Holacode reworked its HR policies and processes to erase the significant salary disparity between men and women within the company.
Holacode offers integration services for migrants in Mexico by training them in software development, and helping them find employment in the growing Mexican tech sector. Holacode offers its students a 5-months bootcamp that provides them with the skills needed to become full-stack software developers, and it also features a job placement support service. Its educational model focuses on promoting autonomy through acquiring new skills.
Holacode’s Co-CEO, Diana Izquierdo, took our «gender mainstreaming workshop» and she realized that in her organizations, there were significant salary disparities between women and men. Indeed, for the same position, women’s average salary was 25% lower than the men’s. And this was likely an important reason for the 12.5% yearly turnover among female employees.
Diana decided it was time to act. To level out these inequalities, she planned to:
- perform an analysis of all salaries across Holacode and organize focus groups, to understand where exactly the problem stemmed from,
- rework Holacode’s HR policies and processes to address and prevent these biases, introducing for example transparent salary tables and formal processes for salary discussions, and
- organize regular gender bias workshops with her whole team, to help employees become more aware of how bias impacts the work culture and employees’ opportunities to grow.
Diana has big plans for her initiative. She aims to decrease the difference between the average salaries for men and women in the same positions from 25% to less than 3% in one year. Moreover, she aims to increase her team’s motivation by 80% and productivity by 50%. Finally, Diana aims to see a decrease in the turnover of female employees, from 12.5% to less than 5% in one year.
If this story inspired you, follow our Gender Mainstreaming Course and learn how to create sound gender initiatives.