The biggest issue facing tech companies right now, Cydni Tetro believes, is diversity.
“Every company should be in on this,” regardless of size, said Tetro, president of the nonprofit Women Tech Council and CEO of Draper-based Brandless, which offers an e-commerce platform .
According to the Utah Department of Workforce Services, 44% of women in the state were employed between 2015 and 2019, but they are not represented equally across sectors. For example, management jobs have almost twice as many men as women.
Women made up just 35.9 percent of officers and administrators on the Wasatch Front between 2014 and 2018, according to equal opportunity analysis of the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute workforce published in August.
Workers who self-identified as Hispanic represented 14.9% of the civilian workforce, but only 7.7% of official and administrative positions. Black workers made up 1.3% of the workforce, but held 0.7% of professional jobs.
To get a sense of what companies are doing to address these inequities, The Salt Lake Tribune’s Top Workplaces program invited candidate companies to complete surveys about their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices.
Several received honorable mentions from Energy, the employee survey firm that partners with The Tribune to collect and analyze Top Workplaces data. Some of these companies shared their strategies with The Tribune.
empowerment
The workforce at Boostability, which helps small businesses with search engine optimization, is 51 percent female and 49 percent male, according to statistics it shared with The Tribune . Its employees range in age from 18 to 69, and nearly a third are people of color.
“We’ve built a very formalized philosophy around diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging,” said Taud Olsen, vice president of people at Boostability, which ranked No. 21 in the workplace size category 2022 average.
The goal of the company’s diversity statement is to show that it “actively seeks diverse people to work for our organization, that we appreciate the diversity of people,” Olsen said, adding that “appreciate” is a deliberate word Appreciating someone is valuing them, Olsen said.
(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Boostability customer service employees from left, Brendan Aguilar, Telisa Willis, Trisha Taylor and Shanley Morgan laugh while playing the card game “Garbage” during a break from work , on October 11, 2022.
“We’re actively looking for people who are different,” including people of different races, ages and sexualities, Olsen said. The company expects employees to “bring their whole selves” to work every day, Olsen said, and believes the unique “voice” each person has is key to the company’s success.
What does this mean in practice? It includes inviting employees to suggest “events or activities or groups” in the community they are part of that the company could support.
For example, this year one of Boostability’s employees was involved in planning the Utah Pride parade, which was looking for funders. Boostability supported Pride financially and sent company volunteers to host a booth, Olsen said.
The company also hosts events to celebrate the culture or backgrounds of the people who work there, has a dedicated Slack channel to celebrate the achievements of people from typically underrepresented communities, and highlights employees and their connections to their communities in company emails, Olsen added.
For example, to kick off National Hispanic Heritage Month, the company hired a small Hispanic-owned business to provide lunch for workers, and has used the company’s channels to raise awareness throughout the month. about people of Hispanic descent who have led impactful lives. .
“Every day we have some kind of event, activity or educational note” in the diversity Slack channel, Olsen said.
Boostability also uses its own expertise to support DEI goals, Olsen said. Following employee suggestions, Boostability has supported minority and women-owned businesses with free SEO educational opportunities and services, he said.
(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) From left, Internet Technology Help Desk Technicians Bryan Seagle and Payson Asper field coworks at Boostability, Oct. 11, 2022.
Part of having workers feel engaged at Boostability is giving them a mission, he said.
“What we do is search engine optimization, but why we do it is more important to us,” Olsen said. “And that’s to help small businesses succeed online.”
weave
Lehi-based Weave, which makes communication software for medical, dental and veterinary providers, said it has made a concerted effort to improve the diversity of its workforce in the past two years.
In the past, these efforts came about “organically,” said Brooke Shreeve, Weave’s chief people officer. She declined to share current figures on the diversity of the company’s workforce, which has about 130 employees in Utah and has been in business for more than a decade. This year, it ranked 18th in the Top Workplaces category for large companies.
Hiring a diverse workforce “is a challenge throughout Utah,” he said, and by 2023, Weave has plans to be more methodical.
It starts with finding diverse job applicants, he said.
“We’re going to universities, we’re going to community colleges, we’re going to schedule boot camps, local organizations, we’re using our referral program” in an effort to reach people from different backgrounds, Shreeve said.
He will also work to “create that inclusive work environment,” Shreeve said. This starts in interviews, such as asking which pronouns applicants prefer, making sure the interviewer has received diversity and unconscious bias training, and making sure the interviewer pool is as diverse as possible.
Systemically, the company tries to make its advancement process fairer by posting all job openings publicly and giving specific feedback to internal candidates who are rejected for positions. Feedback can include strategies for how workers can achieve the skills they need to advance to the position they want, Shreeve said.
It has created peer-to-peer resource groups, which it calls “people resource groups,” for employees to connect with others who share a part of their identity, such as being female or having a specific ethnic background.
Peer resource groups “come with all different names and titles, but ultimately they’re pretty much the same thing” — how to address inclusion and belonging in a company, said Tetro of the Women Tech Council.
Such groups can transcend the business and help it integrate with a wider community, he said. They are extremely valuable because having these groups “provides a forum” to recognize issues and work on them, he said.
DEI decisions should be part of the day-to-day dialogue and strategic operations within a company, Tetro said. In addition to finding ways to connect employees to their communities, she said, the strategies include small procedural steps, as simple as running job descriptions through a “decoder” that looks for biased language that might discourage women or of color interested in applying for them.
Weave has also partnered with diversity and inclusion training company Paradigm, with the idea that creating an inclusive environment starts with how the company’s leadership behaves. “They are the DEI experts,” Shreeve said.
The company doesn’t have the size for a full-time diversity-focused employee, Shreeve said, but a member of the people team was promoted this year to become an “inclusion leader,” which will cause some of his time to be specifically focused on DEI. efforts
How do companies know what works? Look at how often workers participate in events and ask employees to share their thoughts, Shreeve said.
“Feedback,” Shreeve said, “is key.”
Leto Sapunar is one Report for America staff member covering corporate responsibility and sustainability for The Salt Lake Tribune. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by clicking here.
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