Did you know that in middle school, 74 percent of girls express interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM), but when choosing a college major, just 0.4 percent of high school girls select computer science? The STEM community is missing out on a huge proportion of our nation's great technical minds!
Fortunately, there's an organization dedicated to changing that. Emily Reid, the curriculum director of Girls Who Code, was kind enough to share her insights on technology, women in STEM, and the future.
The importance of closing the gender gap
Reid said that by 2020, we'll have 1.4 million jobs in the United States requiring computer science degrees, yet we're currently on track to fill just 400,000 of those jobs. This translates into 1 million computer science jobs up for grabs. Of those 1.4 million job openings, at this rate, only 3 percent will be filled by women.
"There is a huge opportunity both for women and for the technical economy," Reid said. "We don't want our startups and founders to be missing out on 40 to 50 percent of the great technical minds. This is a really important problem for us nationally, and it's also a great opportunity for girls and women to be part of — to have a huge influence on — technology, and to provide that economic opportunity for themselves and their families."
Reid explained that boys and girls both express an interest in STEM fields throughout childhood, but right around the beginning of middle school, interest among 13- to 15-year-old girls falls dramatically. This is the target age group for Girls Who Code.
Why computer science is "awesome"
"What we're trying to do is get computer science into the hands of those girls and show them why it's such an exciting, creative field," Reid said. "There are a lot of unfortunate stereotypes and misconceptions about what being a computer scientist is.
"We get girls interested in computer science by showing them why it's awesome, why it's something that they can be creative with, and that they can use it to solve problems that they're interested in. We find that our girls, once they discover computer science and fall in love with it, start seeing it as a way to solve problems in their communities."
Reid shared two examples of exactly how girls have used computer science to solve problems they care about: Pocket Poll and Tampon Run.
Pocket Poll
Some Girls Who Code students last year were troubled by the low turnout for local elections in their community, despite the numerous important issues on the ballot. The girls created a mobile app called Pocket Poll that alerts users of upcoming local elections, presents relevant details, and includes unbiased information on all the candidates.
Tampon Run
Two Girls Who Code students from last year's New York summer immersion program created a game called Tampon Run. "The game is intended to really bring awareness to the fact that we're so desensitized to violence and guns in gaming today, and that's something that we don't blink an eye at. Yet there is still a stigma for young girls to talk about menstruation. Isn't it an issue that this is something that's so normal and happens to 50 percent of the population, but it's still taboo to talk about? They created a really fun game with a message that has had a really important social impact," she said.
"One of the important things those students said they found was, 'I never would have created this game if I wasn't in a Girls Who Code classroom — if I didn't have this safe environment where I could bring up this idea and be supported by my classmates.'"
Girls Who Code success stories
One of Reid's favorite success stories involves a first generation college student from Miami who came to Girls Who Code with no experience in computer science and minimal experience with computers. Though the program was challenging for her, she built an amazing final project and learned a lot over the summer. She recently received a scholarship to attend her state university, where she's planning to study computer science.
"We have a number of stories like that where we have students who are first generation, and they're getting scholarships and opportunities to attend college because they're studying computer science," Reid said. "Those universities are looking for girls like ours to come and to work on that."
Ninety percent of Girls Who Code immersion program attendees go on to major or minor in computer science.
You can't be what you can't see
There's more to the Girls Who Code story than bits and bytes. One of the most important elements of the program involves role models and mentoring.
"We say that you can't be what you can't see," Reid explained. "So, we bring in women from different areas of computer science: maybe a computational biology researcher, a software developer from Google, or a technical project manager.
"They all have interesting backgrounds and stories, and the girls can look at them and identify with them and say, 'Wow, there was a part of her story that I really identified with that reminded me of my own story.' They can look at that person and say, 'I can do what she's doing.' The girls see other women like them who are out there doing this, and once they see that, it's really powerful."
Partnerships
Girls Who Code has built an impressive list of partnerships. Some of its partners include Adobe Foundation, Cover Girl, AT&T, General Electric, Twitter, Google.org, Microsoft, and News Corp, among others.
"We have been blessed with so much support from our partners," Reid said. "Our partners host girls in their technology companies for the summer. The girls are coming in and out, they get to meet those engineers, they get to see them working day to day.
"We've also had partners who host field trips for us so the girls can come see their technology and meet their employees. They'll offer speakers or workshops to us. So if a company has a really interesting API, they can host a workshop for our girls and teach them how to use their API."
How you can get involved
There are many ways to get involved with Girls Who Code. Organizations can become sponsors and individuals can support Girls Who Code by donating. If you're the hands-on type, you could even host a club or become an instructor.
"Anyone — for example, a teacher at a high school or a librarian — could apply to host a Girls Who Code club, and they don't need to have technical experience to do that," Reid said.
"If you do have a technical background, you can apply to be an instructor at one of our clubs, and you can also apply to teach a summer immersion program if you're available during the summer."
How girls can get involved
- Join (or start) a local Girls Who Code club
- Apply for the seven-week summer immersion program
- Download the free Girls Who Code curriculum
The butterfly effect
Girls Who Code aims to expose 10,000 girls to computer science this year alone through its summer immersion programs and Girls Who Code clubs — and that has a butterfly effect.
"Some of the girls who leave our summer immersion program will start a Girls Who Code club or teach their siblings how to code," she said. "Once you teach one girl to code, she may go and teach five more."
There's a rapidly growing opportunity for girls and women with STEM skills in the modern business landscape, and Girls Who Code is doing great work to help provide the support, community, materials, and mentorship they need to change the world. The best part is, you can help them achieve their mission in so many ways.
If you haven't donated your Bonusly earnings to Girls Who Code yet, today is a great day to start!
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The new and improved Rewards page allows companies to highlight their company culture and users to express their unique personalities through a customized reward experience. Bonsuly’s robust reward catalog meets employees wherever they work with 1,200+ rewards in 200+ countries. With reward information at their fingertips, and a WCAG AA accessibility supported interface, employees can spend less time redeeming rewards and more time enjoying them.
Let’s take a look at what’s on the menu!
Streamlined shopping experience
The new rewards experience matches familiar online shopping patterns and pages load faster than ever before for a stellar shopping experience. Redeeming a reward is as simple as 1, 2, 3:
- When a user navigates to the rewards page, they’ll immediately see how many points they have available to spend with a prominent redeemable point balance.
- With their balance in mind, they can browse the updated reward categories to easily find the right reward for them.
- Once they select their desired reward, they’ll be met with a brand detail page highlighting key information they need to confidently claim their reward. After claiming the reward, it’s ready to be redeemed with the selected brand.
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Rewards for everyone
Bonusly’s reward experience is WCAG AA approved and meets the needs of global customers with robust translation capabilities and rewards in 200+ countries. We’re meeting our customers wherever they work with additional content translations supported and purchasing power parity abilities. It’s the rewarding experience heard around the world. 🌎
Built with your employees in mind
Every employee has a unique reward personality. There are the repeat redeemers; employees redeeming from the same reward month after month. The situational shoppers; employees cashing out rewards to line up with life events. The spontaneous purchasers; employees who like to try a new reward every time.
Lucky for our users, Bonusly’s reward refresh is customized to meet the unique needs of employees and companies alike. Now, everyone can quickly find rewards they might like or re-order their favorites. At the company level, admins have the ability to add custom rewards or donations central to their culture. We’ve also made it much easier to represent your company in style with automated swag fulfillment through AXOMO. Last, but not least, we highlighted "Points Boost" on the rewards page to increase peer-to-peer recognition while keeping recognition budgets in check.
The bottom line: employers reward the way they want, and employees are rewarded the way they want.
As if this update wasn’t enough, we’re just getting started! Keep an eye on this blog post to be the first to find out about additional reward enhancements. We hope you and your employees enjoy a more seamless, fun, and accessible rewards experience. Ready to share the news? Our one pager can help. Happy rewarding!
Are employee engagement surveys the be-all and end-all to understanding employee sentiment? 🤔
Though surveys can be a good first step to assess the state of the organization, they need to be supplemented with rich, real-time people analytics in order to be meaningful, trustworthy, and actionable. Let's take a look at the challenges with traditional engagement surveys and how rich people analytics can help fill in the gaps. 📈
The issue with traditional engagement surveys
Surveys without action can create mistrust among employees. If you're willing to ask employees questions, you should be ready to respond to feedback, and quickly. When survey data is mishandled, mistrust among employees increases. Additionally, employees don’t trust that survey results are truly anonymous and fear retribution for unfavorable opinions about the company. That’s why surveys should be supplemented with reliable, real-time people analytics.
Beyond mistrust, surveys often offer temporary solutions to long term problems. HR teams frequently scramble to offer quick fixes to the issues they see in their survey results, when what they need to focus on is implementing permanent solutions. That’s the problem with receiving engagement data all at once instead of regularly, in real-time. Enter Bonusly analytics! Bonusly allows you to understand and react to employee sentiment in real time with powerful people analytics.
How to use Bonusly to supplement survey data
As Walden University puts it, “Surveys provide a snapshot of the moment that’s already passed.” By the time you collect, analyze and take action on survey results it can be too late to move the needle on employee engagement and retention. In addition to employee surveys, it’s essential to monitor real-time people analytics to act on important peoples decisions quickly.
Zero in on problem areas
Identify engagement issues in real-time and quickly understand which parts of your organization need your attention. With Compare Rates analytics, you can consistently compare recognition rates across teams and identify teams that are giving and receiving recognition at a rate below your company’s average. You can make recommendations to boost recognition rates by implementing award programs, encouraging managers to recognize their direct reports, and connecting your Bonusly instance to your preferred chat tool to boost visibility of recognition and encourage add-ons.
Establish benchmarks
Before and after you take action based on survey results, benchmark your company’s current level of engagement with Bonusly. Having quantitative data to improve upon can be a great way to set tangible goals for long term improvement.
Measure adoption of core values
You can use hashtag analytics to regularly measure the adoption of your company values. Understand if there are values that have trended down that may need programming support from the HR team. Were there key events that can be tied to those declines? Regularly reviewing changes in hashtag analytics allows Bonusly customers to proactively implement changes instead of reacting to survey results.
Incentivize survey responses
A key issue with employee engagement surveys is that they’re hard to get employees to respond to given the time commitment. Low response rates lead to inadequate sample sizes which makes meaningful organizational change a challenge. Using Bonusly’s awards, HR teams can incentivize participation in the engagement survey to ensure they have sufficient results to work with.
Next up, let's look at how you can use Bonusly data to make employee survey results actionable.
How to use Bonusly to take action on survey results
Bonusly’s robust people analytics are essential to supplementing survey data. Here are four ways you can use Bonusly analytics to ensure survey results don't collect dust on your HR team's desk:
Survey says: low engagement scores
Bonusly helps build a culture of appreciation and many of our customers have seen their eNPS scores go up as a result of implementing Bonusly. Both Andiamo and Nexthink were able to increase their eNPS scores significantly after implementing Bonusly. 👏
Survey says: lack of DEI education
If you get feedback about a lack of DEI education in the company, start to incentivize educational behaviors like training, courses, and focus groups happening at your organization. Using Bonusly’s award functionality helps increase employees' personal initiative to take part in important learning opportunities and empowers everyone to influence company culture in a meaningfully positive way.
Survey says: retention is an issue
Often, employees flag retention as an improvement area in engagement surveys. Implementing an employee recognition program has a powerful impact on retention. In fact, 48% of Bonusly customers saw an improvement in employee retention after implementing Bonusly. With Bonusly's help, our customers at Pender Veterinary saw their attrition rate stay flat during the Great Resignation.
Survey says: employees are disconnected
Often, HR teams get survey feedback about a lack of connection between employees, teams, and departments. Bonusly can help! Over ⅔ of Bonusly customers reported an improvement in employee connection after implementing Bonusly.
We've only scratched the surface on what Bonusly's powerful people analytics can do for your company. Want to learn more? Schedule an employee recognition demo.
New Custom Feeds: A Dynamic Feed of Recognition
Too much employee appreciation is a good problem to have, but it can be overwhelming to keep track of every piece of recognition flowing through your organization.
To help you and your team stay up to date on recognition that matters most to you, we’ve launched Custom Feeds. Custom Feeds allow Bonusly users to save feeds to their homepage for specific locations, teams, or departments. Everyone has the freedom to decide which feeds they want to see and the flexibility to quickly change them at any time. With easily adjustable views, users can zoom in on relevant recognition without losing sight of the organization as a whole.
What can the update do?
With Custom Feeds, you can view only the recognition you need to see, when you need to see it. Then, when you’re done looking at a specific slice of your organization, you can quickly toggle back to seeing organization-wide recognition. With Custom Feeds you can:
- Create and save new feeds based on teams, departments, and locations
- Keep tabs on several streams of recognition at once
- Add and remove feeds easily and as often as needed
What can the update do for you?
Teams aren’t static, Bonusly’s new Custom Feeds aren’t either. New Custom Feeds support large, international teams like never before all while saving managers and leaders valuable time.
Support companies with multiple office locations
For companies with multiple offices and locations, Custom Feeds allow you to easily follow recognition posts from your location, helping you keep tabs on the team you interact with most throughout your workday, without losing sight of what’s happening company-wide.
Support large and scaling businesses
If you’re working at a large or scaling business, you can use Custom Feeds to create visible feeds of the most relevant teams, departments, and locations. Then, when you’re done zooming in on specific teams, you can quickly return to viewing the organization as a whole.
Keep track of the team’s key milestones
Gone are the days of missing important work milestones like birthdays and anniversaries. With Custom Feeds, you can view recognition by teams or departments to keep track of recognition and interactions flowing between the people you work with most.
Quickly change your perspective
Custom Feeds saves you time and makes catching up on and engaging with relevant recognition simple. Need to switch up your feed view to get some new perspective? You can change your recognition view in a matter of seconds by adding feeds to your homepage. You can set them and forget them, or make changes as often as you’d like.
What’s next?
Custom Feeds are now available to all new and existing Bonusly customers. 🎉 If you’re new to Bonusly and want to see Custom Feeds in action, request a product demo or take an interactive tour of Bonusly.