Intent HQ wins Best Tech Employer at Women In Tech Awards 2022

Intent HQ is delighted to have gained industry wide recognition for excellence in Diversity and Inclusion (D&I), after winning ‘Best Tech Employer’ in the SMB category at this year’s Women in Tech Awards.

This prestigious award recognises employers with 50-149 employees who have demonstrated an outstanding effort over the past 18 months to attract and retain women in their company. 

Intent HQ’s progress in this area is very clear. Two years ago, the company made improving diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI) a strategic priority and can now report very exciting results. 

In 2020, just 25% of hires at Intent HQ were women but the company achieved a significant increase in 2021, with women making up 31% of new recruits. By 2022, the percentage of women joining Intent HQ had risen further to 44%, just a few points shy of our ultimate target to reach gender parity.

During this time period, employee engagement levels have also significantly improved, demonstrating the beneficial impact of improved diversity. An anonymous employee survey conducted on behalf of Intent HQ showed that employee attitudes towards the company’s DEI programme rose by 54 points,  and their overall sense of inclusiveness and feeling valued rose by 15 points.

These achievements come thanks to our dedicated Diversity, Equity & Inclusion team, consisting of volunteers recruited from across Intent HQ who are passionate about creating an inclusive workplace. These individuals have worked tirelessly to ensure that our vision to be an inclusive employer is ingrained throughout the company’s DNA and that the right support infrastructure is implemented to support these goals. 

Sharifah Amirah, Chief Client Officer at Intent HQ says, “We are delighted to have achieved the fantastic improvements seen and in a very short time frame. These results are firm evidence that creating a diverse, inclusive and welcoming working environment is a value shared by absolutely everyone in the company. Thank you to the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion team, you deserved to be recognised and may we continue to achieve even greater outcomes together going forwards.”

What were the key changes introduced to improve Intent HQ’s DEI Ranking?

The programme created to improve team diversity and attract more women and other diverse groups was company-wide and included reviewing Intent HQ’s attraction and recruitment strategies, plus implementing the following changes:

• Gender decoder tools for job adverts to filter out gender biased language;
• Use of diverse interviewing panels for a fairer and unbiased candidate selection process;
• Briefing recruiters to supply a more gender diverse range of candidates; 
• Using ATS candidate data which is anonymised to avoid unconscious bias; 
• Advertising on the ‘Joppy’ job board which anonymises candidate applications;
• Partnering with ‘Women in Tech’ to attract of more female applicants;
• Highlighting the importance of an inclusive environment for retention;
• Unconscious Bias training for all managers. 

Other initiatives implemented to support the attraction and retention of women included:

• Engaging DE&I experts to speak at company events, educating employees on hiring best practices, and the importance of creating an inclusive and diverse workplace. These sessions helped to raise awareness and reduce unconscious discrimination throughout Intent HQ’s hiring process and within the workplace;
• Appointing women into leadership roles – Data Science Director, Digital Marketing Director, and a promotion to Product Director;
• Offering flexible and hybrid working models, with the acknowledgement that employees have personal lives and commitments that should be accommodated;
• Offering enhanced maternity packages.
• Providing training on Microaggressions, Allyship and Privilege.
• Creating an Equal Opportunities statement, policy and DEI Roadmap.
• Creating a knowledge base for all employees to access DEI resources.

For more information about DEI at Intent HQ, click here.