It is part of our DNA as a company that we strive to do the right thing in every area of business, from the way that we design and make our products to the way that we treat our customers, our team and our suppliers. As a small company, many of our systems and processes are informal but we are in the process of putting in place a comprehensive ethics and values policy, in consultation with our entire team.
We recognise that many people are interested to know whether our ethics and values reflect their own and we have recently had a number of questions which I will address in this blog. We are very open to suggestions about how we can keep working in this area so feel free to email me with any suggestions or further questions.
DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION
WHO IS IN THE EVOLVE TEAM?
We have an amazing team of 30 talented people from many different backgrounds and cultures around the world. We currently employ people from 9 different countries as well as people from different ethnicities, different ages and different lifestyles and beliefs.
We are still quite a small company and we recruit locally from the Hertfordshire area so our ethnicity mix reflects the local demographic mix. Although our organisation has a very flat structure with few senior roles, we do have people from ethnic minority backgrounds in team management roles.
OUR INTERNAL PROCESSES
We strongly believe that people should be recruited, treated and rewarded because of who they are and not because they look or act a certain way. We are building a team of amazing, talented and committed people.
We strive to recruit purely based on candidates' fitness for the job we are recruiting for. We are looking for ways to make this process completely blinded so there is no possibility of any selection bias based on unconscious prejudices.
Our comprehensive review process clearly sets out the criteria for success in each role in our company. Candidates are objectively measured against these criteria in their quarterly reviews.
Our company handbook clearly sets out our expectations about how people should treat each other in our company. We want everyone to treat each other with respect for individual differences. Our culture is friendly and inclusive and we value both individual contributions and team interactions.
OUR EXTERNAL CONTRIBUTION
As a company that creates products and media content, we are also responsible for ensuring that what we create helps to contribute to a diverse and inclusive environment for everyone. With their gender neutral packaging, our products are suitable for all gender orientations, all ethnicities and all skin and hair types. Our range is still quite limited in some areas though which is due to our size.
We do not produce makeup but we do have one tinted product: the Climate Veil SPF20. This product was originally launched in just 1 medium, very sheer shade, which suits 80% of skin types. It does not suit very light or medium to deep skin tones and the reason we didn’t originally launch a wider range of shades was that it was our first tinted product and we did the colour matching in house, a process that we found incredibly difficult. We are currently working with an external chemist to expand the shade range so that we can offer a more diverse range of tinted products which will be suitable for everyone.
We have a limited range of hair care products which are suitable for normal to dry hair. We are working to expand this range to a wider number of shampoos and conditioners as well as hair treatments. Some of our balms and oils such as the satin body gloss and the tropical blossom body butter can also be used in very dry or fragile hair and our nourishing hair elixir can be used as a beard oil.
In the external content we create for our website and on our social media channels, we are careful to include a diverse range of skin tones, although our content is mostly based around images of our products. When we work with social media influencers, we operate on a gifting basis with influencers who get in touch via our social channels or on our website rather than running paid social campaigns so we are partly dependent on the influencers’ desire to work with us. We have worked with influencers from a diverse range of ethnicities but we would love to work with a higher proportion of Black and POC influencers so please reach out and let us know if you would like to work with us!
In terms of our charitable donations, we are a company focusing on beauty and wellness and our donation strategy reflects that. We have recently donated over £34K to the NHS and key workers in terms of both money and products. We have made smaller donations to support other causes such as to promote diversity and inclusion as well as supporting local community initiatives when we are approached to do so. Of course we also hope that our core products are working to make this world a better place because they give people a green, clean alternative to mainstream cosmetics.
All the best,
