Qlik Honors “Women’s Equality Day”

Although that convention was held more than 170 years ago, like many areas of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I), there is always more we can do. At Qlik, we wanted to honor this year’s day by discussing how we’re taking concrete actions – which is crucial to any corporate effort around DE&I.

Qlik already emphasizes policies and actions on issues that matter to women in the workplace: the importance of bridging gender compensation gaps, the need to have internal opportunities and growth available to women, and – probably most important of all – the value of female representation. And given we live in the tech sector, where gender disparities are known to be pronounced, we make it our mission to continually revisit our work toward gender equality.

One of the ways we track progress and keep ourselves honest is through our DE&I scorecard (as seen below¹), which illustrates gender representation across all levels of the organization, from non-managers to directors and above.

Our efforts really come to life throughout our teams. This year, our Global Products and Technology (GPT) team is implementing a variety of programs and tactics to attract, recruit and retain diverse talent in this vital function. Karen Fowlie, VP CTO Office, who is leading the GPT DEI effort at Qlik, notes that GPT’s gender diversity efforts now and moving forward will focus on:

• Ensuring our company’s candidate pipeline includes attracting women to opportunities in GPT by addressing unconscious bias in job descriptions;
• Encouraging Qlik’s female employees in technical roles to host hackathons with local universities;
• Committing to a minimum of 20% women (or one female participant, whichever is greater) on interview panels; and,
• Partnering with our Culture and Talent team to explore ways to make the job candidate process more favorable and accessible to women.

In addition to filling new tech roles, we are also undertaking multiple efforts to ensure we’re retaining and enriching the employment experience for women at Qlik, including:

• Having diverse representation on GPT promotion boards, with a target of at least 20% women; all members of these boards will be required to take unconscious bias training;
• In addition to GPT board members, asking all leaders within GPT to take similar training, with GPT working with Culture and Talent to identify the most appropriate courses; and,
• Conducting periodic/ongoing comparative analyses on roles that both men and women occupy within Qlik, evaluating where each land in the pay scale, and taking corrective actions toward achieving equity.

One exemplar of our pride in women at Qlik is Elif Tutuk, VP of Innovation and Design, whose ideas around collective intelligence was recently featured in Fast Company.

These are just a few examples of Qlik’s ongoing commitment to ensure women are treated equally and fairly in the workforce. To quote Elizabeth Candy Stanton, one of the founders of Seneca Falls Convention, “To refuse political equality is to rob the ostracized of all self-respect, of credit in the marketplace, of recompense in the world of work….” The world of work at Qlik is one where women can flourish and contribute, and we are proud of the DE&I programming here that contributes to making Qlik an employer of choice for women. As always, we will continue to lead and do more, such as creating more flexible employment possibilities for women that choose to have children and then want to rejoin the workforce – they are just as qualified as any other applicant, and we want to include them in our Qlik family.

To that end, Qlik is hiring with an emphasis on attracting female applicants for technology-based/R&D-based positions. Please take a look at our openings by visiting this page.

1. Qlik 2020 Impact Report