Inclusion in Tech

Creating a Cultural Shift for Effective Meetings: Building a Writing Culture

Poor documentation can be risky for businesses, but adopting a writing culture can help to increase inclusivity, reduce meeting time, and increase productivity. To build a successful writing culture, it is important to make it collaborative, document the process and make it accessible, and encourage people to read it. Remote work requires trust, focus time, and asynchronous ways to collaborate and discuss.

How to Manage an Employee With Depression

A team member was on a "return to work" programme after an ongoing depression. The team was small and timelines were short, creating pressure. The person needed to take time off on short notice, and the manager had to balance the person's wellbeing with client priorities. The manager was supportive and understanding, signposted the person to relevant support services, and communicated with the team about the person's condition. The team member was allowed to work part-time, and the manager encouraged them to join a mental health programme. The manager also learned to do research, not make assumptions, and be vocal about support for various diversity segments.

Building a Gender-Balanced Engineering Organization in the Middle East

Jordan's tech scene has a gender distribution of 50:50 in colleges, but this does not translate to the workforce due to women not being expected to stay late at the office. To challenge this, the core team responsible for establishing the Expedia Jordan office focused on making sure to build a sustainable gender-equal presence from the get-go. This included top-of-funnel sourcing, resume screening, tech tasks, and onsite interviews. The outcome was a 50:50 gender balance, showing that women engineers were succeeding in the recruiting process at a higher rate than men. This highlights the untapped talent pool of female engineers in Jordan.

Insights on Diversity and Inclusion

This article discusses the need for diversity and inclusion in the workplace and the practical steps that can be taken to achieve this. The author outlines their goals to improve diversity and inclusion, such as balancing the recruitment funnel, creating special experiences for diversity candidates, and fostering a culture of inclusion and respect. They also discuss the importance of measuring the impact of their efforts and the lessons they have learned.

Diverse Teams Have Greater Customer Empathy

This article outlines the steps taken to build a better mass-market product for an audience of older users. These steps included using personas, advocating for inclusive design principles, and implementing diverse friendly hiring practices. Ultimately, these changes resulted in a more accessible product and helped attract great talent to the team. The article emphasizes the importance of diverse teams in empathizing with diverse audiences and building better products.

Company Culture That Strives for Diversity and Inclusion

The narrator had worked for a company for many years, during which time the company had gone through several leadership changes. The changes had initially been beneficial, but in the last couple of years had become increasingly negative, resulting in a toxic “bro” culture and people, especially women and people of color, leaving the company. The narrator decided to leave and found a startup with a culture of inclusion and diversity. They have been able to contribute to the company culture by increasing the number of women, especially women of color, and making sure that those who work for the company are happy and getting the opportunities they deserve. The narrator has learned that company culture is more important than the product, and that being an ally requires taking action when something feels wrong or oppressive.