VMware's diversity chief says the $67 billion cloud software giant's hybrid work model will help its 9,000 female employees advance their careers

• VMware’s diversity boss says its new hybrid work model helps women in tech advance their careers.
• She said the choice of working from home or the office will help women balance childcare and work.
• VMware is also in the midst of a CEO search as it navigates a spinout from parent company Dell. 
• See more stories on Insider’s business page.

Cloud software giant VMware is betting that its push toward a hybrid work model will better support women in advancing a career in tech — especially as the pandemic has created unique challenges and disproportionately impacted working women.

“Women in particular have had to take on that double burden of managing kids who are being homeschooled and still trying to manage their careers,” Shanis Windland, VMware’s vice president of diversity, equity, and inclusion, told Insider.

VMware’s sixth annual Women in Technology Conference, held this week, is part of the company’s effort to support women in the tech industry, which has been notoriously unfriendly to women — and especially women of color. Over 5,000 people attended the conference, the company said, which was held virtually for the second year in a row due to the pandemic.

In December, VMware announced that its 33,000 plus employees had the option to permanently work remotely. Its offices are being transformed into “innovation and collaboration hubs” for when in-person teamwork is needed.  VMware’s announcement came after other major tech companies, including Apple, Microsoft, and Google, said they were making remote work a long-term option or extended work-from-home policies.

Windland says VMware’s hybrid work model is making a “huge” difference for its approximately 9,000 female employees, and the company has also provided pandemic leave and benefits like “nanny care on-demand.” A VMware spokesperson confirmed that these benefits will continue indefinitely after offices reopen.

“The opportunity to come into the office because you don’t have a space at home where you can work and take care of your kids, or you want to stay at home so that you can be close to somebody who might be still homeschooling or be close to a nanny or a small baby — providing that flexibility to our employees allows them to meet their own needs while still being successful at VMware,” she said.

Studies point to a growing burden for working women because of those duties: One in every four is considering leaving the workforce or scaling back their hours due to struggles with childcare and household duties, and some reported their careers have stalled in the shift to remote work, while men saw theirs accelerate.

In theory, a flexible work model could solve those challenges. But not all experts are convinced — if male partners choose to return to the office in greater numbers, that leaves women more likely to take on the burden of domestic duties. Working from home could also deny women in-person networking opportunities, as well as make their contributions less visible.

Yet Windland says VMware’s hybrid model seems to be working so far, telling Insider that the company is not seeing its female workers leave at higher rates. “That tells me that we’re doing what we need to, to support them here at VMware,” she said.

VMware says its recent ups-and-downs haven’t impacted its diversity and equity goals

The pandemic overall has not been smooth sailing for the software giant, which is being spun out from parent company Dell in a deal worth as much as $9.7 billion.

Last May, VMware told employees it was freezing salaries and suspending 401(k) matches, saying “there have been a number of cost management changes impacting the VMware workforce.” Top executives and board members also said they were taking pay cuts.

Then, in January, CEO Pat Gelsinger left the company to return to the helm of Intel — causing VMware shares to drop over 7% in the immediate wake of the announcement. The company has been seeking a replacement for Gelsinger in the midst of other high-profile executive departures, even as it moves to a subscription-based software model.

Despite the company’s ups and downs, however, Windland says the pandemic created a “tremendous momentum around [diversity, equity, and inclusion]” inside the company — making it “even more urgent that we have space and time to have conversations for our employees, to support our employees, and ensure that we’re focused on things like mental health.”

Racial equity is still a work in progress at VMware

Black and Latina women reported even greater challenges in childcare and household responsibilities than their white female counterparts in the workforce. For VMware, the conversation and work around racial equity is an ongoing one.

“We know that we’re making some progress at VMware and I think it is important to celebrate that progress, but it’s also really important to recognize that this is a journey that’s going to take time and continued focus and effort,” Windland said.

In its most recent diversity report, VMware said it didn’t meet its hiring and retention goals, which included ensuring 1 in 3 global hires identify as a woman and 1 in 7 US hires identify as an underrepresented minority, having at least one woman or underrepresented minority on interview panels, and ensuring attrition for women was lower than the company average.

The company is currently 27.1% female and 72.9% male across all locations, and 55.4% white, 32.3% Asian, 6.2% Hispanic/Latinx, and 3.7% Black in the US.

Despite the previous fiscal year’s shortcomings outlined in the report, Windland says VMware is committed to public accountability for those goals, and that includes tying them to bonus compensation for senior leaders.

“Our hiring goals are focused on both women and underrepresented communities and specifically on the Black and Latino and Asian Pacific Islander and Indigenous populations in the United States,” she said. “So it’s important for us to kind of move the needle on all of these at the same time.”

Though Windland also acknowledged that the company’s Women in Technology conference did not specifically address racial equity, she said over half of the speakers this year were women of color.

Among other tech companies in its peer group, VMware is not alone when it comes to addressing the wide gaps in racial and gender equity in its workforce and leadership. But Windland is optimistic that its hybrid work policy will also help it hire from a larger, more diverse pool of candidates.

“We’re seeing employees move around and take advantage of that during this time and hopefully in the future,” Windland said. “And it also really means that we can increase diversity because we can source the brightest and the best talent anywhere that they might be in the world.”

Source: Read Full Article