Women in gaming: Employees bringing their best self to work, that’s DEI done well

Growing up, whenever people looked at me, I always thought that was because I looked different to them. When you look different from the norm, you tend to presume that’s why people notice you, in the negative sense of the word.

I’m of mixed race and I lived in a Swedish suburb where most people were blonde haired and blue eyed, so I was always asked where I was from. I never felt included, which made me feel like I wasn’t really Swedish. I actually never felt Swedish, until I left Sweden – how’s that for irony?

The feminist in me got triggered for the first time at the age of 17, when I watched the Spice Girls perform, believe it or not. Something just clicked and feminism became a big part of who I was and still am today. In fact, one of my best friends held a speech at my wedding last year and said she never thought about feminism until she met me – one of the biggest compliments I’ve ever received.

Then when I was 25, I worked at an all-male construction company for four years. At that age I thought my opinion was the only right one. I recall sitting at the lunch table leading gender equality and racism debates with sometimes as many as fifteen white men. I may have lacked confidence in other areas, but those were two topics I couldn’t keep quiet about. I’d go all out. I still do, though in a more civilised manner.

This, in a nutshell, is why my mind automatically connects the terms diversity, equality and inclusivity to gender and race. Of course, I know it’s infinitely broader than that, but this lies deeply rooted in me, and this is what I will fight for. I’ve ended friendships over it, I’ve quit jobs over it. Especially in a work environment and especially in the field that I’m in; when you promise externally to do X, but internally you’re doing Y, it’s just not genuine and I refuse to work like that.

Luckily, I found this to be in very stark contrast to the way things are done at Casumo, where labelling is non-existent. The individual is the only “label”, if you can call it as such. In our workspace, everyone feels comfortable to be whoever they want to be, it’s part of Casumo’s DNA. Which brings me to my ‘HR’ point of view: why enforce initiatives and programs when DEI is already deeply ingrained in the company culture? Just to be able to talk about it and jump on the bandwagon? Surely that’s not the right approach. Our surveys have always shown extremely high employee satisfaction rates in this area, so why interfere with something that’s already great as is?

The simple answer is we don’t. Instead, we strive for only one thing, for everyone to feel at complete liberty of bringing their best self to work in whichever shape or form that may be. I feel proud and safe to say that everyone does. In fact, someone recently announced their transition journey on our company-wide Slack channel, an excellent sign of the environment that’s been cultivated, organically, since the very beginning.

I believe that DEI done well doesn’t always mean that we’re all treated exactly the same, because everyone has different circumstances and they’re being recognised. It’s about being treated equally fairly, regardless of what these circumstances might be. Just as the brand itself isn’t mainstream, it’s cool to be different, or weird, or not, whatever you want and whoever you want to be.

I’d like to conclude by quoting Casumo’s own DEI statement, because it perfectly encompasses what I’ve been trying to express in this article: “Great minds don’t think alike; the more diverse we are, the better we become, together”.

Beatrice Martin is director of employee experience at Casumo where she oversees business partnering, HR operations, employee engagement and overall satisfaction, recruitment and learning and development. Martin has fifteen years of HR experience in several industries under her belt of which seven have been in igaming.