FIVE: Women at work

In 2020, women’s rights and gender equality are still topics of discussion across every industry anywhere in the world. Even in today’s society, we still encounter overt and subtle forms of discrimination. The only way to put this kind of inequality and discrimination behind us is to create women’s opportunities in every facet of today’s culture; this is how we can help push society forward as a whole. The best place to start? At our own company.

In light of this, we took a hard look internally at our own stats, and we were pleased with the results. We have always strived to build our company as a place where employees are hired and rewarded on performance and character ever since we started in 2007. And we are living those values: we have managed to ensure equal opportunities, resources, and pay for women and men, which you can see demonstrated in the numbers below.

At FIVE, women are paid equally, or more, than men, for their work

When we analyzed salaries this fall, we saw a pattern of women being slightly higher paid than men for the same role, which is a testament to the talent and experience women at FIVE bring to the table. 

On our design team, women have 1% bigger salaries (circa 120 HRK gross) on average than their male colleagues. This is a huge difference compared to the Croatian standard in design where female designers (35% of the group) said their average salary was between 5000 and 6900 HRK; their male colleagues reported an average between 7000 and 8900 HRK, which would mean that female designer are paid 25% less on average than their male colleagues. 

On our development teams, women have 3% bigger salaries (circa 600 HRK gross) on average than their male team members.

On our PM team, women have 6% bigger salaries (circa 1300 HRK gross) on average than their male counterparts in the same position.

We are ahead of the curve both in Croatia and worldwide

In the US, women in the computer and mathematical sectors make around $16,000 less on a yearly basis or 22% less than men for doing the same job.

In Europe, things are only slightly better: women working in IT earn 20% less than men.

And that’s not all, when it comes to the percentage of women in IT, we’re on the right track, beating global averages again by a landslide.

We’ve increased the representation of women in our workforce by 11% in two years

In 2018, 24% of our employees were female. In 2020, women now make up 35% of our workforce. European stats report only 17% of women employed in ICT, and top five technology companies in the US report 25% of female employees. While we’re proud of our significantly larger percentage of female colleagues compared to European and US averages, we’re committed to keep the numbers increasing over time.

On our development team, women have 14% of our development positions. While this may sound demotivating, it’s in line with the Croatian industry standard at 13%. The American industry standard isn’t that far ahead. In the US only 20% of engineers in the tech sector are female. We can improve in this area – and are always on the lookout for talented female developers (Sound like you? We’d love to hear from you. Head to our careers page.)  

On our design team, female designers make up 63% of the group, which is slightly above the average American design workforce at 61%.

And finally, on our Project Management team, 44% of our PMs are women!

Women are not only paid equally – they are promoted equally

In 2018, women held 20% of the management roles in FIVE, leading teams and departments. By the beginning of 2020, FIVE had 41% management roles filled by women!

If we take a look at the worldwide trends, women hold 26.5% of executive, senior-level, and management positions in S&P 500 companies.

How did we get here? How do we maintain this momentum?

We believe it started (and continues) with a culture of inclusivity and respect, valuing learning, growing, and support for each other. This culture didn’t happen by accident, just because we woke up feeling amazing and wanted to build a great workplace. Building that kind of environment required dedication to our values and some tough decisions along the way, in both talent acquisition and people development processes. Sometimes we pass on candidates with strong technical skills but not our same shared values, delaying the urgent hiring need for a greater long term goal. In people development we strongly focus on people’s individual potential, taking time and attention to really get to know someone and create meaningful opportunities for their development. 

To keep the momentum, we’re proud to say we’ve grown by 36 female employees (50% of new hires) in 2020, and committed to helping employees of all genders balance their work and life, now and always. Still, there is always room for improvement. We pledge to work on increasing the number of women in development roles at FIVE, and creating stronger pipelines for promotion of women into the upper echelons of management. We will continue sharing our numbers and would love for other companies in the tech space to do the same, strengthening a culture that encourages collaboration, equal rights, and equal pay for all genders.