Culture, Our Formula to Attract and Empower Women in Tech

While the lack of woman entering the tech industry can be considered the first half of the battle due to the pipeline issue, the second half is just as tough. Many woman encounter brogrammer cultures when they enter the workforce and eventually, is the main reason they leave.

In 2008, the CTI published a study that reveled that: “52% percent of highly qualified women working for SET (science, engineering and technology) companies quit their jobs, driven out by hostile work environments, isolation, extreme work pressures, and a lack of clarity surrounding career paths.”

Today, many of the factors revealed in this study continue to be a problem. This is a shoutout to all the leaders that define what HR’s priorities should be. This is an organizational development priority.

*Footnote: In Nursoft, we have Human Experience (HX) not Human Resources, but we can get to that in another post.

Nursoft believes it is in the hands of companies to create a safe and horizontal work environment. ¿How did we start? Naturally, as organizational psychology would suggest, from the core: our culture.

We began a study to determine the organizational culture and climate of Nursoft. This involved questionnaires, focus groups, games with purpose and individual interviews. From this diagnosis, we unveiled our 5 core values: Respect, Equality, Diversity, Transparency, and Empathy.

Respect

In this particular subject it implies creating a safe space, where we denaturalize abusive conducts and in no way tolerate harassment or violence. In the very first interview (spoiler), there is a slide that directly addresses our zero tolerance policy for sexual and other forms of harassment. Some might consider this awkward, as it is a woman (me) who puts this card on the table, but what should be more mind boggling at this point is having to mention it when it should be implicit everywhere and to everyone.

That being said, this protocol is available for anyone to download and edit. We created this with the purpose to have an instrument for ourselves and other companies in the tech industry to help educate about the subject and to have a standardized procedure in case of harassment. FYI. It’s in Spanish, since we are based in Chile.

Equality

This begins at the very first step of our recruitment process, a CV will never be tossed for having a woman’s name on it. Our selection process is based on the vanguard of competency interviews according to the role. In other measures, when it comes to determining wage, we have a formula based on five factors that determines your pay grade.

• Academic formation (Bachelors, Masters, Doctorate, etc.)
• Time in Nursoft (readjusted every 6–12 months)
• Experience in high tech
• Previous work experience
• Type of work (part-time, flex-time, full-time)

¿So you are telling me a female psychologist earns just as much as a male software engineer? In Nursoft, yes.

Our benefits also help out evening out the playing field. So, health insurance in Chile sucks. It’s either very expensive or of low quality. Legally, your employer pays the equivalent of 7% of your wage for your health insurance. But take a 30 year old woman in her fertile age whose monthly fee is nearly double compared to a man her same age, sure, even if she is paid the same as that man, she has to pay the difference that her 7% doesn’t cover. At Nursoft, we offer 100% insurance coverage to everyone regardless of gender.

Diversity

For us it is not limited to gender, we also strongly support sexual diversity, diversity of thought, race, and religion. ¿How many more studies do we have to read to prove that this is key for high performance teams to flourish? Here’s one I find quite complete.

Transparency

This is commonly defined as operating in such a way that it is easy for others to see what actions are performed. Transparency implies openness and constant communication. We have weekly meetings where we all make decisions regarding Nursoft. For example, ¿Will we take on interns this year? We have created an environment where everyone can participate, everyone can speak their mind.

Empathy

The action of being aware of the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another. Some may argue men can’t empathize with our cause (woman’s rights) which is fine, I’m not going to get into that argument, but I will tell you this: what we all definitely can do is get educated. Woman’s Day in Nursoft is not an occasion to give chocolate to the women. This year we held a breakfast where we discussed different topics regarding feminism, such as the unpaid domestic work in households. We also saw parts of a conference that explianed some important theoretical concepts, we shared experiences and our personal perceptions.

In Nursoft, we also ensure all messages and materials are gender-neutral and include women. In Chile, a Spanish speaking language, this is a huge problem because our native tongue differentiates words according to gender. For example, you have the word: engineer. A male engineer is ingeniero, a female is ingeniera, yet when speaking in plural, guess which is the one that you use, that’s right, ingenieros.

The tech industry still has a long way to go and it is in our hands to transform it. We hope these practices that are part of our day to day can be of use to other companies who are willing to fight the battle along side the amazing women in technology.

References:

Hewlett, S.A., Buck Luce, C., Servon, L.J., Sherbin, L., Shiller, P., Sosnovich, E., & Sumberg, K. (2008). The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology. Harvard Business Review Research Report. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Publishing.