Skip to content

The @Work Experience Framework Key Success Factors to Retain Women in Tech

Photo of Dmitry Golovsky
Hosted By
Dmitry G.
The @Work Experience Framework Key Success Factors to Retain Women in Tech

Details

Schedule:
6:30 - 7:00PM Food and Networking
7:00 - 7:45PM Presentation
7:45 - 8:00PM Q&A

Summary
High tech is a sector where job opportunities exist but go unfilled. Even with extensive effort to recruit women, women and other populations
continue to be underrepresented compared to other professions.
More importantly, when hired, women are twice as likely to leave mid-career than men. Today attrition costs companies 16B a year. At this time when workers are needed and when studies find that diversity aids innovation and the bottom line we must turn our focus to what goes on within the daily life of tech companies to understand what helps people thrive.

Recognizing this void, Karen Holtzblatt, well known thought leader in user centered design, launched The WIT Retention Project while at Stanford. Starting with in-depth field interviews her team talked with successful women in high tech, ages late 20s to 50s. Through a 360° inquiry into the daily lives of successful women developers, product managers, UX professionals, and managers Karen and her team
identified critical factors affecting retention. The resulting @Work Experience Framework defines these factors which can guide companies to retain technical women. Subsequently, the factors were validated
and honed into a survey with over 1000 people world-wide. The @Work Experience Measure assessing people’s experience at work, repeatedly shows that 49% of tech workers are “thinking of leaving their
job.” Across the board these workers score significantly lower on all the @Work Experience factors related to the daily experience at work.

In this talk Karen introduces the @Work Experience Framework and shares some of the findings from the research. Participants gain insight into their own experiences or how their organization can better support women and diverse people at the work.

Bio
Karen Holtzblatt is a thought leader, industry speaker, and author. Karen is the visionary behind InContext's unique customer centered design approach, Contextual Design. Recognized as a leader in requirements and design, Karen has pioneered transformative ideas and design
approaches throughout her career. ACM SIGCHI (Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction) — the international society for professionals, academics and students — has twice honored Karen. She
was awarded membership to the CHI Academy and received the first
Lifetime Award for Practice presented in recognition of her impact on the field. Karen co-founded InContext Design in 1992 with Hugh Beyer to use Contextual Design techniques to coach product teams and deliver market data and design solutions to businesses across multiple industries. Their books are used by universities and companies worldwide.

Photo of MoCo UX group
MoCo UX
See more events
FINRA
9513 Key West Ave · Rockville, MD