Diversity Mindset

e.l.f. Beauty is one of the most diverse companies out there, public companies. Can you give us an idea of just how diverse?

Sure. So, we take great pride in our diversity, over 75% of our workforce are women, over 60% are Millennial or Gen Z, and almost half the company is diverse, and that's our entire employee base, and it also extends to the board level. We are one of only nine public companies in the US out of almost 4800 that have 67% or more women on their board, and it makes an incredible difference in terms of our perspectives and our results.

That's wonderful, and I think diversity is definitely a strength. I'm wondering though, are there times when it comes to the challenges, because you have to get so many people from different backgrounds, different perspectives to work well together and people who are from different backgrounds often relate to each other in different ways, so how do you deal with that?

Well, we use a framework at e.l.f. on high-performance teamwork and there are really three components of this framework. First and foremost is establishing these passionate relationships, so we spend a great deal of time on the onboarding process and throughout one's journey at e.l.f., really making sure you get to know your colleagues really well, and it's beyond just knowing their backgrounds that it goes down to what their preferences are. Everyone gets a Myers-Briggs test, you can understand each other, better understand each other's preferences, and then really, that leads to the second thing: the better you know people, the more comfortable you are with healthy conflict, be able to get really candid feedback in the spirit of helping the team succeed, and that in turn is the third aspect which is mutual accountability. So, even though people are quite different, there is this great sense of we're in it together as one team and be able to support each other, including their different points of view and different backgrounds.