When women are given the opportunities and resources to succeed in a male-dominated industry, a powerful shift occurs. From communicating inside a company to delivering presentations for international clients, focusing on the diversity and inclusion of women in the workplace is something that every business should strive for. Because, at the end of the day, it’s not only women employees that benefit from this – everyone can feel inspired by a collective effort to take in voices from people of diverse backgrounds.
Achieving equality, year after year
At Amity, we aim to be fierce in everything we do, and we want this attitude to shine in this year’s International Women’s Day. We are committed to supporting women across all departments and this objective couldn’t be clearer when seeing the growth that we experienced from 2020 to 2021 in relation to female representation: During the span of these two years, we’ve had a 93% year-over-year increase in female hires!
We couldn’t be prouder of this achievement and moving forward, we want to continue to foster a healthy and open environment where everyone is seen and heard, regardless of their background.
Women voices at Amity
We have gathered some thoughts from four of our amazing women employees representing different departments at Amity. Read below to see what each of them has to say on this day of representation, diversity, and most of all, equality:
Tereza: As Global Head of Talent Acquisition, how are you actively working towards addressing unconscious bias in recruiting?
Answer: “The unconscious bias plays a big part in the recruitment process of any company and it is important to accept that bias naturally exists in all of us in order to overcome it. However, we dedicate a significant time to train all Amity's Recruiters and Hiring Managers to identify, check and challenge their own biases as well as to understand the benefits of diversity and inclusion, and Amity's commitment to these values.”
Emee: With your experience, both as a software developer and technical writer. What advice would you give to women considering a career in the tech?
Answer: “Don’t get intimidated to enter a career in tech. Some women may be hesitant and think they don’t have enough technical knowledge. A growth mindset, not technological background, is the most crucial factor that will be instrumental to success in tech careers because it can help you overcome hurdles when learning a new technology. It will inspire you to identify problems and come up with innovative solutions.”
Lauren: How do you cultivate equality, diversity, and inclusion when it comes to improving internal communication and engagement?
Answer: "Diversity, equity, and inclusion touches on several aspects of the People Team's initiative and are a real incentive in our daily work. While nurturing a healthy and productive workplace, we want to ensure we foster a culture of respect and openness in everything we do. With internal communications, I want to make sure that culture is seen and felt by anyone across the organization. I want to give people a voice and want the information to flow smoothly. Ultimately, I want to make sure everyone gets to say how they feel. By hearing them, we as a team can turn this feedback into action and improve our processes to make our employee experience better. I also try to spotlight various company profiles to emphasize how diverse our company is and how we should embrace it. We've launched conversations where people share bits on their culture, and it's fantastic to see how we all enjoy learning from each other in all respect and kindness. In all aspects of my communication and engagement initiatives, I try to reflect and embody our diverse and inclusive culture at Amity, where your gender, nationality, skin color, religion, political opinion, sexual orientation doesn't matter. What matters is how FIERCE you are."
DeeJung: How has your experience taught you to use creativity as a tool for greater representation and diversity?
Answer: “People often associate creativity with beautiful design or punchy copywriting— which isn’t completely wrong! But I like to believe that the real essence of creativity is in the understanding of people and their surroundings.
When you equip yourself with this notion, while also challenging presumptions, you’ll find that creativity is a powerful tool to communicate, spark questions, and involve everyone in the conversation.”
2022: A year for greater representation
Amity is driven by purpose and there is nothing that brings us more joy than seeing employees succeed and feel comfortable in an environment that stimulates growth and equality. For us, International Women’s Day is a celebration of all the fierce women, in the technology sector and beyond, who are not afraid to take big risks and learn from their experiences. This is what drives the Amity spirit, and we can guarantee more of this in the coming years. By making sure that our teams are equally represented and cared for, we can create a future that thrives on the creativity of each individual to develop the next generation of social platforms.
