The process of instilling a strong culture is often a natural step in the progression of startup growth. It’s easier to start small and learn from your failures early on, but as you increase your headcount, maintaining a sustainable culture that reflects your values and making sure everyone on your team is on the same page can sometimes prove to be a challenge. That’s why it’s important to consider the value of creating a gender-balanced team from the very beginning. While you’re at it, you may also want to focus on being gender-balanced equally across all roles, whether technical or not. Because hiring a female office manager, receptionist, and marketing associate to counterbalance a male-dominated technical team just won’t cut it anymore. This is but a small part of the bigger picture: workplace culture is evolving.
It’s no surprise that teams composed of both sexes yield better results than teams of a single sex. So it shouldn’t be surprising that when surveyed, actual human beings of both the XX and XY chromosomal varieties prefer to work on a gender-balanced team. Support for this is key in advancing workplace culture as well as our economy, especially with advocates like Kellan Elliott-McCrea, Etsy CTO and Ben Parr, Co-Founder of #DominateFund, who both recognize the need for more men to recognize women. It also doesn’t hurt that the topic has been touched upon by the likes of Arianna Huffington, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Sheryl Sandberg, and Maureen Dowd, regardless of whether you agree with their opinions. Recognizing there is a dearth of women in certain technical and leadership roles and making a conscious decision to promote gender-balance will help to propel our society forward and our economy upward. Articulating this ‘why’ is a finer point lost on many who dismiss culture as merely a soft power that has seeped into the mainstream conversation about work.
Now, the onus is on the startup sphere, not just the corporate giants – it’s us little guys who will be able to adapt quickly and reap the benefits of a more balanced culture.
