We’re committed to taking action-orientated steps to continue to improve our equity, equality, diversity, and inclusion. Our team is our biggest stakeholder and our values run through all we do, from monthly ThreeCheers, job descriptions, performance reviews and more, they are a central part of our culture. With the theme for this year’s International Women’s Day being #EmbraceEquity, we’ve shared how we affirm this practice and work hard to cultivate and provide fair opportunities for all our team no matter what gender.
What is the difference between equity vs equality?
Equality provides a team or individual with access to the same resources and applications. Examples could refer to equipment, opportunities, race, gender or disability. A working environment where there is no place for discrimination.
Equity recognises each team member is unique and from different backgrounds. All employees should have entitlement around fairness, and opportunities in order to advance in their individual career journeys.
How do we implement equity?
We’re proud to foster an equitable workplace by cultivating a safe environment allowing open conversations, discussions and understanding. We work hard to “level the playing field” regardless of people’s differences. We pride ourselves in making sure each employee can access the opportunities we have on offer.
We do this by:
Individual and skills-based hiring
Offering flexible working hours has allowed us to expand our recruitment pool to a hugely diverse group of people. We continue to be employee-focused when recruiting by removing as much bias as possible. We have set questions and include multiple people from the team to assist in making the final decision. We focus on recruiting in-line with our values and would rather invest in training than hire someone qualified who doesn’t fit our culture. We openly share and update all job descriptions on our HR system to show transparency and have an internal ‘meet the team’ page to allow everyone to understand each other’s contributions towards our strategy.
Provide an equitable onboarding process
Within our onboarding process, we take the time to understand learning styles, and preferences and make sure everyone is set up correctly for working from home. This includes making reasonable adjustments to their working set-up, from a stand-up desk to speech recognition software, whatever the individual requires to enable them to work optimally.
Provide a host of equitable benefits
We’re proud to offer a host of benefits including flexible working. We’re a remote-first business so each person chooses where and when to work to fit around their lifestyle. This supports women and men equally, for example, enabling a team member to pick up the kids from school at 3 PM. Lack of flexibility is commonly a barrier to remaining in the workplace, for women who have school-age children. We’ve removed this barrier and recognise that not everyone needs the same benefits or is motivated in the same way. We bi-annually ask the team via a staff survey, what benefits they would like to make sure we adjust benefit priorities accordingly. We’re proud to have systems in place that support employees who are parents, neurodiverse, disabled, and many others.
Prioritise wage equity
We work hard to ensure pay bands are clearly linked to ability and job descriptions. We’re proud to say that our average hourly wage for men is £20.98 and for women is £20.64. We re-benchmark salaries quarterly to inform pay bands.
We currently have 15 women who work in a variety of flexible working roles, from leadership members to senior developers. This is above the industry average as benchmarked in the Tech Talent Charter annual report.
Empower employees to be their best
We encourage the team to continue learning, whatever stage they are at in their career. We make sure that everyone receives CPD time and there is a training budget for each individual to utilise. We encourage the sharing of relevant webinars, podcasts and events. Not only do we like to see team members learning and progressing, but we also like to share our knowledge with the wider community. We are heavily involved with a variety of STEM projects and mentoring programmes.
Encouraging feedback and continuously improving
We encourage the team to share their experiences and knowledge both on Teams and through our internal Gazette to promote inclusivity and equity. Our mental health first aiders provide support and play a key role in raising awareness and reducing stigmas. The level of employee involvement makes us unique and ensures it works for all.
We run an open-door policy when it comes to feedback. Every employee is continuously able to provide input via the employee forum. This is representative of the whole team and meets quarterly both as a group and with the leadership team. They ensure action to make improvements and change while keeping our values front and centre.
How do you strive to implement equity in the workplace? Discover more about our purpose and culture at Software Solved.
