Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging
A Seat at the Table
As a company with "hospitality" in our name, we’ve long strived to make people feel valued and heard. Hospitality exists when people feel you are on their side, but it can only fully exist when all people feel like they belong. It takes an engaged culture of diversity and inclusion to ensure that all stakeholders feel like they have a seat at our table.
We have a lot of work to do and much more to learn, but with our collective commitment to make progress, we will more fully express and live our values:
- We commit to being actively anti-racist.
- We commit to increasing racial and gender representation in our leadership and ensuring pay equity across levels.
- We commit to being a welcoming and inclusive workplace without bias towards gender, race, sexuality, religion, political beliefs, age, abilities or disabilities, and socioeconomic status.
This work is an ongoing journey and we've taken the actions below as a starting point. We invite your thoughts and ideas to help create a dialogue.
Danny Meyer
Founder & CEO
Equity and Opportunity Within Our Company
Diversity within our organization, particularly throughout our leadership ranks, is critical to building an inclusive organization. Representation matters and we have set the organization-wide goals to reflect the diversity of our country. Each quarter we will update our progress below.
Gender | All USHG Goal: 50% Female 82% to Goal | Sr. Leadership Team Goal: 50% Female 134% to Goal | Operations Mgmt Goal: 50% Female 88% to Goal | Operations Hourly Goal: 50% Female 74% to Goal | Home Office Goal: 50% Female 104% to Goal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Racial | All USHG Goal: 60% BIPOC 113% to Goal | Sr. Leadership Team Goal: 60% BIPOC 33% to Goal | Operations Mgmt Goal: 60% BIPOC 83% to Goal | Operations Hourly Goal: 60% BIPOC 122% to Goal | Home Office Goal: 60% BIPOC 73% to Goal |
Continuous Learning and Development
We are committed to ongoing action to better understand systemic racism and bias — in our country, in our field, and within our own organization:
- We continue our partnership with DIBS expert Dr. James Pogue for ongoing assessment of our organization needs, annual DIBS training for all employees, quarterly DIBS and diversity highlight meetings, and an annual employee survey and company-wide compensation analysis.
- We developed and implemented an ongoing DIBS training for all employees, which highlights unconscious bias and the tenets of an anti-racism organization. It will be reviewed by all employees annually alongside quarterly town hall meetings and an annual employee survey.
- We have evaluated our internal policies and practices through a lens of diversity, inclusion, and belonging, including a policy review to eliminate inherent bias and the addition of Juneteenth to our holiday calendar.
- We completed a company-wide compensation analysis to ensure equity by gender, race, and ethnicity in our restaurants. When our team returns to its normal size, we will publish our pay equity analysis.
- We have implemented I-sight, an anonymous platform to report issues or provide feedback, in all our restaurants to provide enhanced reporting and accountability.
- We have removed all gender pronouns from job descriptions and added pronouns to our email signatures.
- We have given all employees paid time off to vote and/or volunteer at a polling location on election days.
- We have committed to further diversifying our Board of Directors.
Community Building
To truly make progress as a community, we ask each of the stakeholders we do business with to uphold our values on diversity, inclusion, and belonging. We are implementing new processes to measure racial and gender diversity in our suppliers so we can develop goals for improvement.
In addition, we have partnered with these organizations to develop opportunities for underserved communities:
When we re-opened in 2020, we donated our first week of revenue to these organizations, and raised over $100,000 in funds for them through an online auction:
USHG also supports these hunger relief initiatives and civic organizations:
In 2021, we donated over $120,000 to the following nonprofits addressing issues of racial injustice; food insecurity; homelessness and incarceration; LGBTQ+ rights; and community services for immigrants, refugees, and youth and families in need:
The steps above are our first in a lifelong journey to a more equitable society.