The first draft of SendGrid’s “Manager of IT” job description scored a “fair” rating for its “very masculine tone”.
It was time for tweaking.
The fast-growing Denver e-mail company runs its job descriptions through Textio, an artificial-intelligence platform crammed with millions of job descriptions and hiring outcomes. The goal of using Textio is to create gender neutral job descriptions that attract the widest variety of candidates. Following the Textio evaluation, the term “humility” (more feminine) was left in the job description, but “managing” and “manage” (more masculine) were changed to “running” and “lead” (more neutral). After further edits, SendGrid got the job description’s Textio ranking to “above average” for gender neutrality.
SendGrid joined the groundswell a few years ago when tech companies, mostly in the Bay Area, began tracking staff diversity. Results have been mixed. Some companies have seen a decline in women hired. Others now more closely mirror the U.S. workforce, where women make up 57 percent of employees.
Tools like Textio help companies be more mindful throughout the hiring process, but there’s also been a change of thought regarding hiring. The focus has turned to creating a workplace that welcomes people with different perspectives, ideas and backgrounds. It’s about giving a diverse group of employees the opportunity to create and innovate, said Terry Morreale, chief technology officer at the National Center for Women & Information Technology.
“One of the things we’re doing today is to shift focus from pure numbers to ‘What are women doing in your technical organization? Are they the creators?’ We need to understand what they’re doing, not just how many there are, and make the conversation about inclusion and innovation,” said Morreale.
Hiring for diversity’s sake alone doesn’t cut it. Take Uber, for example. The ride-sharing company is facing a customer backlash after a number of transgressions, including allegations of harassment made public by a female engineer. Susan Fowler, who left Uber in January, said the company dismissed her concerns of a male manager’s unwanted sexual advances. After she publicly shared the allegations, Uber’s CEO called for an investigation and pledged to release a diversity report in upcoming months.
“The answer is that once you’ve embraced the idea of inclusion, you need to incorporate it. You need to embed it into your business process, in the corporation. It’s not necessarily just a new person at the table but it must be built into the company’s DNA” that every person can innovate, add value to the company and become a leader, Morreale said.
SendGrid, one of the few Colorado companies that has shared its diversity numbers (since 2014), is known for its cooperative corporate culture. The company says making its diversity numbers public is an outcome of promoting an inclusive culture.
The company uses various means to keep itself accountable. After running the IT manager job description through Textio, it checked applicants using AI software from Joonko. Even with the Textio tweaks, the job candidates leaned heavily male — nine to one. San Francisco-based Joonko said that wasn’t a result of the description, but where the job was posted. Joonko suggested SendGrid’s director of IT, a woman, tap her professional network to find people who hadn’t heard about the job.
Ultimately, SendGrid hired a man who was deemed the most qualified person for the job who also best meshed with the company’s culture. Still, by using specific tools to reach more people and by pushing its culture, the company has seen staff diversity increase, according to its third annual diversity report.
“I think the focus at SendGrid is higher (than at other Bay Area companies) and it shows. It improves our culture and makes it a more inclusive place to work,” said Pattie Money, the company’s chief people operations officer who left a Bay Area tech firm last fall to join SendGrid. “…Having people come to the table with different backgrounds and different life experiences allows us to think of our customers through different lenses.”
Women make up 33 percent of its 338 employees, compared to 24.2 percent in the prior year. Women in technology roles inched up to 17 percent of SendGrid’s tech workers, from 12.3 percent a year earlier. Women fill 24 percent of its tech leadership jobs. The company’s ethnic diversity hasn’t changed much, however. Its workforce is 80.2 percent white and 10.4 percent Asian. People of other ethnicities round out the group.
“We’re pleased with our progress,” Money said. “We’ve been very intentional in our hiring efforts. We have a big push from the talent perspective to really go out there and source qualified, underrepresented professionals.”
Diversity, of course, stretches beyond gender and ethnicity to different ways of thinking and life experiences that bring varied perspectives to a room. This can be key in a boardroom. A new Boardroom Composition Report from PwC found that 100 activist shareholders won board seats at tech companies between 2010 to 2016. That alone adds diversity. In its executive survey, PwC found that overall, 91 percent of directors surveyed say diversity enhances a board’s effectiveness and 84 percent said it leads to enhanced company performance.
“There are so many industries converging on technology, whether its auto-tech, fintech or health tech,” said Stacy Huntoon, an audit partner in PwC’s tech practice. “A good part of being prepared for those changes is by looking at the diversity in the boardroom. And that encompasses much more than what you usually think about related to race and ethnicity. Diversity in experiences and bringing those cross-sectors together will prepare companies for the future.”
Sendgrid’s leaders say they’re determined to push for a diversified workforce.
“We’d really like to see the numbers move higher,” said Money, one of two women on the company’s eight-person executive leadership team. “We believe that a diverse workforce will make us a stronger company.”
