In recognition of International Women's Day and this year's theme #BreakTheBias, we reached out to companies asking the following question:
How is your company recognizing International Women's Day and accelerating equality for women?
Here are their responses.
Cedar Women+ is one of Cedar's three employee resource groups. The mission of Cedar Women+ is to support and promote all people who are underrepresented or face gender-based biases through cultivating an environment that connects, empowers, and advances all women, both professionally and personally. We strive to remove gender barriers, promote diversity and provide a safe and supportive community in the workplace for all Cedarians.
We do this in many ways, one of which is our employee resource groups, known as Toast Communities. ToastHER is our Toast Community for female-identifying Toasters and their allies. ToastHER regularly hosts networking events, mentorship programs, and learning opportunities with both internal and external speakers. This community is on a mission to empower one another in the workplace, and help others develop the personal and professional skills needed to thrive.
On Thursday, March 10th at 12pm EST, we will have a workshop led by Claire Wasserman from Ladies Get Paid on the topic of Self-Advocacy. Here's what we'll cover on this session:
FIND YOUR POWER: HOW TO ADVOCATE FOR YOURSELF AT WORK
Many of us think that if we put our heads down and work hard, our work will speak for itself. But it’s actually the opposite: to get ahead, WE have to speak for our work. But easier said than done. Led by Claire Wasserman, the author and founder of Ladies Get Paid, this workshop will give you the tools to take risks, be bold, and make sure your voice is heard. Key takeaways include:
- Identify internal roadblocks (imposter syndrome and perfectionism) and how to combat them
- Track and articulate your strengths and accomplishments
- Find advocates and allies
- Gain visibility and project authority
- Toast to Women at Formlabs on 3/8 with treats from local women-owned restaurants
- Hosting a Women's Networking Night with a few panelists from Formlabs across multiple departments who will share a bit about their background and their career progression so far. We will then offer follow-up conversations split by universal skills such as negotiating & project management, and leave time for open conversation / networking.
- Book club - reading "Women & Other Monsters" - Formlabs provides the books and we meet to discuss over 3 different meetings.
- We have a Women in Engineering Affinity Group that is a very active community for women at Formlabs, with a couple women-specific slack channels that are pretty active as well.
We are recognizing the women at Lose It! through an employee-led campaign that is set to go live on March 8th. Lose It! maintains compensation equality among our employee population through annual salary adjustments that benchmark on market data
We will also be holding on-site and virtual lunches on IWD, with lunch sponsored (or reimbursed) from women owned restaurants and will be discussing Women who inspire us.
To accelerate Women every day at Zus we are focused on building an inclusive and diverse workforce, we are constantly working to remove any bias from our interview and review processes and we look at compensation on a regular basis and adjust folks to ensure parity.
Beyond these initiatives, Nexthink also runs our job descriptions through gender decoding technology to help uncover language that might subtly bias applicants. Our aim is to be as inclusive as possible and using tools like a gender decoder helps us match our words with our intent. There's always room for improvement, and we regularly evaluate our benefits, compensation packages, programs, and policies to ensure we are moving toward a more equitable workplace for all.
Team members will be wearing shirts to recognize the day in colors which embody the cause and symbol of hope and feminism.
Some employees will be recording a video on their views on Women’s Day, they will talk about the significance of women in their lives, how important role they play in office/ work to support them. Today there is more acceptance than ever before that women bring different involvements, perspectives and skills to the table, and make irreplaceable contributions to decisions, leadership capability or technology innovations or contributions.
A quick workshop will be conducted to talk on casual women centric issues/ topics.
This month, we are hosting Valerie Gordon, a 10-time Emmy winning television producer and engaging speaker, for the Commander-in-She: Communicating with Confidence Workshop for employees to improve communications with confidence and influence.
DraftKings also recognizes the importance of offering equitable opportunities for employees hoping to plan a family, regardless of gender, marital status, or sexual orientation. We are proud to provide workplace lactation support as breastfeeding employees face a multitude of logistical, emotional, and physical challenges which can impact ability to succeed, at both feeding and work.
As a company, we continue to add and enhance female sports offerings and promotions across our platforms.
– Jeanne Hopkins, Chief Revenue Officer at OneScreen.ai
A part of that work includes creating a community for our Lady Spiffers where we share all kinds of resources, go to ask questions, and essentially act as a support group for one another. One of the conversations we had about International Women's Day was around the idea of female empowerment and what that actually means. We saw amazing participation in this conversation and came away with some great action items as well as a huge appreciation for one another.
Another area of opportunity unique to Spiff is the opportunity to educate the market on the biases surrounding women in sales and similar commissionable positions. Because of the information we are able to leverage from within the Spiff platform we want to help facilitate a more productive conversation about the barriers to success women face in these key roles. Most importantly, we want to ensure the market is aware of pay gaps between men and women as we make a concerted effort to improve and avoid gaps within our own organization.
Stacey has been in the tech world for the last 10 years and fell in love with being deeply rooted in the era of disruptive innovation. Being a woman in tech to her means helping to drive change through leading by example, creating opportunities for all women, and always challenging the status quo.
Jazmin, a graduate of Olin College, where she focused on applying engineering to real world problems, has taken that technical foundation and continued to develop it over the last 7 years. Being a woman in tech means bringing her whole self to the office every day while working collaboratively to solve difficult technical and human problems.
Additionally, we will continue to celebrate local women owned businesses when we have catered events as we do throughout the year.
But beyond this month, our ERG works year-round to support women at Recorded Future. Through our Empower Scholarship, employees have the ability to attend conferences or events promoting women and/or diversity in our field. Recorded Future is also a close partner to Women’s Society of Cyberjutsu which gives members access to speaking and networking events, technical training courses, community service opportunities and helps enable us to diversify our talent pipeline to close the gender gap in tech roles.