Let’s have diverse teams, now!
Why growing a diverse team organically instead is a more sustainable approach
Have you done some research lately about companies you applied for? And did you notice one particular thing: all their promotional material has diverse teams of different nationalities, genders, ages, etc.? It shows a company’s openness to a diverse workforce, and that’s good, right? But when you take a look around you right now, at your colleagues, are you really as diverse as a team, as your company — as every company — advertises? On all dimensions and levels? Probably not, and this means there is a lot more to be done to be as inclusive and diverse as the branding material.
We did exactly this: we took a look around us, at tb.lx, and realized that we were not as diverse as we hoped to be. So, where was our unconscious bias hiding? Let’s take a look at the steps we took to raise awareness and to become a more diverse and inclusive company:
1. Give everyone a chance to be involved! Start your first step already with diversity
How do we bring more Diversity and Inclusion into our company, into our teams? This question has always been on top of the mind of our People team. But when one of our engineers brought up this topic in Contrarian Hour (an hour every 2 weeks, dedicated to contrarian topics to be discussed with the whole company), we knew we had to tackle it from a different angle.
The easy approach would have been for the People team to lock themselves up in a room and come up with diversity and inclusion initiatives. But our approach was different: If we want to be more inclusive and diverse, we need more than one group of people to think about this topic from one angle, from their reality. So, we invited every one of our company to brainstorm on this topic, and many people joined. We heard different voices and perceptions, discussed, and came up with some initiatives where everyone could participate. We learned from each other and opened our minds to varying views on this topic.
2. Look at your current profiles and see what they have in common. Does that necessarily mean that this is the “best profile fit”, or are you biased with what you know?
As a Software Engineering company, most of our developers studied at the same university or have a similar educational and professional background. They are really good, and we knew we could trust the education on their CV. And there, we found our bias. What were the reasons that let us trust in similar profiles? Why did we hire so few people from different paths? And was this only a reality in our recruiting team, or also in the technical team that conducts the technical interviews? This was a big learning for us, so we talked with our software engineers about precisely this issue, about their perception of it. We reviewed our job ads to understand if we wrote them targeted to those profiles and revisited the reasons we declined other candidates.
3. Make a conscious effort to reach out to different audiences
Now, does this mean you’ll start spending your days approaching only women in tech on LinkedIn? And declining everyone who fit your profile up until now? And that you’ll implement a diversity quota? NO! Of course not!
We made a conscious effort to reach out to different audiences to promote our company and our jobs and get feedback on what’s essential for them when looking for a job. We engaged with coding schools like LeWagon, and WildCode School, with initiatives like Rato, the Lisbon Project, PWIT, and many more diverse communities. This gave us a much better understanding of how diverse the path to becoming a tb.lx’er can be in the future.
4. Revisit how you hire as a whole
Your hiring process is responsible for a “yes or no” decision from the candidates; it’s their decision if they want to work for you. Your hiring process is also responsible for finding you a good match for your company. So, think about how inclusive and diverse your hiring process is. Do you have must-haves that automatically exclude people from reaching the first step? Are all your recruiters aligned with your values? How do they work, and how is their success measured? This part could be worth a whole new article. But basically: no matter how diverse and inclusive your leadership team is, recruiting holds the entry cards!
We asked Sara Gorjão, our Chief People Officer, how her team approached the question of diversity, especially when it comes to Women in Tech :“Sara, is all this talk about Women in Tech a cliché, or is it something we should talk about more often?”
“It’s definitely not a cliché but something we should talk about. I often hear from HR colleagues of tech companies complaining that their candidate pipelines are lacking female engineers. But rather than complaining, we as HR can act proactively and help women find our job ads appealing. What we did at tb.lx was looking into our job ads and adapting them to attract both men and women equally.
We used the Gender Decoder, a linguistic app that allows us to identify subtle gender bias in job ads. We realized our ads were written with mostly masculine-coded language and thus included more female-friendly language as well. E.g., research has shown that words like “adaptable” and “creative” attract more women, whereas “ambitious” and “assertive” appeal more to men. We also revamped the “Must-needed” requirements section. Research has shown that women only apply for jobs if they meet almost 100% of the requirements. Men apply if they meet 60%. We have experienced that first hand at tb.lx. These small adjustments worked for us, and I believe they can work for others.
I would also say that we must be more flexible in the way we write ads and in the way we approach the market. Things are not black and white, yes and no. If we show more flexibility, if we show that we are willing to accept a candidate that does not meet every criteria / technology, we are also opening the door for more people, hence being more inclusive.”
As tb.lx, we are becoming more diverse and inclusive as a company, not from one day to the next to look good on paper, but organically by addressing our unconscious biases. Our pipeline is still now increasing organically with impressive profiles! If you want to take away something from our experience, these were our biggest learnings:
- The topic of Diversity and Inclusion is not only an HR topic. It matters to everyone, and everyone is needed for this.
- Diversity and Inclusion can’t be “fixed” overnight; it’s an organic approach that takes time.
- YOU need to reflect on YOUR behavior and potential biases and open your eyes to different truths. Break your patterns!
- Do not hire a mirror-version of yourself for your team; give chances to different backgrounds, personalities, and ways of thinking.
How are Inclusion & Diversity managed in your area? What did you learn, and how did you overcome your biases? We’re always eager to learn, so please share!
