Tegus

Our DEI Vision:

Our DEI Vision is that Tegus will be demographically representative of the city of Chicago by 2025. In order to achieve this lofty ambition, we created interim goals to keep us accountable and help measure our progress as a company. 

Our Action Plan & Goals:

During the summer of 2020, twenty colleagues (25% of the company at the time) participated in a 10-week working group to develop long-term goals around diversity, equity, and inclusion for Tegus that we will track and report on annually. The following initiatives were approved by leadership and rolled out to the company in October 2020:

• All Tegus employees understand the why of and how to support diversity, equity and inclusion efforts across the organization
• Everyone at Tegus feels welcomed, valued, and comfortable sharing their full identities
• All employees are aware of potential career paths and opportunities for growth and promotion that exist at Tegus and what it takes to achieve them
• We strive to have 30% of staff who are members of underrepresented groups in tech.

Additionally, we made a commitment around compensation and pay parity: 

Employees are treated equally in their opportunities for compensation and promotion -- while each department may have some individual needs, the philosophy and standards around compensation and promotions we uphold are applied equally across all employees. Tegus will conduct an annual audit of pay and promotions across all roles, and commit to adjusting for any unexplained statistically significant gaps in compensation for the same role, level, tenure at Tegus, and performance. The results of the annual audit and subsequent actions will be shared in an annual report.

Community Partnerships: 

• Braven: Braven is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to empower underrepresented college students to transition from college to strong first jobs, and seeks to close this talent gap by partnering with colleges and companies to equip underrepresented young people with the skills, networks, and experiences they need to succeed professionally. Tegus employees have the opportunity to volunteer as mock interviewers, Leadership Coaches, or Professional Mentors to first-generation or low-income college students to provide guidance in their job search and application process. In our first year, we had 22 employees volunteer with this organization!
• Asian American’s Advancing Justice: Asian Americans Advancing Justice | Chicago builds power through collective advocacy and organizing to achieve racial equity. In 2021 we partnered with AAAJ to offer bystander intervention training to Tegus employees. Nearly half of Tegus’ employees participated in this interactive training.
• As part of our business, we offer contracted experts the opportunity to donate a portion of their honorarium to a non-profit organization selected by Tegus employees. In 2020 we donated over $20,000 to Black Lives Matter, Greater Chicago Food Depository, and American Red Cross. As of June 2021, we’ve donated over $19,000 to Equal Justice Initiative and Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Chicago.

Learning & Development Programs:

Tegus facilitates training to support the development of our employees throughout their careers. 

• Week-long, company-wide onboarding for all new hires, conducted the first full week of every month
• Manager trainings on hiring, performance management, navigating difficult conversations, and more
• Anti-harassment training through Ethena
• Quarterly DEI training