Practical Ways To Start Prioritizing Diversity At Your Office

I didn’t mean to create another tech company comprised predominantly of men — but I did. When you first start out, building a startup is a race to grow fast before you run out of money; you hire who you can afford and who’s available right now. In a male-dominated field, that often happens to be men. I know lots of other companies in this same boat. That’s no excuse, however, to let that trend continue.

Reversing the trajectory we set is no easy task. There’s no silver bullet and no trusted roadmap yet for the way forward, and I don’t claim to have the answers. But maintaining the status quo isn’t an option. For other founders and CEOs who may not have built from the start with diversity in mind, I'd like to share what we’re doing to start addressing the gender imbalance, as well as other diversity issues, on our team — because we know we can do better. Some of this will sound strikingly obvious, but sometimes it’s the issues right in front of your face that are easiest to miss.

Want women-friendly policies? Consult women

It sounds like common sense, right? Well, I wish that it was. One side effect of having an all-male cast at our earliest stages was that many of our policies were created without women in mind. Case in point: parental leave. It took a female engineer to point out to me how inadequate our policy was — basically we were doing the bare minimum. Digging deeper, I had to admit we probably didn’t think enough about our parental leave policy at the early stages because we’d wrongly assumed it was an issue affecting just women—and we didn’t have many women around. This was shortsighted on multiple fronts. We’ve since done extensive consultation with our team members, female and male, as well as industry experts, and we now offer a single parental leave policy to both women and men that’s much more in line with best-in-industry standards.

To reduce this kind of oversight in the future, we’ve put together a diversity and inclusion committee we call MyYard, a volunteer group of staff tasked with examining the company — everything from official policies to how we socialize — through a diversity lens. A council like this can help spot and address blind spots, i.e. rules and unspoken traditions that often work against true diversity.

One example that we addressed in the past was one of our main team-building activities—a weekly after-work event that revolved around video games, pizza and beer. This was how my friends and I blew off steam, but it wasn't diverse at all. Having groups like MyYard with an open-door policy and a rotating roster of volunteers ensures there’s a safe place where everyone can discuss potentially sensitive issues like these. As we work to level the field for women in our company, we’re also surfacing and addressing challenges for people of colour, and non-binary or LGBTQ team members, as well. The end goal is that everyone can see themselves reflected in Vidyard culture.

These days, when we kick back as a team we break out the board games, crank up the music and offer a variety of snacks and non-alcoholic drinks, as well. Anyone who wants to is still welcome to crush an opponent on Team Fortress 2 and crack open a beer, but the point is it’s one option — not the only option — to bond with the team. Again, it seems like a no-brainer. But I know there are lots of tech companies out there who may not have considered the message that ping-pong tables and beer taps send in terms of diversity.

Start building a pipeline for the future (our future)

It’s the oldest excuse in the book: we want to hire women, we just can’t find them. I was guilty of this kind of thinking in our early stages, but I now know it to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the pipeline is the problem, then maybe it’s up to us to build it.

One way we’ve been doing this is by adopting an evergreen approach to hiring women for leadership roles. I work closely with our VP of Talent, Lisa Brown, to let her know what kinds of openings for senior roles we’ll have on the horizon so she can forge relationships with rock star women within tech, or other sectors with a compatible skill set, ahead of time. We might not be hiring for those specific roles right now, but when we are, we want to be on these women’s radar.

Meanwhile, we’ve also started hosting “fireside chats” with women leaders from inside (and soon to be outside) our company so our female staffers can learn from those who’ve risen through the ranks in male-dominated fields. The reality is that we don’t currently have the female representation we’d like to see among our own upper ranks, so bringing in examples from outside the company is one way we can encourage the women on our team to identify opportunities for their own career development.

We’ve also been proactive about offering mentoring and executive coaching to female employees that demonstrate leadership potential. We want to make sure they have all the resources and support they need to move up within our ranks. And we’re actively helping to develop the next generation of female tech talent as well. Vidyard has hosted several coding workshops for women and girls at our headquarters in Kitchener-Waterloo. The benefit here goes beyond helping young women develop industry-relevant skills; I also hope that by welcoming them into our offices, they can start to build a vision of a future for themselves that might include working here.

But this isn’t just about making Vidyard better; it’s very likely some of my team will eventually find opportunities at other companies, and that’s the way it goes. The goal here is to foster a stronger network for women across the entire tech ecosystem so we can all benefit from a more diverse talent pool in the future.

Learn to spot subtle bias

This is becoming more widely acknowledged but still deserves attention. Everything from the language used in job postings to images on your website can project a gender bias, even when you’re working to avoid it. A 2011 study from the University of Waterloo found that job postings that use more traditionally masculine language, i.e. “dominating the marketplace” as opposed to “achieving excellence in the market,” net fewer female applicants. Although in most cases it’s unintentional, use of aggressive language can send a subtle message to women that they don’t belong in that role, or that company.

As a next step, we’ll be running job postings and public communications through an app like Textio, which screens for bias in language. And our Diversity and Inclusion Council recently reviewed our website to ensure images and video reflect the diversity we do have, and would like to have more of. Becoming aware of your unconscious bias isn’t easy — it’s why it’s called unconscious — but it is a profoundly important initial step.

Stand up to the haters

Be prepared for pushback. In today’s climate, everyone knows failure to express a progressive stance on diversity will make you a professional pariah. But that’s in public. Behind closed doors, or in private communication, it can still be a very different story.

When I started writing about the need to bridge the gender gap, I faced a shocking amount of criticism from some of my peers. On multiple occasions I’ve been chided in private by tech-leaders for becoming a “social justice warrior” — a pejorative term for progressive activism. Others have accused me of “virtue signalling” — paying lip service to the issue just to get publicity.

At first, I was taken aback by the response, and legitimately concerned about the broader impact. But, ultimately, those people have revealed themselves as individuals I don’t want to work with. I’d rather stay true to my values and my team than compromise myself to curry favor with an old boys’ club.

Part of what makes tackling the gender gap in tech so difficult is that it hasn’t been done before. There’s no playbook on how to successfully reverse the trend, and to say it’s a sensitive topic is a massive understatement. Often, there’s not even consensus within our team about which is the right way forward. (There has been a lot of debate about whether or not men should be included in those fireside chats with female leaders, for example.) But I firmly believe that if we stay humble, responsive and flexible, we’ll eventually find a way forward. So many tech companies out there, like my own, haven’t originally been built with diversity in their DNA. My goal isn’t to call them out or shame them, but simply to say that we can move the needle, in small ways and bigger ones. And it’s our responsibility to try.

This post was originally featured in Fast Company. Stay up to date with my latest by clicking the "Follow" button next to my name above. Or follow me on Twitter.