Listening & acting on feedback from underrepresented groups/employees

This prompt attracted folks interested in two general categories. The first, was how to foster feedback and open communication from underrepresented employee groups. For example, in a company with a carpet/concrete divide, how can that gap be bridged in effective ways. Secondly, we heard concerns for the relationship between product owners, customers, and the engineering teams doing the work.

We brainstormed and shared a few ideas that touched on both situations:

1. Enable communication by providing the time, and space for underrepresented employee groups to organize. Often times individual workers have valuable feedback, but may not want to take the personal risk of raising a concern as an individual. Engaging a group to provide feedback together, and even prioritize their concerns gives an outlet for these ideas. An example to experiment (and augment based on the wikipedia description) is an employee resource group: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_resource_group

2. When problem solving, remember to ask if the problem was indeed solved.

3. Let groups choose solutions, based on knowing the cost of getting there.

4. Have individuals share their stories, in an effort to find more people with similar concerns and experiences.

5. Make agreements on the work that you are going to do; in particular, we heard an example of the QA team and Engineering team both having to agree on the work do be done. If the value couldn't be communicated from one team to another, then they couldn't commit to the work.

6. How can you intercede on a more personal level, i.e. in 1-1s. We talked about the language of continuous improvement; simply ask, what are your blockers and what are your goals and try to help someone get there.

I had an awesome conversation following the session about companies needing data in order to promote changes in the work place. In particular, a company survey didn't show data that suggested any diversity problems. If this is something you are concerned about, take a look at PDXWIT's state of the community report: https://stateofthecommunity.pdxwit.org This data comes from employees at companies who have taken a diversity pledge, and with a large data set, the findings can help a company with limited data become aware of their blind spots.

Thanks!

Maureen Dugan, software engineer