Overhauling a company's reputation, brand and culture is no small feat, but over the last five years, GoDaddy has achieved a full-scale transformation. Katee Van Horn, the company's VP of Global Engagement and Inclusion, has been there throughout. Here, she brings us behind the scenes to show what it's taken to elevate GoDaddy to one of the most admired workplaces for diversity, and particularly for women in tech.

1. From Diversity Zero
to Hero:
The GoDaddy Transformation Story
Katee Van Horn
VP- Global Engagement & Inclusion,
GoDaddy
@kateebar7

2. Talk Outline
Why We Needed to Change
Identifying Bias and Blocking It
What We Learned, What We Achieved
What Can You Do in Your Organizations

3. The right
employee culture
is one where
everyone at
GoDaddy feels
individually
responsible for
a collectively
awesome
experience.

4. ●Build trust & transparency with our employee.
●New & different kinds of talent.
●Offices everywhere we needed to be.
●Employer brand & culture to attract & retain the best.
●External brand to match our internal culture.
Why We Needed To Change

5. Be extraordinary.
Own outcomes.
Join forces.
Work fearlessly.
Live passionately.
Values

6. Taking it to the Whiteboard
Recruit
brilliant
people
Define how
we would
work together
Recognize
great work
& values
Pay
equity
Career
advancement

7. Identifying Bias &
Blocking It

8. It’s not enough to say you
believe in equality.

9. First Published Salary Data at Grace Hopper

10. Wow ~ Women are Doing Well, Except...

11. How We Evaluate
Performance:
The 9-box
The How
Demonstration of behaviors
relative to our values central
to performance:
Own Outcomes, Join Forces,
Work Fearlessly
The What
Performance relative to goals
and impact, based on
expectations of your level.
The What + The How = Our Results
Being Extraordinary is our highest value,
it’s how we make a difference in the world.

12. Own Outcomes Join Forces Work Fearlessly
Every line of code, every pixel, every interaction with a teammate,
customer or partner is a chance to change the world. Our actions
and results speak for themselves. We work toward the best
possible outcome because we are passionate about our
customers. We bring humanity to technology that helps our
customers achieve their dreams.
As a team, we move the company toward its vision.
When I can help others, I do. Great teams multiply
individual talents. Great teammates make others better
without taking credit. We win together and lose
together. Together, we celebrate our successes and
learn from our failures.
We innovate and take risks to achieve uncommon outcomes.
We are curious and not afraid of experimentation or failure.
We take risks and try new ways of doing things. There are
valuable discoveries and lessons to be learned everywhere.
We ask questions, we seek to understand, we give feedback
and challenge the status quo. We measure our results and
continually grow and improve.
CRITERIA TO EVALUATE PERFORMANCE BASED ON ‘THE HOW’.
Are you customer-obsessed?
▪ We act as co-founders and customer advocates seeking to
understand customer needs, relentlessly improve their
experience, even in the face of barriers, speak up on their behalf
and encourage others to do the same.
▪ We make fact-based decisions, seeking to identify the right
objective metrics for customer and business impact and use
facts objectively to identify both good and bad outcomes.
Do you share knowledge and solutions?
▪ We proactively share information and best practices
with others and encourage others to share.
▪ We reach out to partners, listen to understand their
needs, and actively connect them to people,
solutions, and resources they need.
Do you innovate, take risks and strive to improve
our products and services?
▪ We experiment, take calculated risks, generate and
support new ideas and encourages others to do the same.
▪ We are curious and drive continuous improvement to
increase the quality of our work to create better products
and services.
Do you have a growth mindset?
▪ We own successes, mistakes and we’re willing to identify if
something isn’t working and use experiences to grow, develop
and focus on solutions in the face of setbacks.
▪ We don’t settle for what we know today, we push to continuously
improve our expertise and apply learnings to solve problems, as
well as coach and mentor others to grow their skills.
Do you work across team(s)?
▪ We look for ways to integrate work within and across
teams, build broader end to end experiences and
think beyond individual goals or silos.
▪ We volunteer ourselves to deliver what’s required to
see collaborative projects through to completion.
Do you drive different perspectives?
▪ Contributes to an environment where people can be
authentic, offer ideas and critiques without fear.
▪ We include and involve others and advocate to hear
differing views to drive innovation and better outcomes for
our customers.
The How =
Demonstration of behaviors relative to our
values central to performance.

13. Stereotypes are cognitive shortcuts
or bugs. We use them when
processing information.
When assessing an individual’s
performance, they unconsciously
impact the standards we use.
Partnership with the
Clayman Institute.
They taught us about
unconscious bias.

14. What We Learned Was a Challenge
Bias embeds itself in every people process
Selection Promotions Performance
Reviews
Rewards

15. Key Findings
Bias embeds itself in every people process
Women are less
likely to be top
performers
Different measures:
style vs. skill
Feedback to
improve & grow
Promotion equality

16. Guiding Principles
Develop fair and consistent values criteria.
Allocate equal time to evaluate and discuss
every person.
Ask everyone to monitor consistency in talent
review meetings.
Introduce tools to drive consistency and efficiency.
Pilot promotion flagging for level 1’s.
Train everyone, employees and leaders at
all levels.
Guiding
principles.

17. Own Outcomes Join Forces Work Fearlessly
CRITERIA TO EVALUATE PERFORMANCE BASED ON ‘THE HOW’.
Are you customer-obsessed? Do you share knowledge
and solutions?
Do you innovate, take risks
and strive to improve our
products and services?
Do you have a growth mindset? Do you work across
team(s)?
Do you drive different
perspectives?
Defining and Evaluating the How
Demonstration of behaviors relative to our values central to
performance.

18. Talent Review Scorecard
Emily Engineer, Software Dev Eng IV
The WHAT (directional based on midyear)
2-3 bullets on goal achievement and impact
• 2-3 bullets on goal achievement and impact
• 2-3 bullets on goal achievement and impact
• 2-3 bullets on goal achievement and impact
The HOW
Owns Outcomes
Customer-obsessed
Growth mindset & learning
Joining Forces
Shares knowledge & solutions
Works across team(s)
Works Fearlessly
Innovation, risk taking &
continuous improvement
Drives different perspectives
K
E
Y
Struggling to reliably achieve goals based on expectations at their level
Strong goal achievement based on expectations at their level, may occasionally exceed expectations
Exceptional goal achievement based on expectations at their level; often exceeds expectations
K
E
Y
Ongoing challenge with one or more of our
values pertaining to "How"
Exhibits behavior consistent with our values
pertaining to "How"
Achieves greater outcomes on the "how";
recognized as role model amplifying our
culture
Recommend
HO
W
X
WHAT
Opportunities to grow
1-2 bullet(s) on opportunities to grow
• 1-2 bullet(s) on opportunities for growth
• 1-2 bullet(s) on opportunities for growth

19. A timer, YES a timer.
A timer to keep on track & make
sure employees are discussed
consistently.
Make exceptions if further
discussion is needed.

20. Promotion Flagging Pilot by Levels
Equally consider our employees for promotion.
We either promote, or provide specific actionable feedback
to increase likelihood of a future promo.
1 2 3
12 Months 12 Months 12 Months

21. • Spend about the same time evaluating and discussing each
person.
• Make sure the “how” and the “what” are covered and equally
weighted for each person.
• Make sure that whatever you are using to calibrate is equally
applied to all of your employees.
• Tie the what and the how discussion to outcomes and specific
behaviors.
• Make sure the decision in rating talent is separate from
concerns about people’s reactions.
Tips for
Great
Talent
Reviews

22. The results are
in.

23. Style Comments
In 2015, comments relating to personality,
while infrequent, conformed to stereotypically
gendered categories. Men were criticized as
“too soft” or “not aggressive enough” while
women were criticized as behaving too
aggressively
In 2016, for both men and women, there was a
almost a complete elimination of style
comments

24. Specific
feedback
provided for
areas of
growth/
improvement.

25. Statistically Eliminated Gender Bias in Our Calibration
HO
W
Exce
ption
al
Top Performers
Before: Women 53% Men 76%
After: Women 57% Men 69%
Stron
g
Strong Performers
Before: Women 46% Men 18%
After: Women 39% Men 27%
Impr
ove
Improve Strong Exceptional
WHAT

26. “I'm going to be concentrating on the
'what' and 'how' rather than other
factors such as personality.”
- Employee
“Much more apples to
apples comparison,
much more balanced.”
- Leader
“The focus on outcomes and examples
instead of using vague comments or
emphasizing personality/style.”
- Employee
“Many more people acted as
criteria monitors in all the
calibrations I attended.”
- Leader
“It only took me 5 minutes per employee to
fill out the templates, less than hour in
investment to fill out all the cards of my
team – it’s a pretty light investment to
evaluate my directs thoughtfully. Simple,
easy, and the conversations had a
massive level of consistency.”
- Leader
What They Told Us

27. Our Learnings
● Similar criteria across employees
● Consistent discussion of all aspects of employee
performance and ways to grow and improve
● Eliminate discussions of communication style
● Thoughtful and consistent prep for talent reviews
by managers
● Promos flagging can help to ensure no one is forgotten

28. Exec team must co-own.
Partners can accelerate change; start with a brave
look at your data.
Massively respected change champions needed.
Don’t boil the ocean; tackle specific areas to effect
real change.
Don’t neglect the well intended, we are all influenced
by cognitive short-cuts.
Experimentation matters when the change is
behavior.
While there’s never an end point, there are moments
to celebrate based on both data and accolades from
employees for saying, “Thank you for making this
process fair.”
Our
Advice

29. To hear more from Katee, watch her
dynamic Summit session here:
https://www.lever.co/resources/talent-
innovation-summit/diversity-
inclusion-forum
Katee Van Horn
VP- Global Engagement & Inclusion
GoDaddy
@kateebar7