Recruiting female workers in technology

The pandemic is known to have disproportionately affected women in the labor market. With the increased amount of caregiving required by lockdowns, women, who still fill most of those roles, have been forced to leave the workforce at an alarming rate.

More than two years since the start of the pandemic are still here 808,000 fewer women in the labor force compared to February 2020. For comparison: male workers regained all the jobs they lost due to the pandemic in January this year. Today there are 693,000 more men in the labor force than in February 2020.

This situation only exacerbated an issue that technology has been grappling with for some time, namely the lack of women in our ranks, begging for change.

One of our mandates as HR leaders is to create teams where everyone can thrive, regardless of background, origin or other differentiators. Exposure to diversity has been proven to enhance innovation, creativity and problem-solving skills – traits every technology company values ​​for their ability to impact bottom line. In fact, companies with a diverse workforce are 35% more likely to earn greater financial returns than their non-diversified counterparts.

In other words, it’s about time we increased the presence of women in our ranks.

Hiring women starts with an inclusive culture

Hiring and retention are major challenges for organizations today as the demand for both technical and soft skills confronts the great resignation. An organizational culture that fosters a sense of belonging in the workplace is a critical asset in this environment.

An inclusive culture helps its members feel connected, valued and vital to the company, enabling them to have a positive impact on their organization. This sense of belonging is highly correlated with business success: Employees who feel they belong feel comfortable being themselves, which promotes psychological safety and positive employee engagement. Ultimately, this contributes to dramatically better performance (a high level of connectedness is linked to a 56% increase in job performance) and, in the long run, higher retention.

This is where the core of empowerment and recruitment lies. By creating a culture of inclusiveness, employers can lay the foundations for women to be heard, valued and prepared for success in the workplace, while cultivating an environment of respect and trust that applicants will be attracted to.

Designing a more inclusive recruitment process

In the ideal workplace, everyone works together as one team towards clear, common goals. Companies that fully recognize the value of teamwork understand the critical importance of nurturing a culture where everyone has a voice and can make an impact, regardless of their demographic. This all starts with a company’s hiring process.

My company employs people in over 80 offices in over 28 different countries, giving us the opportunity to experience multiple cultures. However, it is important for us to go beyond that baseline and ensure gender diversity within our ranks. That’s why we set ourselves a goal: 25% of our new hires in 2022 would be women. While this may seem like a small number, it is an aggressive target in the tech and telecom industries, which are notorious for under-representing women.

As we embarked on this hiring goal, we learned some huge lessons about creating equal opportunity for all employees and building initiatives to further diversify our workforce. These include:

Put inclusion first; diversity will follow

Don’t just try to hire several candidates knowing that it would be very difficult to make them feel represented. Before you start hiring, take a look at the situation: talk to your current employees to understand what works and where you should focus your efforts to drive inclusivity and connectedness within your teams. It is important to ensure that current employees feel respected for their individual talents and for their ability to grow based on their motivation and skills. This lays the foundation for inclusion, as employees need to feel respected and valued if you want to become an employer of choice for a diverse workforce.

By starting your diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) journey with understanding how your people feel, you can address internal weaknesses while also identifying successes to preserve and replicate. This could include conducting a DEI employee survey, giving your team a full picture of all global regions and establishing a baseline for your DEI efforts. Questions should determine things such as how much employees feel they are valued and respected by their peers, regardless of their demographic background, and whether men and women feel they have equal opportunities to progress.

Take a holistic approach, but work gradually

DEI is a long-term proposal. Focus on one community to begin with and use the results of these efforts to build a community of people within your organization that can help scale DEI to additional populations, creating a virtuous cascading effect.

For example, companies may decide to invest more time working with managers to avoid biases that can affect career progression between men and women. This could include launching a series of workshops, lectures and webinars on various DEI topics for managers. Key components may include training hiring managers to create job descriptions that appeal to female candidates and reviewing hiring processes to ensure there are no unintentional biases. Once managers are trained, you can make resources available to all employees, using management to promote inclusive practices.

Make objectives visible and stimulate transparency

People want to stay with companies that embrace who they are. So make it easy for applicants to understand who you are as an organization and the role of inclusion by publicly committing to share your DEI goals. Communicate on your website, blog and career pages why inclusion is a core part of your culture and how it helps define your organization. Be sure to highlight female employees and leaders and their collective achievements on social media and other external media. This makes it easy for candidates to understand how inclusiveness relates to your values ​​and actually see those values ​​in action. Then build a regular cadence to share continued progress toward those goals and demonstrate the value of your efforts and how you plan to continue to improve.

There is much more to be achieved in hiring women

As we have followed these practices, almost 30% of the new hires we have welcomed so far this year are women. Having surpassed our initial goal, we are moving forward with a charter to have 30% of all management positions held by women by 2030. women face in pursuing management positions and creating a community for change. Fortunately, these best practices have laid a solid foundation for inclusivity that will enable the achievement of this goal.

While we are proud of what we have achieved so far, there is more the industry can collectively do to create a more inclusive work environment, increase the presence of women and expand diversity efforts across the board. Only by making real, measurable commitments to foster inclusivity will the technology industry finally create workplaces that are more representative of the world we live in.

Petrena Ferguson is SVP HR at Ribbons.