Home

Search form

Workforce

Preview Image

How Can Organizations Reap the Benefits of a Diverse Workforce?

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.

Preview Image

How Can Leader-Member Relationships Promote Women’s Retention and Advancement?

Positive leader-member relationships are characterized by exchanges of trust, respect, and low formality. They measurably improve performance, job satisfaction, and commitment.

View the research

Preview Image

What Makes Electronic Mentoring Effective?

By removing time and location constraints, e-mentoring allows women to connect with many more women than face-to-face mentoring permits. It can also promote more open mentor-protégé communication by limiting status differences.

View the research

Preview Image

How Does the Physical Environment Affect Women’s Entry and Persistence in Computing?

The décor of physical spaces conveys messages about the kinds of people who belong there and the kinds of activities that should be done there. Understanding this influence allows us to actively craft an environment that makes a broad range of people feel welcome in computing.

View the research

Preview Image

How Does Combating Overt Sexism Affect Women's Retention?

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.

View the research

Preview Image

NCWIT Tips: 8 Tips for Announcing Your Workforce Diversity Numbers

Releasing the diversity demographics of your technical workforce is important for stimulating open conversation and measuring efforts to increase diversity in your organization. These tips will help you plan the release of this data and take follow-up steps to implement meaningful change efforts toward increasing diversity.

View online.

Cover Image

Recruiting, Retaining, and Advancing a Diverse Technical Workforce: Data Collection and Strategic Planning Guidelines

Developing a diverse workforce must be treated like any other critical business issue. Use this guide to help you collect important data and develop a strategic plan for increasing the meaningful participation of diverse groups in your organization.

Preview Image

How Do You Provide Intentional Role Modeling?

In addition to demonstrating expertise and experience, intentional role models display their strengths and weaknesses and help observers see how they could attain a similar position. Role modeling is less interactive than mentoring, but is often a component of mentoring relationships.

View the research

Preview Image

How Do You Mentor Technical Women at Work?

Paired mentors and protégés exchange advice for career advancement and reduced turnover. Formal mentoring programs may include organized activities that provide a framework for the mentor-protégé relationship and can lead to more rapid career advancement and higher career satisfaction for participants than non-participants.

View the research

Preview Image

Computing: Get the Most Out of Your College Degree

Computing offers high quality jobs and is one of the fastest growing occupations in the United States. This resource compares computing to other occupations on quality of life issues such as pay, educational requirements, and work hours, to assist young women and their advisors in deciding whether computing is right for them.

Preview Image

How Can Reducing Unconscious Bias Increase Women’s Success in IT?

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.

View the research

Preview Image

How Can Organizations Recruit Diverse Talent in Ways that Promote Innovation and Productivity?

Significant evidence suggests that diverse work teams produce tangible benefits, including improved innovation, problem-solving, and productivity.

View the research

Preview Image

How Can Encouragement Increase Persistence in Computing?

Encouragement increases self-efficacy, which is the belief in one’s ability to successfully perform a task. Because we are more likely to engage in tasks that we believe we can perform successfully, encouragement may be especially useful for attracting women to male-stereotyped fields such as computing.

View the research

Preview Image

How Can Companies Promote Innovation with Diverse Employees?

Diverse work teams can improve innovation, problem-solving, and productivity.

View the research

Preview Image

How Can Companies Achieve Organizational Diversity?

Companies that establish organizational accountability for diversity, whether in the form of full-time diversity staff or a diversity task force, are more likely to increase the representation of women and minorities in management than companies that use only mentoring or diversity training programs. 

View the research

Preview Image

How Can Companies Attract and Retain Mid-Career Female Employees?

Flexible work arrangements and career paths, along with re-entry training and support, can attract and retain mid-career female employees. 

View the research

Latinas & Tecnología de la Información

Latinas & Tecnología de la Información (website)

Latinas & Tecnología de la Información is a Spanish-language website for inspiring young Hispanic women, or Latinas, to pursue technology. The website, containing both English-language and Spanish-language resources, provides:

Video Screenshot

Unconscious Bias and Why It Matters For Women and Tech

Learn about some of the hidden barriers that often prevent technical organizations from hiring and retaining top talent. This video will take you through a series of engaging, interactive experiments that introduce the concept of unconscious bias and explain why this information is vital for technical companies to understand. The video will also point to free NCWIT resources you can use to address these hidden barriers in order to better attract and retain a diverse workforce that will drive future innovation.

Preview Image

What is the Impact of Gender Diversity on Technology Business Performance? Research Summary

This report provides a comprehensive review of current research on gender-diverse teams. Despite their challenges, they demonstrate superior productivity and financial performance compared with homogenous teams.
 
In addition to summarizing recent research on financial performance, team dynamics, and organizational effectiveness, this summary also reviews strategies to maximize the potential benefits of gender diversity on technical teams.
 
 
Preview Image

NCWIT Tips: 8 Ways to Increase Male Advocacy

Once you have identified potential advocates, use these tips to increase their advocacy. These ideas and quotes are drawn from research NCWIT conducted with male advocates in technical workplaces. Tips range from ways of raising awareness to technologies for encouraging activism.

View online.

Pages