Susan Allen and Tara Chandra, Flo
“GROW YOUR APPLICANT POOL”
“We wanted to create a company that felt like something your best friend would suggest to you,” says Susan Allen Augustin, co-founder of organic period product brand Flo. All packaging is biodegradable or recyclable and 5% of profits go to girls and women in need. Flo also donates products each month to fight period poverty.
“We had the idea seven years ago chatting in the bathroom between classes during our Masters , but we only started the company three years ago,” says co-founder Tara Chandra. The extensive research and focus groups they did as part of their degrees paid off; Flo has quickly become an international company, sold in supermarkets and pharmacies in the UK, France, Netherlands, South Africa and parts of the United States.
The team is currently made up of three full-time employees, one part-time employee and several contractors. As they grow, the founders are determined to keep doing the right thing, both on recruitment and retention. “One thing I’m proud to be a part of is thinking really consciously about diversity,” says Tara. “We’re constantly asking ourselves: How does our applicant pool look? Do we need to reach out more? You sometimes need to work harder to get a more equitable, diverse applicant pool. You can’t rely on people putting themselves forward and then tell yourself that you’ve hired ‘the best person for the job,’ especially when we know certain demographics don’t apply, even when they’re qualified,” she says. “I really believe that representation matters.”
When Susan isn’t branding and marketing Flo, she works as Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for Open Society Foundations. One of her key focuses is bringing more women into leadership roles in the non-profit sector. “As a general trend, at senior management level, external knowledge is valued more than internal knowledge within the company,” she says. “When looking at external pipelines at that level, it’s very male, very white, often. So you’re then picking from a completely different pool, even if the rest of your organisation is diverse. It calls for introspection about your own culture.”
For both small and large companies, expanding your applicant pool and developing your pipeline internally is critical. “Really living your values is the way to set that tone,” says Susan. “You can write really glossy Diversity & Inclusion statements but it’s really the way you act as founders that people take away.”