Supervising-in-a-Box Series: Supervisors as Change Agents is for supervisors who wish to become change agents in their organizations. The materials are focused on actions that you as an individual supervisor can take to raise awareness and motivate change. Of course, supervisors cannot “do it all,” but these individual efforts are often what it takes to spark change. The materials here also point to other NCWIT resources that can help with planning more systemic, department, or company-wide change at later stages.

Supervising-in-a-Box helps establish supportive and effective relationships with a diverse range of employees. This box explores ways to reduce or remove unconscious bias, discriminatory practices, and institutional barriers while performing supervisory job functions – including recruitment, project management, performance evaluations, feedback processes, and everyday communication. Team/Project Management focuses on running an effective, innovative, and productive team.

Supervising-in-a-Box: Employee Recruitment/Selection provides supervisors with resources for recruiting and hiring the best talent. This “Box” includes background information, a training guide, tip sheets, resources for employee recruitment and selection, templates, evaluation tools, and a summary of key takeaways.

Institutional barriers (IBs) are policies, procedures, or situations that systematically disadvantage certain groups of people. IBs exist in any majority-minority group situation. When an initial population is fairly similar (e.g., in male-dominated professions), systems naturally emerge to meet the needs of this population. If these systems do not change with the times, they can inhibit the success of new members with different needs. IBs often seem natural or “just the way things are around here.”

Sexism has measurably harmful effects, but sexist behavior can be minimized. Instructors and supervisors can practice zero tolerance and facilitate positive peer interactions, and they can provide highly visible leadership, policies, and procedures that go beyond legalities to explicitly denounce sexism. This case study identifies available surveys and issues that should be considered when assessing the prevalence of sexist behavior in an organization.

Faculty mentoring programs help junior faculty to acclimate and promote relationships that can cover a broad range of topics. These programs enhance career commitment and self-confidence in women. Successful programs initiate mentor pairings early for new faculty and formally facilitate the relationship until the mentor-protégé bond is established.

Research shows that even individuals committed to equality harbor unconscious biases that impact everyday decisions and interactions. In the IT workplace, unconscious gender bias can mislead employers, both male and female, to make inaccurate judgments in hiring, performance reviews, and promotion. This case study focuses on the profound effect unconscious bias can have on the recruitment and selection process — from crafting and distribution of job postings to interviewing and hiring. Steps are offered for overcoming this bias.

Whether or not an organization will fully benefit from diversity depends on how its members answer the questions, “What do we do with this diversity? Why do we want a diversified workforce?” Organizations must explicitly address these questions if they are to prevent diversity efforts from backfiring and if they are to reap the oft-touted benefits of better performance and productivity. Three organizational diversity paradigms are presented along with the assumptions and practices, pros, and cons of each.

Women in IT: The Facts, sponsored by NCWIT's Workforce Alliance, brings together the latest findings from recent research on technical women. This report gives you:

• The best available data about the current state of affairs for technical women, in a single, easy-to-access resource
• A summary of the key barriers to women's participation in technology AND promising practices for addressing these barriers
• Data and tools to support your organization's change efforts