6 Ways Every Boss Can Bring Diversity to the Workplace

As tech companies continue to receive heat over their lack of inclusivity of women and people of color, more studies are showing that there is a measurable benefit to focusing on diversity in the workplace.
Through a mix of civic action on tax reform, altering hiring practices and recognizing religious differences, here are six examples of how to push for more inclusivity in your own workplace.

1. Attract More Women With Different Incentives

When Netflix announced a revision to its parental leave policy to include a minimum of three months’ full pay for hourly employees and up to 12 months for salaried workers, the internet was abuzz with how much progress American companies were making when it came to the new moms in their ranks.
But Netflix is an exception to standard policy. Currently, federal law only requires large and medium-sized companies to provide 16 weeks of parental leave, all unpaid. And there is even less support for working mothers, as federal subsidies for childcare are at a 12-year low.  
To improve the landscape for working women, look to Canada. After our northern neighbors altered their tax system in the 1980s and ’90s to allow for childcare subsidies and mandatory paid maternity leave, more women joined the workforce. Today, there are about 8 percent more women working in Canada than in the U.S.

2. Embrace Global Workers — And Their Customs

All companies want to grow their business and increase their bottom line. One way to do that: Sponsor international workers.
Yet when it comes to bringing in new people from across the globe, most industries rely on old hiring tactics, using generic language in job listings or posting to job sites that aren’t used in other countries.
“There has been an idea for some time that you could standardize the [human resources] function globally,” said a 2012 report from KPMG International. “Many markets today, though, are so distinct that [HR] needs to focus on understanding local needs.”
In the same study, leaders from multiple companies found that international workers were essential to their business. For those pushing to hire people from other countries, the process was found to be the most successful when HR departments accommodated the worker’s local customs and culture.

3. Include More Holidays on the Company Calendar

New York is one of only a handful of cities that observe holy days of multiple religions. In 2015, the city’s school system added two Muslim holidays to its number of days off and have also designated times during which students of certain Christian denominations can leave school one hour early for religious study.
For businesses that want to do the same, the website Diversity Best Practices has a full list of religious and cultural holidays, including the Indian feast holiday Makar Sankranti (Jan. 14) and Native American Citizenship Day (June 15). Some companies have taken up the trend; UPS, for example, recognizes a number of cultural holidays such as Passover and the Chinese New Year.
“The key … is to make sure no one feels excluded or forced to participate in workplace festivities,” according to a post by the Society for Human Resource Management.

4. Use Technology as a Guard Against Implicit Bias

Despite a hiring manager’s best efforts to avoid discrimination in interviews, it’s completely natural to have biases — and it’s even harder to recognize them. To best diversify a workforce, it’s crucial to take a look at the technology that’s being used to communicate with potential hires, from how the job is posted to the method used to extend an offer of employment.
When the social media developer Buffer changed job descriptions from “hackers” to “developers,” they found women applied to the jobs more often. “It was eye-opening for us to realize the ways we had perhaps been implicitly biased without realizing it,” wrote one employee for the company’s blog.
Companies can utilize software that analyzes internal emails, documents and job postings in real time to avoid bias. Joonko, for example, “can identify events of conscious and unconscious bias,” says cofounder Ilit Raz. “The point isn’t just to hire more diverse people, but the right people for your company.”
Gapjumpers and Blendoor are two companies whose software removes a candidate’s name and any data not relevant to the job descriptions so managers can base hiring decisions solely on merit. The Google Chrome extension Unbias also blurs out LinkedIn images and names to reduce unconscious bias. Think of it as hiring à la “The Voice,” where judges hear singers before they see them.

5. Dish Out Diversity in Lunchrooms

Outside of benefiting a business’s bottom line, having a diverse work environment also introduces other people to cultures they might not otherwise interact with.
Communities are better strengthened when the people in them socialize with one another, says Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam. As the Houston Chronicle put it, “When a variety of viewpoints are thrown into the problem-solving mix, new and innovative solutions can be reached.”
Encouraging social diversity can be as easy as mixing up the menu. In Australia, for example, companies are encouraged to participate in A Taste of Harmony, a program that introduces employees to new cultures through food. And if you have a fairly diverse workforce already, try organizing a potluck where staffers bring in their favorite cultural dish to share.

6. Enlist Outside Expert Help

More companies are starting to beef up diversity by hiring outside help, such as diversity consultants, to oversee their company strategy.
Organizations like Paradigm and Project Include, cofounded by former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao and other high-profile female techies, help startups analyze their company’s needs, and then hire and retain diverse talent.
“We convened as a group of tech women to strategize and try to move diversity forward by having hard conversations and redirecting efforts,” reads Project Include’s manifesto. “We want to provide our perspectives, recommendations, materials, and tools to help CEOs and their teams build meaningful inclusion. We know how hard change is from our own experiences.”

Working Their Way to Independence

On a recent Monday afternoon, in an office tower in Manhattan, Judy Matthews sat around a table with three other domestic violence victims and talked about her résumé. Through a nonprofit, she’d recently taken a Microsoft Word course for the formatting, but Matthews, a black, middle-aged mother from Brooklyn, was worried about the content. The problem? A 10-year gap, the result of pressure from her abuser to drop out of the workforce.
“For the past decade, I spent most of my time near the window, while my husband went to work,” says Matthews. “I didn’t have any friends, and I didn’t have a career. I completed my degrees and I put them in a box. I didn’t know who I was, other than who [my husband] told me I was, which was a woman who’s got nothing to offer. It was a sense of: ‘Why did you even waste time going to school?’ That’s why I spent my time at the window, watching everybody else walk their kids to school, go to work, do everything they need to do.”
About a year and a half ago, Matthews (whose name, like other survivors quoted in this story, has been changed) packed a few belongings into a plastic Marshall’s bag and made her way to Sanctuary for Families, New York’s largest nonprofit for victims of domestic abuse, sex trafficking and other gender-based violence. There, she enrolled in the Economic Empowerment Program (EEP), a workforce-development program to help survivors regain the self-sufficiency and financial independence they lost during an abusive relationship. Today, Matthews, a victim of childhood sexual abuse who was once too scared to take the subway, has an internship with the city’s Human Resources Administration, which distributes public assistance.
Founded in 2011, EEP’s 15-week program prepares survivors for entry-level openings in fields with potential for significant career growth. During the first two weeks, sessions focus on workplace readiness: punctuality, email etiquette and proper attire, for example. But the bulk of EEP’s training focuses on math, literature and computer programs. Throughout, the women revise their résumés and practice mock job interviews.
“We don’t want them working in fast food or at a clothing chain. Not that those aren’t honorable work, but it can’t get a person off public assistance,” says Judy Harris Kluger, who was a New York State judge for 25 years before becoming Sanctuary’s executive director in 2014. After EEP, she says, “I hope they’re in a position to support their children; to live on their own in an apartment, not a shelter; and to find healthy relationships and people who care about them.”
Nationally, an estimated one in four women and one in seven men will experience serious violence at a partner’s hands. Within New York City, police responded to 279,051 domestic violence incidents in 2015 — roughly 32 calls every hour. For each of these victims, an intimate link binds her checkbook to the risk of abuse by her partner. When a couple’s finances are strained, the chance of violence triples. An abuser who can’t find work for months may lash out at his spouse, the one aspect of his life he can ruthlessly control. The victim, meanwhile, her bank account depleted, can’t afford to stay at a motel for a few nights, much less pay for her children’s basic needs or see a psychiatrist or divorce lawyer. Money, in other words, can force victims to stay with their abusers.

EEP participants attend classes in math, literature and computer skills, and receive guidance on resume-writing and office culture.

And when battered women do work, holding down a job is a constant struggle. In one survey, nearly two-thirds of victims said abuse interfered with their work performance. Of that group, two-fifths were harassed by a partner’s phone calls or in-person stalking. For others, the difficulty started before they even left home. To disrupt a victim’s schedule, an abuser might deprive her of sleep, unplug the alarm clock, hide clothes or car keys, refuse to babysit the kids, cut and bruise her or physically bar the doorway. Distracted or depressed, these survivors showed up late or not at all; one study showed these women earn less as a whole.
Faced with these challenges, how does EEP perform? In its five years of operation, 564 survivors enrolled in the program, and nearly all of them — 88 percent — completed it. By the end, two-thirds of the graduates land internships or jobs. A year later, at least 65 percent of those alumnae report keeping the position. EEP aims to place enrollees in fields such as workplace administration, construction management and medical billing. On average, EEP graduates are paid $13.71 an hour, well above New York’s $8.75 minimum wage.
Angelo J. Rivera, EEP’s director, believes the model works because it establishes a clear path off welfare. When a person starts the program, Rivera’s team sits down with a chart of seven “keys,” which demonstrate career readiness and includes benchmarks like reaching a 10th-grade reading level, earning a high school diploma or GED, and gaining intermediate computer skills and prior work experience. (On average, participants enter with only three or four of these skill sets.)
To start meeting the seven keys, EEP readies survivors for office culture, beginning with how they dress. At the program’s start, each class heads to Macy’s to pick out a suit and two blouses, which they’re required to wear to class on Mondays and Wednesdays. Dressing professionally — or in other words, putting on the appearance of success — is an important first step in the transition to the business world, explains Sarah Hayes, EEP’s deputy director. “A number are homeless and living in shelters. They’ve had to leave their possessions behind to flee an abusive situation,” she says. “Being able to put on a suit is dignifying. They don’t feel like they’re different from anyone else traipsing around Wall Street. It’s a powerful anonymity that you get to wear, and it helps you envision yourself as the professional that you want to be.”
Once they look the part, the women in EEP run through a crash course in sophistication, in part by catching up on well-known literature. Under Rivera, the reading list is a guide to power relations: “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Animal Farm” and writings by James Baldwin. The group also recently toured the Metropolitan Museum of Art, many for the first time.
Though EEP’s classes avoid discussions of the women’s abusive relationships — a marked shift from other social programs that deal with trauma through support groups — counseling and other services are available at Sanctuary. Immigrants who need work authorization can seek remedies from the legal team, for example, and someone facing an eviction can receive emergency monetary assistance and defense in housing court.
But there’s another reason why EEP so clearly divides its efforts from the rest of Sanctuary’s services. Below the surface, EEP’s architects have an ambitious plan: To see their workforce-development program applied to other demographics, like foster youth, single mothers in public housing and the formerly incarcerated. The victims of gender-based violence that Rivera sees regularly come in believing they are worthless, after hearing it repeatedly from their abusers. The 15-week program works to reverse that by convincing battered women they’re worth a decent salary and empowering them to work their way to independence. The question for Rivera and his cohorts now is whether the EEP model can uplift other struggling populations toiling under their own trying circumstances.
If you are experiencing physical violence, emotional abuse or financial control at home, you can call 800-621-HOPE in New York City, 877-384-3578 in San Francisco or 800-799-7233 for all other locations.

5 Super-Easy Ways to Use Your Holiday Dollars for Good

The average American plans to spend $752 on Christmas presents this year. That frenzy of gift-buying nets corporations (including some naughty ones) hundreds of billions of dollars. During that four-week shopping spree, from Black Friday to Christmas Eve, it can be tough to find a moment to research where all your cash is going — and, by extension, what business practices your purchases might endorse. NationSwell selected five apps, all available for free in the iTunes App Store, to help you shop responsibly. After all, you don’t want to find coal in your stocking come Christmas morning, now do you?

1. See what other socially conscious consumers think

Scan a barcode, and OpenLabel will give you the crowd-sourced lowdown on the item in hand. The Yelp-like reviews — which touch on everything from environmental sustainability to labor practices — aren’t fact-checked, but a system of up-voting puts the most helpful reviews at the top. See an un-reviewed product? Add your own slant to the growing mix.

2. Support companies that support women

Data on gender equality is tough to find online. How many women hold leadership positions in a given company? How many weeks of maternity leave does a business’s policies guarantee? Does its advertising reinforce gender stereotypes? Buy Up Index Index has your answers. Use this app to determine whether 120 popular corporations are worthy of women’s purchasing power.

3. Know which political party you’re backing

With its ruling on the Citizens United case, the Supreme Court allowed independent political action committees to raise unlimited sums from corporations. (In the past year, these super PACs spent $1.1 billion to influence the election.) BuyPartisan, an app built by a former Capitol Hill staffer, compiles data on campaign contributions so you can see if a company’s CEO, board of directors or a corporate PAC is funding a candidate you oppose.

 4. Join a campaign for change

Voting with your dollar is essential. But a company might not know you’re doing so, unless you explicitly tell them. On Buycott, you can join user-generated campaigns that will tell you which products to avoid. Whether the Koch Brothers or Kellogg’s are the objects of your ire, you’ll find plenty of others to join you in protest here.

5. Shop at ethically responsible companies

Worn out from all this research into the byzantine world of corporate ownership? DoneGood makes it easy to target mission-driven sellers. Select a value you prize — “green,” “locally sourced,” “gives back” — and you’ll see a list of businesses that match your criteria. Several vendors offer discounts if you find them through the app.

These Organizations Are Empowering Female Workers

There aren’t a ton of bright spots in the working world. After all, there’s the continued problem of unemployment, millennials’ struggle to find jobs and the high poverty rate amongst minimum-wage workers — which is something that women struggle with in particular since they make up two-thirds of minimum-wage employees.
However, some organizations and cities are working to alleviate some of that burden. One of which is Seattle, which just became the city with the highest minimum wage: $15 an hour. Fortunately, this wage increase may be just the first of many, now that the movement 15 Now is spreading through the country.
While this will greatly benefit the women in Seattle, women nationwide still earn only 77 cents for each dollar that a man earns. The poverty rates are also higher for women: 15.4 percent in 2012 compared to 11.9 percent for men and 31 percent for women-run households.
That’s why some women are taking matters into their own hands. Instead of waiting for change in government policies, they’re forming worker cooperatives that offer guarantees of fair pay and non-exploitive working conditions. These co-ops focus on specific female needs by providing an empowering environment that helps women fight feelings of isolation, vulnerability and inferiority.
While these co-ops can be found across the country, here are a few examples of ones making a big difference:
The country’s largest female-owned co-op is Cooperative Home Care Associates (CHCA), which was founded in the Bronx in 1985. The group’s business? Direct personal health care. CHCA offers jobs and benefits for 2,000 people, earning $60 million a year. Additionally, the co-op offers a free training program focusing on workforce development to 600 low-income and unemployed women.
The Women’s Action to Gain Economic Security (WAGES) began in 1995 in Oakland, California. Comprised of low-income immigrants (mainly Latinas) the organization now boasts five eco-friendly housecleaning co-ops. More than 95 women are employed by WAGES, all of which are worker-owners — entitling them to vote in business decisions and receive an equal share of the profits.
Another one is the New York City-based Beyond Care Childcare Cooperative, which started in 2008. Working in partnership with the Center for Family Life in Sunset Park, the co-op is owned by immigrant women and now boasts 30 members. Its services include business development, nanny training and social support and education opportunities.
While change may be slow, these female-owned co-ops are demonstrating that women are not willing to wait any longer for it.
MORE: Ask the Experts: How Can We Solve the Young Adult Unemployment Crisis?