Dear Tech Companies: Want to keep your talent? Ask these 6 questions.
It’s not just about what your policies offer, it’s about how you put them to practice.
Each story in our Dear Tech Companies series focuses on issues in the tech space and provides strategies and solutions to companies looking to invest in meaningful solutions that will drive impactful industry change and make the industry more accessible to Black, Latina, and Native American women.
It’s time for a throwback: it’s been almost a year since we released our System Upgrade report. We found that companies have a clear opportunity to offer 9 cornerstone policies and practices that benefit Black, Latina, and Native American (BLNA) women, and all employees in the technical workforce. In times of flux, these policies don’t just help bring people into the industry — they help them stay there.
You might be thinking: that’s great, but my company already implements these policies. Having these policies is a key part of the solution, but it’s not the full picture.
Take paid sick leave. 77% of the private sector in the U.S. offers it. It sounds pretty good, until you realize 89% of U.S. workers still worked through an illness in 2022. That number is staggering, and begs the question — why are workers not using policies that exist to help them?
Without intentional, data-driven implementation, policies are just words on paper. From low awareness to poor accessibility to a lack of top-down modeling, your employees may face hidden barriers that keep them from using your policies.
So what can we do about it? This isn’t about reinventing the wheel or starting from scratch, it’s about finding the right information to refine and hone what you have. Our report proposes some tangible steps to close the gap between the policies you’re offering and the ones your employees really need. If you’re looking for where to start, consider just 6 questions.
1. How can we use quantitative and qualitative data to identify how pain points differ for each group?
How you collect company data determines whether your data tells you the story you want to hear versus the one you need to hear. If you survey your employees about how often they use your policies and disaggregate that data by gender, but not by race, professional level, caregiving situation, or other life experiences, you’re leaving insights on the table.
2. How can we offer employees multiple relevant options?
Imagine a new mother returning to work after parental leave and hoping to advance to the Senior Engineer role. She wants to limit her use of sick time in fear of being passed over for that promotion. She may not want to take full sick days for doctor appointments, so offering sick hours or remote work options on days where she or her kids have appointments might encourage her to utilize her benefits without hesitation. Eliminating unnecessary barriers by offering multiple options impacts your employees’ ability to stay and advance at your company, for the better.
3. Have we ensured that all options are accessible and easy to use?
If you have multiple options, but they’re hard to find, they’re not going to be used. Put yourself in the shoes of a new hire who’s hoping to take time off but is missing some key information — like where to access the sick leave policy, where to find and tally their sick leave balance, how to account for team coverage, or how to get time off approved. Providing easier ways to navigate these questions can ensure they’re using policies the way they’re intended.
4. How are we communicating frequently and clearly about this practice?
Communication about policies isn’t a one-and-done, it is key to keeping your employees informed and engaged. It might be helpful, for instance, to re-up your paid sick leave policies during holiday season, peak travel months, and Back to School times. Multiple channels help reinforce the point — consider engaging employee resource groups and their platforms, newsletters, firm-wide Townhalls, offline bulletins, and asking managers to communicate more frequently to their teams.
5. How are we promoting a culture that encourages adoption?
Culture eats strategy for breakfast — if you don’t nurture a culture where employees are encouraged to use these policies, even the best laid out plans will be ineffective. That starts with leaders not only socializing these policies, but modeling them. If you have robust paid sick leave, but your senior leaders work while they’re sick, their junior colleagues will hardly feel empowered to take time when they’re under the weather. Companies could go even further to make this part of their corporate culture’s DNA, for instance by rewarding senior leaders who utilize their sick time and consistently have strong engagement and well-being scores.
6. How are we continuously measuring impact and iterating as needed?
Building belonging is not a checklist, it’s a feedback loop. There is always room to grow and improve corporate policies by continuing to ask different segments of employees what is useful about a policy and what pain points they are experiencing. You could track policy utilization rates, employee satisfaction scores, or send regular feedback surveys on employees’ experiences.
To turn policies into practice, companies need to rethink how they’re designing these policies in the first place. When we create policies that are designed to elevate the steepest barriers to access, everyone benefits. Learn how to supercharge your corporate policies by diving into our free tool and resource–6 Design Questions to Guide Your Policies. And remember, this isn’t a box to check off. It’s an invitation to think intentionally about not only what policies we put in place, but how we implement them.
