Best Companies for Women to Advance Q&A - RTI

We spoke with Stan Schneider, CEO of Real-Time Innovations, to share more insights into why RTI is one of the Best Companies for Women to Advance. Read the Q&A with Parity.org CEO Cathrin Stickney and RTI CEO Stan Schneider below.

Cathrin: Why is gender equality important to your company's success?

Stan: At its most basic, foregoing a commitment to gender equity eliminates 50% of the talent pool. In reality, however, it’s far more important than that.? Diversity and inclusion bring perspective and balance that make the company stronger in many ways.

Cathrin: How have women leaders made an impact in your company?

Stan: Success stories abound.? Our VP of Operations started as an admin assistant.? Our sales team has more women, especially in high-paying positions than almost any technology company.? Two women, founding members of our rapidly-growing Spain office, are now its most senior leaders. ? Our female General Counsel serves as Secretary of the Board. 33% of employees, 36% of managers, and 30% of executives are women, compared to 19%, 16%, and 10% in the technology industry.? And we are actively improving: 38% of our Director-level employees are women, mostly hired and promoted from lower-level titles.

Cathrin: What program, policy, or decision has your company implemented for gender equality that you are most proud of?

Stan: RTI actively recruits, mentors, and promotes women, especially into key roles where they can serve to increase our perspective and as role models for others.? As a result, we have many women in key roles across all departments, from entry-level engineers to our top executives.? Even in traditionally male-dominated roles, RTI has many women leaders.? This includes top engineers, engineering management, sales management and account executives, and operations and financial leadership.

None of this is because of a specific policy favoring women.? Our women are not paid well, advancing, or managing teams because we preferentially pay or promote.? They are just damn good.? Our policy is simple: we recognize their talent and help them thrive.? We do find that role models are critical; an environment with diverse gender representation in powerful and leadership positions encourages others to grow as well.??

Our women are not paid well, advancing, or managing teams because we preferentially pay or promote.? They are just damn good.?

That said, just recognizing talent does not suffice; we also offer extensive training and guidance.? As CEO, I lead a Professional Development Series of over 20 “classes” in a wide range of topics from personal growth to delegation and leadership. Our executives offer introductory “lunch and learn,” helping people understand the functions in their departments. We offer it to all employees; enabling ambitious talent to grow quickly into leadership roles. We encourage employees to explore the vast opportunities available, help them choose, and then foster their success.

For new and growing managers, this program is expanding into the RTI Management College (RMC).? Instead of ad-hoc training found in most companies, the RMC provides consistent, scalable, practical training for RTI’s next-generation management team.? This includes curated content, challenging growth assignments and homework, and active coaching. Our training was recently featured in Forbes.

We realize that women often find technology companies unfriendly.? We actively counter that at RTI, partially by ensuring high percentages of women in engineering, management, sales, and executive roles. We also offer outstanding support for working mothers, from flexible schedules and WFH to maternity and paternity leave.??

But more fundamentally, RTI cares about women.? RTI mentors women.? RTI promotes women.? And RTI provides an intentional environment where women can lead and contribute.? There are few more supportive environments.

Cathrin: How do you foster an inclusive company culture, especially with the rise of remote work?

We live in an era where technology can free us to work almost anywhere.? RTI’s business is well suited to take advantage; we can offer our employees more location freedom than many companies.? Even before the pandemic, we were very distributed.? We had employees in 22 states and 7 countries, but only two offices.? As we grow, we will open more offices, but we will also retain and expand our excellence in distributed culture.

Our “rLocation” policy is simple: All employees may work from home (WFH) as much as their position and team permit. We also will support most employees who wish to move to other locations. This freedom helps us honor our core commitment to employee career and quality of life. By excelling in managing distributed work, we can gain a better work and home environment for us all to thrive.

Of course, this is not without challenge.? Our primary challenge is to preserve our culture despite losing the bond of a? common workspace.? Interactive culture is no accident and it’s not cheap.? We meet this challenge by investing in both in-person and virtual interaction.

People bond primarily by being together; face-to-face interaction is the glue that holds us together. Despite our distribution, we offer face-to-face interaction to all.??

For local employees, RTI strives to make our offices appealing. We host office events, lunches, stimulating meetings, team days, after-work socials, games, and more. These are all optional.

For remote employees, we support increased travel for proactive face-to-face interactions.?

This includes a variety of company-wide, department-wide, or team-focused events.? Major events include the annual Company Kick-Off (CKO) and the Field Engineering Technical Interaction (FETI).? We also encourage team offsites and other smaller get-togethers. Whenever practical, these meetings should be at RTI offices to encourage extra-team interaction; we support that with “surge capacity” in our offices.? Using our offices to host these meetings helps to ensure a lively office environment and provides ample opportunities to maximize interactions.??

We also offer extensive online interaction.? All teams hold regular distributed team events.? Examples include online cooking classes, games, coffee chats, and more. Every meeting welcomes remote zoom participants. We record or schedule all meetings to accommodate different schedules and time zones.??

Perhaps most importantly, we ask our employees to recognize and personally contribute to team interaction.? We have always trusted employees to manage their own work schedules, vacation, work-life balance, location, and more.? We don’t rely on oversight to drive action.? However, with an even more distributed team, we must ask employees to be responsible not only for their own productivity, but for team and company productivity as well.? We all share the responsibility for interaction.

Cathrin: This last year has seen women drop out of the paid workforce at an alarming rate. What are you doing to retain women, particularly those with caregiving responsibilities?

Stan: The first principle in our core values is to accept a fundamental responsibility to further the career and quality of life of every employee.? This includes active support for work-life balance, including strong support for family caregivers.?

For example, in the US, RTI has employee-managed PTO; we do not accrue or limit time off. Beyond this paid time, we also pay an extra bonus to ensure quality family time. The bonus is for all employees who take an annual “real vacation”, defined as a vacation with no contact with the company through email, social media, or other means. Real vacation is for your family.

This is just the start. We offer extensive maternity (and paternity) leave. We host interactive family events (including online) such as making gingerbread houses or tie-dyed shirts. We have a special “mother's room” for lactation in our office.? We have no set hours or workdays, allowing parents to juggle their busy schedules.??

Our support is not just through policy; we have a long history of encouraging working mothers to be present for their families without penalizing them for periods in their lives when they cannot dedicate as much time to their careers. This commitment to career and quality of life requires flexibility, but it also engenders deep loyalty. Even in the frothy Silicon Valley job market, we have dozens of employees who stick with RTI while raising their children and growing their careers over many years and even decades.

Cathrin: What advice would you give to other companies that want to create gender equality?

Stan: Diversity takes work; you have to actively look for talent.? Hire and develop great people irrespective of gender or other diversity. Take the attitude that employment is a true life partnership. Trade your commitment to employee career and quality of life for theirs to company health and success.? Accommodate differences in work styles, schedules, location, and attitudes.? Nurture people and their families along with their careers. Expect to support people over time as they go through life transitions. Train, mentor, promote, and adapt.? Care.