International Women’s Day: Fostering a culture of inclusivity and equality at Xero

This Sunday, 8 March, is International Women’s Day. The global focus for 2020 is #EachforEqual – the idea that whatever our gender identity, each one of us can help create a gender equal world.

This theme resonates, because one of our six representation, inclusion, and belonging principles at Xero is that we’re all accountable to create an inclusive culture.

We’re committed to championing gender equality as part of our wider representation and inclusion work.

On the whole, the technology industry doesn’t have a great record when it comes to gender representation, but at Xero we’re out to change that.

That’s why we were proud to be globally recognised for our commitment to gender equality recently, by being included in the 2020 Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index. This index tracks the financial performance of public companies committed to supporting gender equality through policy development, representation and transparency.

We believe fostering a representative and inclusive workforce is of the utmost importance, because not only does it ensure our own people thrive, it also reflects the needs of our customers.

We also recognise that gender is not binary, so we’ve framed our measurable objectives for gender balance as a minimum of 40% women and 40% men, with the remaining 20% open to allow for flexibility and acknowledge that there’s a range of gender identities among our people.

As we prepare for International Women’s Day, we’re delighted to celebrate all the incredible women who contribute to our business. As at 1 January 2020:

• The Xero Board was 43 percent female
• Our leadership team was 42 percent female
• 43 percent of our employees were female

But a diverse workforce is not limited to only gender balance – we’re also focused on other areas to ensure all our Xeros feel included, can be their authentic selves, know they belong, and do their best work. We’re driving this through a range of initiatives such as flexible working options; delivering unconscious bias training; and mentoring. We’re also championing mental health and wellbeing through personal stories by our leaders, mental health awareness training for our people managers and redefining sick leave as ‘wellbeing leave’. We’re celebrating cultural identity and engaging in activities to promote LGBTI inclusion and support of people with disability.

To learn more about how Xero is focused on creating an environment where everyone is equal, see our People webpage.

To find out more about what a gender equal workplace means to our staff and customers, see International Women’s Day: What does a gender equal workplace mean to us? (part 1).