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Twitter commits to a global workforce comprising 50% women by 2025

Twitter has announced that by 2025, it aims to have at least half?of its?global workforce comprising women. Currently, women make up 42.5% of its employees globally.

This was shared by the company's Vice President, People Experience and Head of Inclusion & Diversity, Dalana Brand, in its Inclusion & Diversity Report for March 2020.

Additionally, the company also wants women to be represented across its global business, and has set sights on having women represented in 42% of technical roles, and 41% in leadership.

"This is an ambitious goal and timeline, but one we can and must achieve together," Brand said.

Outside of Asia Pacific, in the United States, Twitter is committing to at least a quarter of its workforce comprising under-represented minorities by 2025 - Black, Latinx, Native American, Alaskan or Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, or multiracial.

Brand went on to share that while goal setting has been seen as a point of controversy in D&I, "we know representation targets work, because we?ve seen it in action."

"The introduction of workforce representation targets were a catalyst to increased investment, organisational alignment, transparency and accountability. "

Most importantly, she stressed, it has helped drive progress; since the introduction of workforce representation targets in 2018, the firm's global representation of women has increased 4.1 percentage points.

Moving forward, Brand shares that Twitter is launching an inclusive hiring programme to drive global progress in workforce representation. "We?re leveraging the momentum from investments in our global Business Resource Groups (BRGs) to introduce an Allyship Programme with the goal of bringing our BRGs closer to the business and drive belonging.

"And, our Supplier Inclusion Programme is expanding its focus to include more communities and regions."

In other Twitter news, the firm announced on 11 March that work-from-home is now mandatory for its employees globally, in wake of the COVID-19 outbreak.

For contractors and hourly workers who are not able to perform their responsibilities from home, Twitter will continue to pay their labour costs to cover standard working hours while the firm's work-from-home guidance and/or travel restrictions related to their assigned office are in effect, its Vice President, People, Jennifer Christie shared.

The following will apply to those working from home:

Best practices for working from home

Some factors put in place to ensure productivity in staff include workspace, communication, self-care, and logging hours. "Overall, working from home doesn?t change your day-to-day work, it just means you?ll be doing it from a different environment," said Christie.

Managing a distributed teamA manager resource guide has been provided, which highlights the three key pillars of management: Strategy, Growth and Care.

Virtual interview guide

All interviews at Twitter will be done via video conferencing. Christie adds: "While this Virtual Interview Guide is not a holistic Interview Guide, it instead focuses on the aspects of interviewing candidates remotely that differ from interviewing candidates in-person.

"We have also shared guides for working across time zones, utilising collaboration tools to stay connected, and ergonomic tips for working from home and on-the-go."

Before making work-from-home mandatory, the firm first announced on 2 March that it was encouraging its employees to do so, and only made it mandatory in Hong Hong, Japan and South Korea due in part to government restrictions.


GO Communications? officially commences 4.5-day workweek

In similar news, Malaysia-based independent communications agency GO Communications recently announced a slash in its workweek, from five to four-and-a-half days, effective March 2020.

This means that every Friday, the firm's employees will only need to work from 9am to 1pm.

Meanwhile, other terms such as employee salary and working hours from Monday to Thursday (9am to 6pm) will remain unchanged. This essentially translates to employees still being paid a full five-days-a-week salary while their working hours will be shortened by at least two days per month and 26 days a year, which is akin to a 10% pay rise and 624 additional hours of "me time".

Commenting on this, Chief Executive Officer Peter de Kretser said: "Happy employees are naturally more productive employees. More than merely preaching a strong work-life balance, we see it as our responsibility to put words into action. Of course, there?s no secret that this is also designed as a team retention and attraction mechanism, while encouraging greater productivity.?

In a digitally and technology-empowered world, he shared, there's now "so much potential for an increase in efficiency and productivity."

"This should naturally require a paradigm shift in the way we do business. We need to constantly evolve while boosting productivity in this era of technology while empowering colleagues to utilise their time more effectively towards improved results. Gone are the days when working late and long hours and burning the midnight oil was the norm, which often results in employee fatigue and diminished results," de Kretser explained.

Lastly, de Kretser cited a move by American industrialist and business magnate Henry Ford to shorten workweeks in 1914, back when working 12-hours a day, six days a week was the norm.

"Much like Henry Ford during his time, we strongly believe this is a very progressive move which will lead to better results. We could very well be the first agency in Malaysia or even the region to implement a 4.5-day workweek but I'll bet it won?t be long before more companies here implement similar changes,? he added.

Lead photo / 123RFPhoto inside / Provided

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