Redbubble Reviews

From Martin Hosking, Redbubble's Founder and CEO You have raised an important issue that Redbubble, along with many other technology companies, is dealing with, that of inclusiveness and diversity. I want to emphasise that we consider that promoting diversity and inclusiveness is not only fundamentally aligned to our values but is a key to success. We recognise that the inclusive environment we aspire to has not yet been realised. While progress has been made in key areas that we have focussed on including gender diversity in the engineering team and in leadership roles, clearly we still have more work to do. We are committed to learning from our mistakes, embracing feedback and improving. What we need to do now is to double-down on living up to our ideals and aspirations. We have important things to do in hiring and leadership development that we remain committed to. We need to understand more about the challenges people are facing at Redbubble. I appreciate your commentary about the email. As you note the email was tongue in cheek but it lacked the kind of compassion that I seek to role model. I accept accountability for the impact and I have unreservedly apologised for the hurt these words caused. We want to see an environment at Redbubble that is genuinely inclusive. We see this as an opportunity to realise our aspirations and I want to underscore our commitment to the journey. Martin

On behalf of Vanessa Freeman, Chief People & Culture Officer: Thanks for recognizing all the great things we too love most about our mission to help artists thrive. We endeavour to support our people to thrive too and believe that is reflected in the great talent we are able to attract. We are also deeply committed to having a compassionate conversation with all team members about their strengths and what skills we would like to help them to develop. While we recognise that this candid guidance may at times be uncomfortable, we believe it is our obligation to set our people up for success. The scale of our recent growth means that there have been and will continue to be opportunities for Bubblers to take on new activities and expanded roles. We are each accountable for our own success -- asking for help, stating intentions and partnering to create opportunities. And those opportunities can come in many shades and patterns. Special projects, committees, new roles, new teams... It is all in finding that magical space where your talents and business need/opportunity meet for biggest impact. While your rating and comments are an outlier to what we typically receive, we take what you have said as an indication of poor communication on our part regarding that space we believe we have created. Each day we look for the most creative, accountable way to do business, providing new opportunities for individuals to stretch their capacity by building upon their strengths. As organizations endure, it's imperative they consider evolving the ways in which they develop their people. We believe wholeheartedly, backed by data (and the feeling in each of our offices), that we are one of these forward-thinking organizations. We take action to create solutions to the challenges created by rapid growth. One solution we are most excited about? A formal coaching and development program launching that includes a structured and compassionately candid approach to guidance and career planning. This coupled with the release of a new learning management platform that puts our team members in the driver’s seat. These two key initiatives, incorporated effectively, will continue to build upon our core values and help us achieve even more impressive levels of engagement, entertaining all points of view along the way. We acknowledge that the dynamic nature of our marketplace model coupled with our growth aspirations means that occasionally the needs of the business change and the focus of particular teams will shift. This can result in us evolving how teams are composed, what new roles we add, and sometimes which roles are no longer required. We endeavour to always be candid and direct about these shifts and to be accountable for our decisions. We also strive to have the courage to identify when a team member’s strengths would be better utilised outside of Redbubble and to assist people to transition to roles they are better suited to. We are conscious of the perceived impact these changes can have on the team and work hard to communicate them in ways that are consistent with our values to strengthen our culture. -V