A Couple of Nerds Teach Us About the Care and Feeding of All Nerds at Work

This post is one of a series of powerful, eye-opening interviews from Jensen’s ongoing research into Leadership into the Future of Work, as well as from the study by Ultimate Software/Jensen Group: Reimagining HR for the Augmented Era. 

Mona Becker and Melanie Nilsson are Co-Founders of STEMivism. STEMivism’s mission is to promote a sustainable, inclusive, innovative, and socially responsible climate for scientific and technological advancement.

How Did STEMivism Come About?

Mona Becker: “Melanie came back from a conference, where she had learned about artivism, activism through art, and said our focus should be STEMivism.” 

Melanie Nilsson: “And in talking to a lot of our friends, who see many of the same things we see, but don’t know where to start. And are afraid to even start the conversation. That’s what we do.

“STEMivism’s goal is to create a better environment within education. Education trains people for jobs and for what to expect. So we need to intervene there, as opposed to allowing this negative model to persist.” 

Mona: “We want to make the scientific fields more socially responsible, more inclusive, and to celebrate the diversity that is in these fields. 

Melanie: “One of the things we’re focused on is bringing people together in diverse, cross-field settings. The STEM fields have set themselves up as silos in the sky. And being so isolated just reinforces the poor cultural problems. We want to hybrid multiple fields together.”

What Concerns You About How Education and Work Flow Into One Another?

Mona: “We see a lot more students who are coming through higher education with support networks in place. Either through families, mental health professionals, or personal development mentors and coaches. So one of the things we need to be aware of is that these students are leaving relatively structured environments and support systems, and then, when entering the workforce, they find less support stuctures in place. 

“So HR needs to be aware of the support that potential employees might need. And to be aware of what early interventions may be needed to help people succeed.

“We’re seeing disabilities that are coming in at the college level, that would not have been on the books ten years ago. From the autism spectrum, to attention deficit, and more. Mind you, the majority of these students are phenomenal! But they’re going to be lost in a traditional workplace, because they might hesitate to speak up for themselves, and might need more support than others. 

“Getting the students, and then the early employees, to be their own advocate is what will work best. But they need help and support to learn how to do this. 

“Many early employees will need great help and support in figuring out how to advocate for themselves in chaotic, disruptive, competitive work environments. Mentoring programs and similar support may need to change to provide greater support than currently exists.” 

Melanie: “The HR approach for training and development — that one size fits all — has never worked. And it’s going to be even more useless in the future of work. The workforce will be even more diverse in their needs, so what didn’t work before, REALLY won’t work going forward. 

“There needs to be more assistance at the ground level, to build the support that’s needed as well as bridges of understanding about what extremely diverse populations need. 

“Also… As evidenced by the #MeToo movement… Bad behavior is absolutely rampant in the STEM fields. Ranging from sexual harassment to different types of bullying. Also, safety issues. In STEM fields we see a lot of employer failures to provide physically safe work environments.

“We need to see a lot of improvements in the ability for people to report bad behaviors and major concerns with non-punitive results. Whistleblowers are still ostrasized emotionally and career-path-wise. 

“As a consequence, these behaviors continue, and that means innovation will be dead on its feet. 

“There’s also a great lack of self-awareness within the workforce. You can’t work on what you can’t see. Many of the challenges we all need to work on are not just five-minute conversations during or after a meeting. Some things require deep introspection. HR could be creating the safe spaces for that. Guidance in how to build bridges to our inner selves and with others. 

What Are the Tough Choices That Business Leaders Must Make? 

Mona: “They need to play a larger role in education. We need more business people coming to high schools and colleges and talking about STEM opportunities in the real world. As part of that, business managers get a much better understanding of who is coming to them as the new workforce.

“Also, transparency matters a lot. When HR recruits for a job, be realistic about the work, the workload, the goals, what your expectations will be. Lack of doing this serves to decrease retention.”  

Melanie: “We need business leaders doing more to set the standards for, and talk about, soft skills. They also need to walk the walk. Cultivate more self-awareness themselves, as leaders. Talking much more openly about soft skills, cognitive errors, the importance of diversity and inclusion.” 

Why Do You Each Care So Passionately About These Issues?

Mona: “I’m a scientist, and a humanist. When I entered post-doc work (after PhD), I became passionate about advocating for people issues. When I was an educator in Maryland public schools, and I saw the large inequality that existed between socio-economic classes. We had so many young people who were starting at such a deficit from the other students. And I was shocked that so few educators understood this.

“So that inspired my work with students, and retention and recruitment in STEM fields. There is such potential in so many students, and then when they become part of the workforce, many will write them off because they are so different. 

“People are our greatest resource and there are lots of contributions in the field of science that are not being made because of the environment in which work takes place.” 

Melanie: “During elementary and high school I got the sales pitch that science was all about creativity and innovation, and that it you could make a difference and help people, and there’s good job security. I drank that Kool-Aid because that was me!

“It wasn’t until I graduate school that I realized: 'Oh my gosh, this is not what I was sold.' I started to see a lot of the inequalities in STEM. Also, the metrics that we’d be judged by are so ambiguous that it’s nearly impossible to achieve success. There’s no such thing as work-life balance. You have to live/breathe/eat science to even be considered remotely successful. I also witnessed a lot of misconduct like data stealing and sabotaging of other’s research. 

“That led both of us to form STEMivism: We’ve got to work on this landscape. We’ve got to begin to reshape it, to make structural barriers more visible, because they’re completely invisible to most people working in STEM. We wanted to make a difference.”

Jensen Site, Twitter, FB. Bill’s upcoming book, The Day Tomorrow Said No, is a powerful fable about the future of work: Designed to revolutionize conversations about the future between leaders, the workforce, educators, and students. Go here to download a FREE copy of the final pre-press draft of the book.