Overview

For Mend, formerly known as WhiteSource, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) lie at the heart of the company’s culture. From promoting pay equity to celebrating the multiculturalism of its employees, it’s no surprise that Mend implemented DEI training and programs to empower underrepresented employee cohorts. Mend employs more than 300 people around the world. This can make rolling out new programs an uphill battle in terms of maintaining momentum. But with a culture of learning already in place, Mend was able to roll out DEI learning experiences for its employees without hesitation.

The Challenge

Women in software companies, especially in departments such as Product and Research & Development (R&D), are often overshadowed by their male counterparts. In fact, within Mend, only 30% of employees in tech roles are female. Women often encounter gender bias and face many other obstacles in the workplace; such as being interrupted extensively during meetings, being overlooked for promotions, and the lack of female role models. EVP of Human Resources Galit Gold and Training Manager Michelle Weisbeker are committed to ensuring these types of bias don’t occur at Mend, so they set out to create a program to support this.

The Solution

The Growthspace platform was first piloted with a group of 15 employees and quickly expanded to 40 seats once the initial programs were measured and found to be impactful. Through the Growthspace algorithm, Mend matched employees to external experts to support their career development goals, based on whatever their individual challenges may be. The pilot program’s main objective was to facilitate employee growth, help retention efforts, and increase promotion from within. The secondary goal was to drive diversity and inclusion — and that’s how Mend’s women’s program “Ready to Grow” was born. 

The “Ready to Grow” program emphasizes advancement and upskilling of women. The initiative centers on women in male-dominated departments and across the company. For the first cohort of “Ready to Grow” participants, 15 women from R&D and Product were selected for growth sprints, working with their managers to identify the skills they’d like to develop or boost their knowledge in, and set expectations together.  

 “Ready to Grow” is about professional empowerment through upskilling. By supporting women through soft skills programs: communication, productivity, and leadership, the women of Mend are strengthening their talents and becoming more confident in their professional endeavors. It’s about helping women feel confident, and it’s worked.

Participant Highlight: Anya Grinberg

Anya, a Growthspace program graduate, is a Senior Software Engineer at Mend with 20 years of coding experience under her belt. Before her program, Anya had mostly learned on the job, soaking up as much as she could on each project she worked on. And through that, she’s learned so much that younger developers often turn to her for advice, guidance, and unofficial mentoring.  

With “Ready to Grow,” Anya chose the leadership track after hearing from her manager how beneficial her own Growthspace program had been. Anya was matched with Lishai, an expert who had been a software engineer before switching paths, enabling Anya to use the technical language that other experts likely don’t use easily. Her leadership sprint helped her learn, in her words, “how  to nourish the junior engineers’ creativity instead of just offering answers — and I learned that I have plenty to learn from them, as well — they have marvelous ideas, too.” Anya also learned how to create boundaries in her work relationships. She’s gained confidence in speaking and has learned how to support those she exceeds in experience — respectfully. Anya appreciated the impartial, confidential expert-participant relationship, as well.

A Short Explanation of Organizational Development

Organizational development (“OD”) is a comprehensive method of enhancing an organization’s abilities. OD tries to make every aspect of operations the best that it can be. It is actually one of the older HR concepts, becoming popular in the 1950s, and it brings together many HR-related functions, including:

• Learning and development
• Psychology and social sciences
• Human resource management
• Innovation and research design
• Organizational behavior

The process of OD goes through the phases of assessment, formulation, implementation, and evaluation. However, many companies choose for OD to be ongoing, and in such cases, the process becomes a cycle.

Enter Interventions

In the language of OD, “interventions” are part of the implementation phase. They are meant to correct whatever activities are seen as sub-par. Interventions are critical because they are the method through which improvement is made, whereas the other phases are more about analysis, planning, and measurement related to improvements.

There are three basic types of interventions. They can affect every department in a company. But, as you’ll notice, they are all strongly related to human resources and L&D.

Technology

Every company uses technology to some degree, while for others, their entire business revolves around it. OD tries to match the right technologies to the best uses. This might mean implementing a cloud-based storage system, all the way to building an agile methodology for project management.

The key to making sure these changes actually work is through training. For instance, agile project management actually demands a culture shift that includes constant collaboration, customer service, cross-functional teamwork, and self-management.