IDEXX CIO Ken Grady pulled together data around gender, tenure, compensation and role levels and shares what they’ve learned in this blog.

I’ve had a lot of roles in my life. But perhaps my most enjoyable role ever (certainly the hardest) is being the father to a pair of pretty smart kids.

My 13 year old daughter (the older of the two) has already found love. She doodles her love on her notebooks, and in the margins of her papers. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it.

She loves math.

Seriously. She is happy to spend literally hours on math homework, apparently for the sheer joy of it. She’s on the school math team. She has a ‘Mathlete’ t-shirt that she wears on Math-meet days. She and her team get on the bus and travel to other schools to do math competitively.

She’s a geek. And I couldn’t be prouder. (I’m one too).

Earlier this year, I had an opportunity in my role as CIO to represent my company, IDEXX, in awarding a young woman at a state-wide ‘Hardy Girls, Healthy Women: Girls Rock!’ for efforts in promoting STEM activities and developing a new program with her high school peers.

Sadly, it is still true in this day and age that there are too few women represented in science and technology professions, and that it is still notable and award worthy when a girl takes a leadership role in these areas in our society.

As an executive who is always looking to attract and retain the best resources and develop the next generation of leaders, it galls me that we might not be tapping the breadth of talent that could be brought to bear in our fast-moving and innovative company. As a father, my daughter gives me all the reason I need on a personal level to do what I can in ensuring that we actively identify and remove barriers, and I was proud to represent IDEXX in sponsoring the award.

At about the same time as that event, I was deep in negotiations with Salesforce.com to significantly expand our user base of the CRM and service programs. During the back and forth of the conversation, I stumbled across this article covering the internal approach and analysis of gender pay and diversity within the Salesforce.com organization. I was impressed.

Compiling Our Own Data

The confluence of events set me to thinking, and over the next few weeks I worked with my internal HR business partner to pull together the numbers and analysis on our representation across my own IT organization by role, level and tenure.  

If we had an issue, I wanted to know about it. And if we didn’t, I wanted to know that too.

We compiled the data and assembled the insights into this summary of findings I could share with the team.

I’m proud to say that across the IDEXX IT organization, we have a nearly equal mix of both male and female leaders, a truly fair and equitable compensation policy that is reflected in reality, and that we are further expanding the diversity of perspective through the international experience base. (Particularly important as we continue to grow our international presence).

Our Gender-Equity Improvement Opportunities

That’s not to say we don’t have opportunity to improve. We want to make sure we provide coaching and development at every level, and throughout the career of an employee with our team. One of the learnings was that, while every other part of the career path was equivalent, there is a material difference in the momentum of entry-to-mid-level female managers in the organization versus their male counterparts. This is consistent with industry benchmarks, and indicates that there may be a challenge in pairing junior managers with effective mentors, or in providing adequate support through this challenging growth time in a career. I’ve partnered with HR in developing Frontline Leadership curriculum and coaching opportunities as a result.

women in tech

(Click image for full infographic report of findings)

We also have an opportunity to ensure that our reputation for fair and exciting opportunities are known as we’re talking to incoming talent. (In the graph, you’ll see that we still have a real slant in the applicant pool). This provides me and my leadership colleagues with a great chance to work actively with HR and recruitment to help advertise our company as a place where background, gender and cultural diversity are not only no barrier – they are welcome additions that reflect both the communities of which we are a part and our customer base.

Contributing to the IT Industry

As an executive, developing a talent pipeline and a dynamic team is one of the most important contributions I can make. As a CIO and leader within a technology and science based industry, I am very conscious that we are still under-utilizing a significant portion of the talent pool. As a father, I encourage and applaud my peers when they take this challenge seriously, and use the data available within their own organizations to identify opportunities to address this need.

I’m proud of how well we’re addressing this at IDEXX and in our IT organization, and that this has become a measure of our success. I expect that sharing this data will only help us continue to attract and retain the highest caliber talent of all backgrounds, and I hope that it will challenge others to take stock of how well they’re meeting the same opportunity.

Women in Technology

Roles We Recruit


 

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