When I was at GDC back in March, I talked to several developers who were all running into the same problem: they wanted the development teams in their studios to be more diverse, particularly in terms of increasing the number of women on their teams, but they didn’t know how to make it happen.
It’s a hard problem, no doubt. You can’t force diversity of any kind - or, well, you can try to, but you’re probably not going to end up with a maintainable result. This is because diversity is actually just an outcome - it’s a byproduct of a healthy organization. While it’s true that you can’t just make diversity happen, you can encourage it to grow by focusing on making your studio as inclusive as possible.
While there’s no authoritative answer regarding how to increase inclusivity in a workplace, since we at Unity have recently launched a series of “Women in Gaming” workshops, I thought it would be timely to share some of the tips I think work best.
Do your job descriptions have long wishlists of “required” skills that are nearly impossible for a single person to fulfill? You may have heard this statistic before, but it’s worth mentioning again: men apply for a job when they meet only 60% of the qualifications, but women hold back unless they meet 100% of them.
Putting these two together: by using exclusive language and/or unrealistic requirements in your job descriptions, you can inadvertently miss out on a big, viable portion of your candidate pool. Instead, focus on only the few actually required skills, and spend the rest of the posting talking about how the candidate will make an impact within the team and organization. Instead of appealing to “rock stars”, help candidates fit themselves into the role.
Even if you don’t have the resources to launch your own diversity initiatives, your studio can still support diversity by being vocal about supporting others’ initiatives. You can also offer your workspace as a meetup location for local user groups or organizations geared towards bringing minorities in the tech world together.
I can’t guarantee that doing these 5 things will improve the diversity of your team, but I can guarantee that each one contributes toward an environment in which it can blossom and flourish.
Is this article helpful for you?
Thank you for your feedback!