PerformLine Leans In on Black Lives Matter

Since the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor that echoes so many other killings of Black people in America, our CEO Alex Baydin took a step back to listen, learn, and evaluate PerformLine’s position and response to Black Lives Matter(BLM) and the movement that has happened as a result. We haven’t done enough, we must ensure we are anti-racist, and we will do more.

PerformLine strives to be an inclusionary company that values diversity and human rights, but upon further reflection, we realize we can be doing much more. The company has built a culture around taking accountability, so we’re looking at how we will do better as a company moving forward. One of our first actions was to update our company core values, to highlight the fundamental need to speak up, listen, and lean in.

We want to bring people from various backgrounds. Set higher diversity goals, including the makeup of both our staff and directors. We want to see our company represent the true diversity that makes up our state and our country.

We’ve created a space for discussions among team members on BLM and provide helpful reading materials for those looking to get a better understanding of the situation. We’ll continue to host these types of discussions on various, relevant topics to allow our employees to feel comfortable in sharing their thoughts and feelings in a supportive and open setting. PerformLine’s CEO says on this, “Did anyone else grow up being taught to be “colorblind” and not to see race? Many of us were taught that by well-meaning teachers and parents. If you were taught to not see race, you certainly were not going to talk about it with Black friends or colleagues, as doing so might even feel racist to you. A good start is simply doing the work to open your mind up to think about racism differently than you may have historically. Reach out to your friends who may be hurting, reach out to people and have the difficult, uncomfortable conversation because doing so is the only way we’ll be able to get to the root of the issue.”

Last month, PerformLine was happy to donate to the Newark Community Street Team NCST not only for being local to our headquarters, but also for their long history of supporting their community with resources such as hardship assistance, legal support, crime survivor support, employment referral and life skills development, and other wellness and social service assistance. 

Last, we look to our own software and share how PerformLine is going to use its platform, technology, and resources to help bring about that positive change.  Last week we announced new tools to help organizations monitor for potential racial bias and discrimination within marketing and consumer interactions.

Through the use of custom-crafted rulesets that have been optimized to work across PerformLine’s multi-channel compliance platform, the company is helping its customers audit and eliminate instances of content or language that foster bias or extremism, across their marketing and sales channels in near real-time. Our clients can easily deploy this across any channel of customer communication. Their scale in turn can leverage the impact of these efforts.

This is just the beginning of PerformLine’s journey and we’re reminded by our CEO that action can start today: “Don’t be afraid to reach out. I am just at the start of my more direct and active contribution to bring about positive change. I am going to use the platform of PerformLine to help do that.”