Software Tools for Gender Diversity – How to get better results faster

Recently some good software tools for gender diversity have come to market to support you in creating gender balance. Have you seen them? Are you using them already? How do you feel about them?

Admittedly these tools scared me a bit as I was initially afraid they might put me out of a job as a consultant and trainer in this area. At the same time, I was excited about them because I am really keen to see organisations create a better gender balance.  Plus I could really see some of these tools creating a step change!

However, by looking closer at the tools and how they are used I am now learning that they seem to do both! They help you get results in gender balance quickly, and there is still work for me. Software can’t quite solve everything for us, can it? For instance, if you are hiring more women with the help of recruitment tools, what are you doing to make sure they stay and that your promotion and advancement is inclusive? Also, your hiring managers still need training on inclusive hiring too.

So, to make sure you stay up to date and move towards gender balance as fast as you can I would like to share some of my favourite tools. Please note I haven’t tested any yet, and most of them are quite new to the market, but these definitely merit a further look.

My favourite Gender Diversity software tools

• Career choice – WISE offers a tool to guide girls at GCSE level into tech and engineering
• Jobshare platform for employers – DuoMe – You can post your new job roles on here, and it will help you find 2 job share candidates for 1 post. Or, if you have a team member who is keen to job share, but doesn’t have a partner, you can recruit them on here.
• Fair hiring software – FairHire (previously Notxx) and Be Applied offer a software platform that supports blind hiring and integrates with your own recruitment systems. InterviewAI offer an AI assisted smart video interview solution, which includes training and question templates for fair hiring.
• The Fair Hiring Project – Fair Hiring Project offers candidate support to level the playing field at the recruitment stage.
• Gender decoder software to create gender-neutral job adverts – Kat Matsfield offers a Gender Decoder (free) where you can check your job adverts for male or female coded language. Textio takes it one step further and also benchmarks your ad against competitors and suggests alternative wordings.
• Gender pay gap software – Curocomp and Gapsquare offer an app. PIHR offers software. And many reward software packages offer a custom solution.
• Online Unconscious Bias and Diversity & Inclusion Training – at W₂O we offer tailor-made training and solutions, working with a number of e-learning experts to create solutions. Here’s an example of what we did.
• Virtual Training for Diversity & Inclusion Practitioners – With The Big Fish Academy I offer virtual programmes – and face to face ones – to teach D&I practitioners the latest frameworks, tools and techniques, so they can get the best results in D&I in their organisation.
• You can also find basic e-learning programmes on LinkedIn Learning.  Or you can buy off-the-shelf packages at Marshall e-Learning or Cobblestone Learning. There are also quite a few more out there.
• Diversity & Inclusion data dashboard – Pulsely helps you gather D&I data, shows them on a dashboard and suggests possible action.

It would be great to hear what software tools for Gender Diversity you are using. Have I missed any? Which one is your favourite? What results are you getting?