Vessy Tasheva, Founder & CEOHow does Vessy.com enable its clients to successfully implement Diversity and Inclusion?
One of the most critical and distinguishing factors pertaining to our strategy is our holistic approach. Considering our customers’ business model, values, and objectives, we help them see D&I as an investment rather than an employee-related cost. Vessy.com embodies a global perspective and serves companies internationally. Our team is currently of ten working remotely from North & South America, Europe, and Africa. We practice what we preach - our own internal processes and principles are mirroring the ones we practice with our clients. Each of our team members has a unique competency, and this allows us to genuinely understand the problems faced by both leaders and employees to provide solutions to our clients.
What are the challenges faced by your clients in achieving outstanding levels of diversity and inclusion?
A prevalent example of difficulty encountered by some companies is the usage of non-inclusive language. Others have struggles regarding company culture, where employees have polarised views. A serious issue is around the leaders’ authenticity in their commitment to D&I. This predicament occurs due to a lack of self-awareness among leaders, which hinders their intentions of first being honest with themselves. We are in the process of adding a member to the team whose very expertise over the last decade has been transparency and accountability to give them a structured and actionable framework to work on these. Our D&I implementation strategies already take into account our client’s OKRs to ensure that we drive measurable results for D&I. We approach each problem scientifically; we assess the current blockers to Inclusion and then set clear objectives and key results in their D&I strategy.
What are the most effective practices you employ to bring about the necessary changes required for diversity and inclusion?
We start by taking into consideration what our client’s values are. We use them to introduce D&I and the various D&I areas so that people can genuinely relate to concepts, such as belonging and empathy. Doing so, we discover and evaluate how D&I could be embedded in the company’s mission and linked to already existing values.
That’s just the starting point. We do employee surveys, and interviews that are entirely anonymous and identifiable information is removed from them. Based on those, we create a State of Inclusion report that gives our clients a clear sense of the ground reality of what blockers to inclusion they experience, and we create a D&I strategy or program that’s a direct response to that.
We take into account every critical aspect of our client’s operations and design a programme that helps them sustain D&I in their daily lives while supporting their company’s growth
Could you share with us a customer success story that demonstrates how Vessy.com helps brands implement D&I efficiently?
We have a long-term partnership and deep commitment with Reward Gateway—a London-based provider of employee engagement solutions that have employees and clients spread across the globe. The client wanted us to focus on one of their offices to evaluate their current state of inclusion, build D&I awareness, and increase employee engagement and allyship through an educational programme. Instead of following a generic approach, we decided to conduct an audit to identify specific challenges faced by their employees and prepare a State of Inclusion Report. Based on this, we created an educational programme proposal for them covering the next three years. Meanwhile, we also started a pilot programme with a couple of teams back in 2020. We got complete support from our client and were able to detect the blockers to inclusion. Every employee, global leadership, manager, and HR must undergo this programme, and we tracked their involvement and tailored the session accordingly. The client’s NPS steadily increased since we started the pilot programme and kept growing further with each session. Our relationship with Reward Gateway is based on trust and respect, this allows us to co-create, and we’re happy with the results.
Recognising the aftermath of the pandemic, where do you see Vessy.com headed in the near future?
I founded Vessy.com back in 2018, and now we are a team of ten members. We preach the values of helping, curiosity, joy, courage, and autonomy, and the cornerstone of our operations is selfcare. How can we assist our clients if we do not do our own work? Our purpose is to help our clients and their employees remove internal and external barriers and live a happier and healthier lifestyle. D&I is rarely mentioned in the mental health ecosystem, and the opposite holds true as well. So over the last 18 months Vessy.com has been operating at the intersection of the two. Our vision is to help people on their journey of self-awareness and discovery and break down existing barriers. Mental health is a priority for us and to ensure continuous learning, I am now doing a Masters in psychotherapy at Trinity College Dublin. What else is ahead of us? Up until recently, most of our work was in North America and Europe, such as Canada, the US, the UK, Germany, Spain, Ireland, Bulgaria and more. We are now expanding our operations in South America, Africa and Asia to help more people with our unique approach to D&I, holistic and tailored, that takes into account every critical aspect of our client’s operation to design a programme that helps them sustain D&I in their daily lives while supporting their company’s growth.
