they would outperform the more homogenous teams. So that's the example I always point to when I'm trying to explain why we, as a company, emphasise diversity and just being the right thing to do. It's not a virtue-signaling exercise; it is intrinsically valuable, which I think many people don't get.

This might be tricky as I know you are still growing the company, but I wanted to ask whether you guys have a trans policy or whether you're looking to implement one for any trans or nonbinary stuff in the future or ones that you may currently have.

That's an excellent question. With the size of our company, we're light on official policies across the board, and putting in place more formal policies is something that we're doing at the moment. Currently, we don't have any trans or non-binary team members. But interestingly, I was at a Diversity and Inclusion Conference recently. They said getting these policies in place before interviewing someone is essential because you might make all this effort to attract diverse talent. Still, if you've not prepped your internal team and haven't got policies in place, they won't want to work for you and will feel poorly coming away from that experience. For example - if a candidate asked, "What is your policy on non-binary and gender-neutral bathrooms?" would the interviewer be able to answer that question? I was thinking, even though we have a very diverse, liberal team, would every one of our interviewers be able to answer that question? Well, I thought, no, they definitely wouldn't. So it's something that we're putting in place and actively doing at the moment. It's an eye-opener, and we're constantly learning, which is why these D&I conferences are great.

You mentioned tech returners, which is fantastic. But tell me what other things Street Group is doing besides using DJM internally to address diversity and inclusion challenges and what has happened over the past year.

Yeah, the first thing to note is that we're at the 50-employee mark at the moment, and we're increasing. So, we want to ensure that we're building in diversity from the ground up rather than trying to retrospectively add it into the company, which is highly problematic and very difficult. So we've always set out to do the right thing from the off. We have great diversity within our team, other than female representation on the engineering side, which I mentioned earlier. But we want to make sure that we're putting an active effort into ensuring that diversity continues and grows.

We have great tech returners but want to be visible in the community as an inclusive company. There's no point in having initiatives going when no one knows and, therefore, can't participate. So we have, just by accident, really, quite a large gay contingent in our company – many members of the LGBT+ community. So we're looking at getting a float this year in pride.

I'm looking forward to that. If pride is on this year, I'm hoping it is. But a lot of it is setting our culture internally, then making that visible externally, and making sure that from the outside looking in, diverse candidates can see quite clearly that we are an inclusive company and will be an excellent workplace.

One of the significant things that we've done is recruit the talent team. So obviously, with Heather and me's background, D&I has always been a focus. And so when we were bringing Laura in, our Head of Talent, one of our number one requirements was that we wanted somebody as passionate about D&I as we were. It was a weird thing, bringing on a Head of Talent because you're kind of passing on that responsibility of growing your team and culture to someone else, and that's difficult, especially when you're so protective of that inclusive culture like we are. We wanted to make sure we were finding the right person. And we've continued with that, so every person we bring into our talent team, like Jonny, it's pretty much a prerequisite that they're passionate about D&I. Hopefully, that will mean that it organically becomes an ingrained value in the company.

What are your feelings about doing this work and taking on that responsibility?

I immensely enjoy it. I want the challenge of making the work environment as inclusive as possible. The last year has been challenging and punishing while trying to do everything remotely. But if I look at the absolute highlights of the year, what picks me up is hearing from the team that they love working for Street Group - I know it sounds cheesy as anything, but it makes it worth it. We have a culture of 'default to open'; I'm curious if you've ever encountered this. Most companies will operate on the basis that if a piece of information comes in at the top, they will think, "Do the te,amDoeed to know this?" whereas 'default to open' is flipping that on its head. So, by default, you share anything that comes in - any piece of information - with the team. That's the default unless there's a good reason not to. So we enacted this from day one and have continuously operated like that. It's easy to do when things are going well, but it's much more difficult if there's a problem and you must share bad news.

But the idea is to try and almost back yourself into a corner where you've set up your company so that you will be forced to adhere to these values later. One of the things we do is that every Friday, the team can use a system called Slido to ask us anonymous questions that we will then answer to the whole team. And it puts that pressure on you because you know there will come times further down the line when commercial stuff directly conflicts with cultural things. And there will always be a temptation to go with the commercial pressures. Whereas if you set up this type of system if we ever start doing stuff like that, then people can call us out on it in front of the whole team, and we will have to answer that. Which is significant from a company corps point of view.

But back to the original question you asked, some of the best moments I've had over the last year were when people have used that system to anonymously say how happy they are with what we've done. For example, one of the things that we've implemented is Sanctus, who is a mental health coach for the team. So we have a dedicated mental health coach who comes in once a month; anybody can book in with them. And I've had loads of anonymous messages because it's completely anonymous. I don't know who is using the mental health service – saying it's been beneficial and telling me that, you know, they were struggling, and I've got no idea how much of a difference it's made to them. So, creating a suitable environment for people is genuinely one of the most fulfilling parts of running a company.

That's amazing - and you'll be held accountable because you've made yourself accountable, which is so important. But then you also see when people are happy because of the environment you are fostering. That's brilliant, Tom; thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me!