Episode web page: https://bit.ly/40y13N5 ----------------------- Rate Insights Unlocked and write a review If you appreciate Insights Unlocked, please give it a rating and a review. Visit Apple Podcasts, pull up the Insights Unlocked show page and scroll to the bottom of the screen. Below the trailers, you'll find Ratings and Reviews. Click on a star rating. Scroll down past the highlighted review and click on "Write a Review." You'll make my day. ----------------------- In this special episode, recorded live from THiS 2024, we explore the biggest challenges women face in today’s workplace and the actionable steps needed to drive change. Our panel of inspiring women leaders dives into the persistent gender pay gap, the lack of leadership representation, the importance of mentorship and sponsorship, and achieving a sustainable work-family balance. From tips on negotiating salaries to navigating career growth with intentionality, this conversation offers practical advice and powerful insights for women looking to thrive in tech—and for organizations striving to create more equitable workplaces. Whether you're a leader, mentor, or someone starting your career, this episode provides valuable takeaways to help you advocate for yourself, build meaningful connections, and craft the career you want. Panelists included: Stacy Sherman, author and advisor, Doing CX Right Alita Joyce, UX Researcher at Google Cloud Monique Lalonde, Director, Product Design at REI Lija Hogan, Principal, Experience Research Strategy at UserTesting What You’ll Learn in This Episode How to address the gender pay gap with practical negotiation strategies and pay equity policies. Why leadership representation matters and how to position yourself for growth. The critical role of mentorship and how to build relationships that empower your career. How to balance career and family with the right support systems and mindset. The power of asking for opportunities, setting goals, and creating your own communities for support. Key Topics Discussed Gender Pay Gap Women earn 84% of what men earn—how can we close this gap? Negotiation tips and strategies for pay equity. Leadership Representation How to find companies that prioritize women in leadership roles. Practical advice for setting and communicating leadership goals. Mentorship and Sponsorship The difference between mentors and sponsors—and why both matter. Proactive steps to find mentors and build supportive professional networks. Work-Family Balance Why it’s not about choosing “either-or”—you can thrive in both work and family life. Insights into planning and creating a sustainable support system.
Chapter 1: What challenges do women face in the workplace?
Welcome back to the Insights Unlocked podcast. Today, we're bringing you a very special episode recorded at the Human Insights Summit back in October. This panel, one of the most attended sessions of the event, dives into the challenges and opportunities for women in the workplace with a focus on closing the gender pay gap, increasing leadership representation, and the critical role of mentorship.
We've edited the conversation for time, but you're about to hear some incredible insights from our inspiring panelists. They include Stacey Sherman, author and advisor at Do and See X Right. Alita Joyce, UX researcher at Google Cloud. Monique Lalanne, director of product design at REI. Leah Hogan, principal of experience research strategy at User Testing.
Our panel shares candid advice and actionable steps to create more equitable workplaces, whether you're just starting your career or shaping the culture of your organization. It's a conversation you don't want to miss. Enjoy the show.
welcome to insights unlocked an original podcast from user testing where we bring you candid conversations and stories with the thinkers viewers and builders behind some of the most successful digital products and experiences in the world from concept to execution there is a national global women's month women's day typically in march
But we need to continue celebrating, not just in one month. And that's why we're having this conversation. I asked if we could solve one workplace challenge for women this year, what would it be? And it narrowed down to four topics. gender pay gap, leadership representation, work family balance, and lack of mentorship and sponsorship.
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Chapter 2: How can we close the gender pay gap?
So the fact is that women earn 84% of what men do, 10,000 less annually, and the gap has remained nearly constant for a decade. Okay, so, My first question I'll ask each of you is what are some simple, actionable steps we can take to reduce this gap?
I'll start by saying one, I want you all to make as much money as possible. So like, please. But from the corporation perspective, I feel it's hard in this market. You know, we've seen so many layoffs in the tech industry for years. Budgets for promotions, promoting up have gone down. Hiring is still hard. Teams are quite stretched for resources.
And so personally, as someone who started doing my own consulting this year, that was my takeaway of like, how can I start to do more for myself, recognizing there are limitations from the corporate perspective.
Chapter 3: What are effective negotiation strategies for women?
So whatever that looks like for you all, if your corporations aren't giving you what you're looking for, always, you know, looking elsewhere as well, stay competitive, moving around, but also seeing what you can do for yourself outside of that has been top of mind.
Thanks. I'm really happy to talk about this as well. My thing is when you're negotiating that first offer at the initial offer, ask for more money. I have hired a lot of people over the years, and when I go on this side, I can tell you from experience, men almost always ask for more money. Women, maybe one out of five. That is like you're starting behind, right?
And that gap just continues to accrue because we all get merit in percentages, right? The second thing I'll say is a lot of states have laws around pay equity. Washington state is one of them. I knew a gal that I worked with at Expedia who successfully requested that her pay be evaluated and she got a 10% raise just by asking HR to evaluate her pay in the market.
And then the other thing that I'll notice is when you are talking to company and asking them about their benefits, try and find out what they do to ensure pay equity between gender. I've worked at places that only had merit, and it's really hard to get pay equity with only merit because it's performance-based. But there are companies out there that have market adjustment
pools, money pools to work with as well. And those are there to help solve things like pay inequity. So just ask questions, you know, talk to HR. I mean, you shouldn't, everybody should have an open door policy nowadays.
So I think I want to bring the perspective of actually a leadership perspective. And so one of the things that I did, so I had a team of about 35 researchers in a previous role at a company.
And one of the things that we introduced, and I worked with our HR team to do this, was a set of core competencies that really said like, what is a good objective way to set out career pathing and development, professional development for folks, and then also ensure that pay banding is consistent across role.
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Chapter 4: Why is leadership representation important?
And so really getting like sharp and disciplined around what are the expectations that we have for professional development? How do we bring people in-house who have the skills, right? And then also ensure that people are progressing towards tangible goals and getting paid and compensated in a fair and equitable way.
Leadership representation. So the data shows that women hold only 35% of senior leadership roles, although they make up 58.4% of the workforce. So then that leads to a question, What are simple, actionable steps we can take to reduce that gap?
As an IC, I have less opportunity to make those types of decisions. But one thing I will say is I'm incredibly grateful throughout my career to have so many female leaders. I've actually only had one male manager throughout my entire career of like six. And so that is an honor as well as right now, everyone up to my next three levels are women and POCs as well.
So I think as an IC trying to find those opportunities with women, which is hard in a male dominated industry, but like finds like, and so usually if you're looking for those opportunities and you have the choice, it is so nice to do that. But I'm curious for both of your perspectives being more leadership roles.
Chapter 5: What role does mentorship play in career growth?
Yeah, well, I can say I always start with, I take a look at the company and I see where they're at. Forbes comes out with a list every year. At the time that I applied at REI, they were number two on the list for women in leadership. I look at the C-suite. Most of the companies I worked with until then, like maybe the HR director was a woman, if you're lucky, marketing.
But at the co-op, our chief technical officer Our technology officer was a woman. Our chief legal counsel was a woman. Our chief finance officer was a woman. And it's probably because at one point REI had a woman CEO in the 90s. And that makes a huge difference. Companies that have tend to have had a woman CEO at one point tend to have more women in leadership. People see them in those roles.
You're not going to be it if you can't see it, right? So I always think like making sure that if you really are interested in leadership and working for a company that has equity in leadership, those are good things to keep in mind. And if you don't have that where you're working now, talk to the CEO. He's the one that gives those jobs to the other people that are in the C-suite.
Those jobs open up from time to time. Tell them that you expect to have roles filled by women in those positions. And then I think that lastly, I'll just say that again, like, you know, to your point earlier, if you don't ask, you don't get.
So making it very clear with your manager that your intention is to seek a role in leadership, is to be a leader and get advice on what skills do I need to focus on to develop that to get there is like a way that we're going to have more women in leadership.
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Chapter 6: How can women achieve work-family balance?
I think to compliment what you've already said, which are great points, you have to set up your personal life to be able to be successful in the office too. And that means you need to have supportive partner, you need to have, if you're interested in having a family, a real plan around how you're going to manage all of the responsibilities that you have.
And I have to say, like a lot of people that I see starting down the management track, are people who are starting a family at the same time that they're starting on that leadership track. And they have supportive partners and they figure out the right way to kind of manage that work-life balance in order to make sure that they can be successful in the office as well as at home.
Yeah, having a good partner at home certainly really helps. It did in my case. I'm glad to hear that you had some great women leaders and bosses and managers.
There's one more thing that I wanted to say, and it really was around, I think, women too frequently count themselves out when considering going for senior leadership roles. And so I think it is believe that you can do it, express an interest in doing it and know that you can have a full life. You don't have to only be a professional person. You can have a full life and be a senior leader.
I want to emphasize that it's not either or. It's both and. You can both have your career and be that role in family. So a lot of times people do think they have to make the choice. And yes, if you have a partner at home, that is going to make it a lot easier. And I also like that you said you have to ask and make it known because nobody's a mind reader. So someone hiring...
will write very intentionally about you don't have to have all of these skills. Right. So that's important because a lot of times we'll look at a description and say, nope, I don't I can't go for that. But it's it's directional. It's it's you know, you have to look at it in totality and not like a perfection of
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Chapter 7: What steps can organizations take for equity?
who you are but go for it if you believe that that you can exemplify that and here you're you're hearing proof that it's not literally literally every single word um that's good to know thank you so let's talk about mentorship and sponsorship this comes up a lot the fact is women are less likely than men to have a mentor who advocates for them
Enhancing mentorship can significantly aid career advancement. So let's talk about this. What initiatives can we introduce to improve mentorship for women?
Yeah, in terms of initiatives, the open door policy is pretty consistent. I maintain my brand to be incredibly accessible. I also find people commonly tell me that talking to me is like therapy, which is nice. Maybe if I wasn't a researcher, that would be a perspective. But I think it is that active listening and just trying to identify what are people doing.
Oftentimes they are more well thought out in some of their opportunities than they think they are. And so taking that active listening, asking a lot of questions, what's your direction that you're striving for? What are your overall objectives and those goals is really important just for that reflection of an activity.
You know, I thought about this a little bit on my way in here and thinking that, you know, typically my advice is make sure you have something in mind when you're approaching somebody to be your mentor, you know, like, or get like sponsorship, whether it's like, Hey, I thought like you were really good at like your presentation skills are killer.
I, I want to grow my career into a role of leadership. Could you help me develop some of my presentation skills? I'd like to work with you, meet with you every other week over the next three months to, to see if I can improve this skillset, right? Like that's a great way to find a mentor. You want to,
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Chapter 8: How can women advocate for themselves in their careers?
be specific you want it to be time box you want it to be something that they're comfortable in sharing with you and the relationship and the sponsorship will develop from there um don't think that you need to get a mentor that is somebody who you want to role model like that is one person but getting mentors that have different perspectives than you are a great way for you to see your blind spots and um there's been so many places where i've worked where
Women in leadership, they're like mentoring like 20, 25 people. The men that are in those positions are only mentoring like three or four. So don't discount men, like get male mentors. They are often the best sponsors that you can find.
And I think maybe again, a complimentary perspective is if you are even an individual contributor who is more senior, who has a lot of connections, help make connections between people who can help people to achieve their goals.
And I think that that's really vital because sometimes we underestimate the value of just introducing someone to someone else who has the skill set, the interest, the experience that somebody is interested in.
Yeah, I'd like to add that You don't have to wait for a formal mentorship program at your company. Some companies have it and some don't. You can actually be proactive and go to people and say, you know, can you help me with XYZ? But it is a responsibility. If you are getting mentored or you get to be a mentor, It comes with responsibility.
You can't just show up and say, hi, I'm ready to be mentored. You have to have an agenda. You have to have a goal. And it's a two way street. And it's really important because a lot of times people come into this with an expectation and they get disappointed. And then you don't have to just only do it within your company.
Well, what I did was I went on to LinkedIn and I started my own group on LinkedIn. women empowering women. It's called Women Leaders Making a Difference. The point is, and it's 3,000, it's not a million on purpose, right? Quality over quantity. But the point of the story is you can do that. You can go create your own communities where you feel like you need support.
Don't just wait for others to come to you.
I love the points of the different fidelities of mentorship from a very formal to just like having an hour long conversation, monthly, quarterly type of thing. And also the types of mentors, like my, some of my mentors in Google are like, they're great with the politics. I came from consulting at a small 25 person company. That wasn't something I needed to worry about before.
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