Racial Justice and Our Values: We Are A Mosaic

The killing of George Floyd in May has renewed focus on the struggle to overcome the long history of systemic racism and injustice in America. We stand with SEIA in the fight for racial justice, and stand beside our partners in the solar and home improvement industries in clearly stating: Black Lives Matter.

This has been a time of learning, as well as action, for us as individuals and for Mosaic as a company. As Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson writes in heartbreaking detail, racism derails the fight to stop climate change in so many ways. Racism is also antithetical to Mosaic’s mission of making clean energy more accessible and inclusive to achieve our vision of 100% clean energy for all.

One of the eight core values of our culture is We Are A Mosaic, which states:

These have always been more than just words on paper to us, and we put this value into action in several ways.

• Hiring: Mosaic has actively sought diverse candidates for roles, including work with organizations like DiversityJobs, InRoads, The Mom Project, and Hackbright to source applicants. We have also encouraged diverse candidates to be put forward in our employee referral program and structured our interview process to reduce unconscious bias. As a result, Mosaic’s staff is currently 42% BIPOC and 43% women.
• Salary and Benefits: To ensure that our BIPOC and women team members are paid equitably, Mosaic conducts regular salary equity audits and disparate impact analyses on salary increases and performance ratings. We also offer 14 weeks parental leave to both men and women on our staff, as part of a generous benefits package.
• Culture: To foster a sense of inclusion and community, we hold office celebrations honoring a diverse range of heritages throughout the year. We also encourage employees to organize their own office events, so they can share their authentic selves. In an anonymous engagement survey, Mosaic received a 74% favorability score on questions about inclusion – with no difference between scores from white and BIPOC employees or between men and women.

We are proud of the work we have done to try and build a company that not only celebrates diversity and inclusion but is diverse and inclusive. However, like most Americans, recent months have been an occasion for us to look in the mirror, when it comes to racial justice. We are asking ourselves what part we still play in systemic racism and what we can do to play a more constructive role in dismantling it.

This work, which is ongoing, has taken several forms:

• Stronger Diversity Goals: Mosaic has set new goals of reaching 50% BIPOC as well as 50% women on our team, with a timeline to be determined based on hiring needs.
• Juneteenth Celebration: This Juneteenth, employees were given time off to reflect and celebrate, as well as opportunities to participate in learning paths and group conversations about white privilege, unconscious bias, and how we can take action to advance racial justice as a company.
• Dialogue on Equity and Inclusion: We have also held a series of town hall conversations about the impacts of racial inequity, as well as discussions about how we can make Mosaic a more inclusive work environment.
• Local Action: We are identifying organizations working to advance social justice in Oakland and Phoenix, and we have encouraged team members to donate, volunteer, or take action in other ways that are meaningful to them in their communities. Currently, we are supporting The East Oakland Collective in Oakland and Black Family and Child Services in Phoenix.
• Energy Access: We are exploring how to more effectively leverage our core business of lending to make the benefits of clean energy more accessible to communities of color.

This post is our way of being transparent and accountable as we strive to do more to put Mosaic’s values into practice. Just as building a better, more sustainable world can begin at home, building a more diverse, inclusive, equitable, and racially just world begins within our own company – and it doesn’t end there.