Recruiting Women Is One Thing, Creating a Welcoming Workplace Is Another

This article from Julie Holmes, Co-CEO of Virginia Tire & Auto, also appears on Medium.

As I’ve written about in previous posts, we’ve been very intentional about recruiting women at Virginia Tire & Auto. The result is that we currently have more women working for us than ever before!

But to be perfectly honest, the only real place for us to go was up on this metric. And while step one is creating recruitment strategies that speak to women, we know that to retain women in an environment that has been predominantly male, we need to make sure we are creating a culture where women feel comfortable, welcomed, and included.

We hosted our first VTA Ladies’ Night last summer at Axes and O’s, a local axe-throwing venue.

With this in mind, we are being intentional about our decisions and giving female employees opportunities to connect through women’s outing events and a Virginia Tire & Auto women’s channel in Microsoft Teams. But we know we need to go beyond this and address unconscious bias inside of our organization, and we are doing so from a place of education and empathy.

I know that we aren’t the only organization actively working to be more inclusive, so I decided to candidly share how we are reshaping our organization. Perhaps there is something that can be borrowed from our experience.

Reminding Everyone That Women Aren’t Girls

One key area of focus in addressing unconscious bias is the language we use in the workplace and how it can unintentionally make women feel like they are unwelcome or unequal to their male counterparts.

One of the most common forms of unconscious bias we encounter in our stores is women being called girls. Historically we’ve heard everything from “shop girl” to “a girl is working in the back” to “we just hired a new girl.”

I know this can seem innocuous to the person saying it, but as a woman myself, I can tell you, it’s insulting. After all, I never hear grown men called boys, so I think 2022 is the perfect year to put this form of unconscious bias to rest. And because we assume our team members don’t mean to intentionally demean women, when we do correct it, we do so gently and kindly and then we move on.

I’ll give you an example that was shared with me by our Chief Operations Officer, Jamie Steider. She was at a store where we recently hired a female manager and one of the technicians said, “Did you meet the girl in the back?” And Jamie responded, “I met the woman in the back.” And the technician replied, “Woman, girl, same thing.”

Jamie had a few options on how she could approach this and help dismantle the unconscious bias that had surfaced here. She decided to educate with empathy and responded, “We don’t call the men who work here boys, so we shouldn’t call the women girls,” and then went on to explain a bit more.

In another instance, Jamie and her directors were interviewing for an open position. Jamie explained all the aspects of our organization that she is responsible for, and the candidate said, “Well little lady, you sure do wear a lot of hats.”

One of Jamie’s (male) directors jumped in and said, “It’s really demeaning to talk to our Chief Operations Officer like that.”

This comment may have gone unnoticed or unaddressed by anyone other than Jamie a few years ago. But because we shined the light on the negative impact language like this has on the valuable women who work at our company, the men in our organization have not only shifted their language, but they have also become allies, correcting other men when needed. Now the responsibility to educate doesn’t solely fall on the women who work here.

Removing Barriers

I’d be remiss if I didn’t address the physicality of some of our roles and the need for women to be able to do things like torque a tire (which weighs roughly 50–60 pounds).

Women don’t typically have the same upper body strength or body size as men, which means that different techniques are needed to complete certain tasks. With that in mind, we have one of our female employees (who started as a general service technician and is now a manager) meet with our female general service technicians to give them tips on how to approach these types of tasks. We also know being in the minority or being an “only” in a location can be intimidating and make it difficult to feel as if you belong, so having someone to turn to who may have a similar experience can significantly decrease this stress.

Another barrier to entry can be scheduling. We have a female technician in one of our stores who explained that she can’t work Saturdays because of childcare responsibilities. While working Saturdays is a requirement of the role, we recognize that this can be a huge barrier to entry, especially because women continue to be responsible for most childcare responsibilities. Because of this, we adjusted the schedule so she can work Monday–Friday.

We are also making sure that our physical spaces aren’t unintentionally unwelcoming to women by doing things such as creating a private changing area where everyone can change into and out of their uniforms.

Having One Vulnerable Conversation at a Time

We know some of these conversations aren’t comfortable for many team members. But we can’t shy away from difficult conversations, because without them progress on any level is virtually impossible. And while we aren’t trying to change people’s minds and hearts, we are giving people the language and tools to create an environment that is aligned with our values. Sometimes that requires us all to be vulnerable.

These are just a few examples of what we are doing to make our workplace more welcoming to women. As I mentioned earlier, I’m sharing this progress as it unfolds, and I’d love to hear about other areas of focus that organizations undergoing similar improvements have implemented.