Equity Plan

Trillium’s mission is to make transit easier to use. This is our plan to pursue that mission in a way that has equitable outcomes.

Principles

• Data is political and should be approached with clear, good politics:
  • Equity must be fostered through centering disadvantaged stakeholders at each opportunity
  • Public health before private wealth
  • Environmental sustainability supports future equity and health
• Every consulting and design project is about planning how to allocate scarce resources equitably.
• Measure the magnitude and equity of impact of our work through many different metrics, and report on that work for accountability but not for promotion.
• Creating and maintaining an equitable and inclusive workplace is a necessary component of any external work.
• We need to recognize when we are not the best suited to doing certain equity work and that often there are more qualified folks already doing that work. In these cases we need to seek out these folks and compensate them for the help they give us.

Commitments

By September 30, 2020

• Give more to charities and institute an employer match program. Define a long-term company giving approach correlated with revenues and/or profits.
  • 11/5/20 – Budget of 0.5% of previous years’ revenue will be contributed this year and next, split between employee-match-based contributions provided through payroll and contributions to 3-5 organizations per year targeted at events that provide for staff community engagement activities.
• Define a program and develop resources to encourage staff participation in training opportunities related to issues of equity.
  • 10/2/20 – Page with resources posted in Operations Manual. Employee expectation of 2/hours per quarter paid-time reviewing resources individually or in groups.
• Every project [Note for non-Trillium readers: this is a technical term in our business processes, meaning a custom deliverable as opposed to a “product” that has a defined deliverable regardless of who buys that product] to which we will dedicate over 16 hours will require a written equity justification. This will be some amount of text, scalable to the size of the project, that explains how the project supports our equity principles. They’ll be logged within our project tracking system for historical review and evaluation.
  • 12/8/20 – Two equity justifications for projects we’ve initiated now exist on a running Google doc.
  • 2/1/21 – Monthly reviews have begun.
• Greatly reduce company plane travel permanently, and establish parameters for reasonable plane usage prior to restarting routine site visits or local conference attendance. Purchase carbon offsets for all future plane travel.
  • 5/1/21 – No plane travel since March of 2020.
• All projects over 16 hours will have a 15-60 minute meeting with the PM, COO and other staff (at their discretion) dedicated to reflect on project impacts and lessons at conclusion
  • 12/8/20 – We’ve now had 5 of these meetings, all of which have a record tracking the outcomes of the conversations. Managers and staff members have found these valuable and they’ve served the specific purpose of providing a structured and safe way for junior staff to provide constructive criticism to project managers.
• Provide support and training to management on working with different communication styles.
  • 10/2/20 – First initiative has been to collect references for coaching services for executive staff. Additional services for other managers and staff to be planned in future.
  • 12/8/20 – We’ve not successfully hired a contractor for a management workshop that we investigated in November. We’re still trying to find the right team and pricing model that fits our needs and budget.
• Create an internal tracking list for DBEs/Minority-owned businesses. Begin defining criteria and adding to the list with the goal of transferring all possible company purchases to these vendors by the end of 2020.
  • 12/4/20 – List continues to expand, especially as we make holiday gift purchases. 🙂

By December 31, 2020

• Every project over 16 hours will have at least 5% of its budget allocated directly towards user engagement or creating features that clearly support more equitable outcomes. These allocations will be accounted for and explained in the equity justification of the project.
  • 1/1/21 – Document tracking justifications is internally available to all staff. Justifications are to be integrated as part of project kickoff and close processes.
• Define multiple “key equity indicators” for our work, our baseline on those metrics, and our tracking process
  • 12/4/20 – List of indicators partially compiled.
• Establish new pay transparency parameters, including published salary ranges for all job titles
  • 12/4/20 – Internal documentation in draft for all salary ranges, as well as reasons for hiring rates within those ranges.
• Formalize reporting process for grievances, within the company and through a third party if preferred
  • 1/1/21 – Grievance process updated within internal documentation.
• Begin flagging all non-DBE/non-Minority-owned business purchases in our financial records for our advisory board

By end of Q2 2021

• Host intern from Emerging Leaders or a similar program
  • 12/4/20 – MoU signed with Emerging Leaders.
• Create system for more consistent employee appreciation/sharing of positive feedback
  • 2/1/21 – Employee feedback form has been created and is integrated into our team meeting structure.
• Define an internal user interface design process that explicitly and consistently centers disadvantaged user experiences and use cases
  • First user facing survey scheduled to be deployed in June 2021.
• Increase PTO for all staff to 60 hours per quarter at full-time rate
  • This increase effective as of 4/1/21.
• Identify which additional employee benefit would be most supportive to add by end of Q2 2022
  • Employee survey delivered in April 2021 to identify areas of need.
• Provide better user facing documentation for our open source tools, define our support terms for open source code we publish, and our budget (cash and labor) for engagement with open source projects we leverage in our work.
• Institute relationships and processes to more regularly engage users in our work, and develop a process to identify GTFS data extensions desired by those users to bring to the GTFS and other data standards communities

By end of Q4 2021

• Develop a tool or partner with another company to provide GTFS-Pathways accessibility data to all agencies for which we maintain GTFS data
• Perform a detailed accessibility review of all websites we manage and provide for improvements wherever feasible

By end of Q2 2022

• Move all staff positions to a 36 or fewer hour work week
• Create a system for employee reviews and raises that accounts for and reduces the possibility of implicit bias and increases transparency in the review process.
• Contribute to the national dialogue regarding the use of GTFS data to improve Title VI analyses
• Develop a social media and blog communications program that centers equity concerns in a rural/full network context, with the targeted aim of making “anti-racist, anti-oppression, rural transit twitter” a thing. (Hat tip and recognition to those who were there before us like @pnwtransitdaddy)
• Pay for or lead a white paper writing and research project on the equity impacts of operational, reporting, and public information technologies in public transportation
• Begin publishing and call for adoption of a GTFS-Eligibilities specification
• Support the publishing and maintenance of an affordable open source booking application for small demand-responsive providers, or work with a partner to offer such an application