Working Together: D&I

Question 1

What was the situation

Answer 1

• I wanted to improve ProDev’s diversity and inclusivity.
• When I started the gender split was 14%, there was no women’s network, and no forum to discuss diversity and inclusivity.

Question 2

What was the task

Answer 2

• Co-found a diversity and inclusivity squad and a women’s group.
• Address the lack of women in prodev
• Begin to widen the definition of diversity and explore issues of inclusivity

Question 3

What steps did you take?

Answer 3

• I co-founded the diversity and inclusivity squad and started a women in ProDev group which continues to meet monthly
• I pushed the D&I squad to think about the problem in two phases: recruitment and retention. From existing data the issue was recruitment, not retention.
• I encouraged CTO to begin to measure our recruitment pipeline, surface any patterns
• I worked with other D&I members to research industry standard approaches to improving diversity at recruitment stage

Question 4

What further steps did you take

Answer 4

• I reached out to Makers Academy who assisted in assessing and improving job descriptions to attract more diverse candidates, facilitating meetings between our people team and Makers
• I proposed we try TW’s approach (one mainstream, one marginalised candidate).
• I compiled a list of affinity-based meetup groups and reached out to their organisers to offer our space – working with both the people team and marketing to advertise.
• Throughout this process I shared both my research and my work in the D&I slack channel and google drive

Question 5

What results did you see?

Answer 5

• After a year we’d doubled the number of women developers in prodev
• Had a reliably diverse recruitment pipeline

Question 6

What would you improve or do differently?

Answer 6

• We specifically narrowed the definition of diversity to women which ignores intersectionality and the experiences of other under-represented groups in tech.
• The phase model allowed us to focus all the energy on recruitment, but it meant we weren’t spending time on developing mentorship or improving our career progression paths.