3 Ways Nitro Is Helping Close the Workplace Gender Gap

Today is an important day.

Not only because the world is celebrating women everywhere, but also because more people are elevating the conversation around gender inequality in the workplace. While this has been an ongoing conversation for decades, it is even more critical today amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

During these unprecedented times, many women have struggled to balance a full-time job and full-time family care. In fact, The National Women’s Law Center reported that 100% of the jobs lost in December were all positions held by women, which is a shocking stat to see.

This year’s theme for International Women’s Day is #ChooseToChallenge, which emphasizes that a challenged world is an alert world. This means challenging the status quo and creating a work environment in which women, especially those juggling the demands of a career and family, can grow and succeed. We know how important this balance is at Nitro and have strived to create this type of environment for our Nitronauts.

Our CMO Maria Robinson puts it best:

“The only way anyone can balance work and family is if everyone within an organization agrees that ‘life balance’ is critical to the overall wellbeing of its employees and productivity of the company. When COVID-19 pushed us to work remotely with kids at home on Zoom school and parents online with their global teams, many women needed to step away from their careers to focus on children. 

At Nitro, we wanted to blend work and home life in a way that allowed us to feel even more like a Nitro family. We implemented many ‘family first’ people principles throughout the organization and got to meet the children of Nitro on video conference! We know it will continue to be a balancing act, but we have each other’s back.”

We consider ourselves a family at the end of the day, and it‘s so important to us that everyone at Nitro feels empowered, included, and celebrated, and in challenging times like these, flexibility and empathy are key.

Here are some other ways Nitro is embracing the #ChooseToChallenge theme and helping close the workplace gender gap:

Women currently make up 40% of our global Nitronaut team and our goal is to get that closer to 50% in the not-too-distant future. We are working hard to achieve that by diversifying our talent pipeline, particularly in more technical areas like Engineering. We want to widen that pool at the top of the talent funnel as much as we can while also hiring the best and right person for the job. By sourcing well-qualified and diverse candidates, we’re continuing to push the industry standards for women in tech and diversity more broadly.

One of our core values is simply: Be Good. We want to hire good humans who are going to be good to each other — and being good means supporting diversity and celebrating differences. When I joined the company 12 years ago, there was (and still is) a clear passion for diversity, especially on the gender front. Sam, our CEO and Co-Founder, and male leaders across the business have embraced what women at Nitro bring to the table and are committed to gender equality which has helped remove, or at least break down, a barrier that is often a constant in other companies.

I recently came across a study by Silicon Valley Bank that found about 41% of U.S. tech firms have at least one woman in the C-suite, and 37% have at least one on the board of directors. We #ChooseToChallenge the tech industry status quo here at Nitro, and I’m so proud that we have three women in our C-suite and two on our Board of Directors. We also have many women at the VP, Snr. Director, and Director levels leading our Customer Experience, Sales, and People teams. We believe having female leaders and a strong support system are crucial to building a gender–inclusive space.

Today — and every day — we celebrate the social, political, cultural, and economic achievements of women around the world. We know there’s still much more work to do, but we will continue our efforts to help close the gap and do our part at Nitro.