In addition to recruiting women, the tech industry has a problem retaining them.
Research from Accenture and Girls Who Code found that women who take a tech job are 50 percent more likely to quit before the age of 35 than men. Making it past that marker doesn’t guarantee a long career, as 56 percent of women actually leave the industry mid-career, more than twice the rate of men.
As a woman in tech and the Director of Talent Development at live events marketplace Vivid Seats, Allison Betancourt is acutely aware of how hard it can be to retain women talent. In its quest to be an exception in the industry, Vivid Seats has adopted a multifaceted approach to promote this retention.
At the core of this approach is a listening strategy that enables Betancourt and her colleagues to keep a pulse on the sentiment of women at the company. This listening strategy, combined with a willingness to pivot away from what isn’t working, has helped the company tip the scales in the battle to retain talent.
“So far, 2023 has been fantastic for our retention, and we are incredibly proud considering the broader trends in tech,” said Betancourt.
Betancourt shared the strategy, initiatives and mindset that helped her team get to such a fantastic place with Built In Chicago.
Vivid Seats is a live events marketplace offering tickets for plays, sports events, concerts and more.
What is Vivid Seat’s approach to retaining women on your team?
Vivid Seats takes a multifaceted approach to welcoming and retaining women. It starts with our listening strategy, which consists of surveys, focus groups and stay interviews throughout the year. Our feedback platform allows us to drill into many demographics, including gender, and is a driving force behind so much of what we do to retain people.
Our employee resource group, Vivid Women in Tech (WIT), is influential in ensuring equitable experiences for all employees. It is more than 90 members strong and hosts regular meetings, social gatherings and guest speakers to foster connection, growth and drive change. WIT hosted “Seats at the Table,” an event where our women executives shared the very personal ups and downs they’ve faced in their careers and their lives. It was truly inspirational!
We also invest in building a strong leadership development culture and specifically coach leaders to understand how marginalized people are impacted in the workplace. As part of our development culture, leaders calibrate on talent across the company to ensure that we are being fair and equitable throughout the employee experience lifecycle.
And it can’t be left unsaid that 50 percent of our executives are women!
How do you track and measure the success of your retention efforts?
We have a team that’s responsible for measuring and tracking retention, and report this information monthly. In addition to data, we have a robust exit survey process that includes a standardized questionnaire as well as a one-on-one conversation with an HR business partner. We care deeply about understanding the variables that impact someone’s decision to leave, and gathering both qualitative and quantitative data is crucial.
Our listening strategy serves as an important vehicle to understanding the success of our retention efforts. We consistently seek feedback to understand how new initiatives are received, and if things are not moving in the right direction, we pivot. That’s one of the things I love most about Vivid Seats: We’re very agile and if something isn’t impacting our employees positively, we will shift. We are also diligent about drilling feedback down to the individual level. Our transparency helps ensure we get candid feedback and can keep iterating and improving.
We consistently seek feedback to understand how new initiatives are received, and if things are not moving in the right direction, we pivot.”
How have you tweaked your approach to retention efforts over time?
The needs and wants of employees are constantly changing, and so must we. Through our listening strategy, we found that women felt feedback from managers wasn’t as critical as it could be. There is data out there indicating that women often receive feedback that is less direct and actionable. To address this, we’ve amped up our feedback training and resources to ensure that the feedback approach is the same no matter your identity. We’ve also implemented new feedback touchpoints throughout the year to give everyone more opportunities to practice and build those muscles.
Another recent tweak being made right now is a survey to better understand what our employees actually want. It’s no secret that the drivers of engagement have changed since 2020, but no one truly knows what motivates people today … even the experts seem to be scratching their heads. Our newest survey has several questions that get to the root of what our people really want. From there we’ll make decisions and design programming to address those specific needs, all in an effort to continue engaging and retaining our great talent.
