Overview
For Mend.io (formerly WhiteSource), diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) 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.io implemented DEI training and programs to empower underrepresented employee populations. Mend.io has more than 300 employees around the world, which makes it challenging to maintain the momentum of new programs. With a culture of learning already in place, Mend.io was able to roll out DEI learning experiences for its employees without hesitation.
The challenge
Women in software companies, especially in Product and Research & Development (R&D) departments, are often overshadowed by their male counterparts, encounter gender bias, and face many other obstacles in the workplace, for example, being interrupted during meetings, overlooked for promotions, and lacking female role models. Within Mend.io, only 30% of employees in tech roles are female. The EVP of Human Resources, Galit Gold, and Training Manager, Michelle Weisbeker, made a commitment to ensure these types of bias don’t occur at Mend.io and set out to create a program to support this.
We found that the women who’ve gone or are going through a sprint are more confident in anything they do. With Growthspace, we can easily connect both women and men to the right expert for their challenges, based on their manager’s feedback, and we immediately start noticing changes. Between increased confidence, especially for women, and the skills learned through their sprints, it’s been a dream and a true win-win for all. We truly find that after five meetings, employees and their managers see positive changes in the employee’s work, and for me, that’s the sweet spot.”
Galit Gold
EVP of Human Resources, Mend
The solution
Mend.io first piloted the Growthspace platform with a group of 15 employees. The pilot’s main objective was to facilitate employee growth, drive retention, and increase promotions from within. The secondary goal was to drive diversity and inclusion—and that’s how Mend.io’s women’s program “Ready to Grow” was born.
The “Ready to Grow” program focused on empowering women through upskilling, particularly in male-dominated teams. For the first cohort, 15 women from the R&D and Product departments were selected. They worked with their managers to identify the skills to develop and the knowledge to acquire in the program. The Growthspace algorithm then matched each with an external expert based on their background, function, and goals. The results showed that the program helped this group of women develop their communication, productivity, and leadership skills, which made them more confident in their professional endeavors.
Once the initial results were measured and the program was found to be impactful, the pilot quickly expanded to 40 seats. In addition, Mend.io now offers leadership sprints to all new managers to ensure they start on the right track.
Participant highlight: Anya Grinberg, Senior Software Engineer at Mend.io
Anya, a Senior Software Engineer at Mend.io, had 20 years of coding experience under her belt. She had mostly learned on the job, soaking up as much as she could from each project. Younger developers would often turn to her for advice, guidance, and unofficial mentoring.
Anya’s manager went through a Growthspace program and shared how beneficial it was for her. Having the opportunity to participate in the “Ready to Grow” program, Anya chose to focus on leadership skills and was matched with Lishai, an expert who had been a software engineer herself. Her leadership sprint helped her learn, in her words, “…how to nourish the junior engineers’ creativity instead of just offering answers. I learned that I have plenty to learn from them, as well — they have marvelous ideas, too.” She also gained confidence in speaking, learned how to create boundaries in her work relationships, and how to support those she exceeds in experience.
Anya appreciated the impartial and confidential nature of her relationship with the expert. “I thought about why it’s so important to speak with someone outside the company — I needed an objective outlook on my work in order to get unbiased feedback. Everyone should go through the program at least once a year — it’s very beneficial.”
58% of the “Ready to Grow” participants focused on management and leadership skills
4.6/5 overall program ratings
51 Growthspace sprints completed
Why Growthspace
- Growthspace’s five-meeting sprints are a practical way of making quick changes and empowering all employees.
- The platforms’ scalability enables the HR team to easily match and measure all employees for whatever skills they need to improve.
- Growthspace’s data enables HR to easily identify high potentials or hidden talents of employees who they may have previously missed.
- With a relatively short time-to-value, the one-on-one sprints enable managers and employees to work together to set expectations and measure results to see the programs’ true impact on the employee’s performance.
- Growthspace’s pool of 1,500+ experts who speak 50 languages, live in 40 countries, and cover 70+ areas of expertise, makes it easy to match diverse employees with the expert best suited for them.
About Mend.io
Mend.io, formerly known as WhiteSource, has over a decade of experience helping global organizations build world-class AppSec programs that reduce risk and accelerate development – using tools built into the technologies that software and security teams already love. The automated technology protects organizations from supply chain and malicious package attacks, vulnerabilities in open-source and custom code, and open-source license risks. With a proven track record of successfully meeting complex and large-scale application security needs, Mend.io is the go-to technology for the world’s most demanding development and security teams. The company has more than 1,000 customers, including 25% of the Fortune 100, and manages Renovate, the open-source automated dependency update project. For more information visit mend.io
