New Study Finds reacHIRE Leadership Development Program Improves Retention of Women in STEM

By PR Newswire On Apr 25, 2023

reacHIRE, dedicated to helping companies meet their diversity goals through Returnships and innovative leadership development programs, announced today that a study by Stanford’s VMware Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab found that women who completed training using reacHIRE’s Leadership Development Program were more likely to remain at their companies than peers. The reacHIRE program, Aurora, trains women to enhance interpersonal skills, grow networks, and provide access to mentors. The research, conducted by Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences professor Shelley Correll and PhD. student Julia Melin focused on women working in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

According to an article published by SHRM (2023) women make up only 27% of the workforce in the technology industry, with more than 50% of them likely to quit before the age of 35, and 56% likely to quit by midcareer.

The study leveraged a six-month intervention to see if focusing on interpersonal skills with women in STEM would improve retention and job satisfaction rates. Skills such as negotiation, influence and networking were delivered employing the high touch, scalable Leadership Development program, Aurora. After training, women rated their skills an average of 9% higher than before the program. A control group, who did not go through the training, rated their skills an average of 3.5% lower. Taken together, these findings suggest that the average overall impact on the treated group was 13%.

“Providing professional development on ‘interpersonal skills,’ and doing it in a manner where women support each other, helps women advance and builds a strong sense of belonging,” said Addie Swartz, reacHIRE’s CEO. “These conditions are critical for retention.”

reacHIRE’s Leadership Development program Aurora is purpose-built to help women advance within companies. It utilizes a cohort model, is led by seasoned female executives and leverages a digital platform which includes a growing library of short-form videos called “Real Leader Real Stories,” 10-Minute Career Workouts, a community forum providing real-time advice and tools for building personal networks. Participants give the program 95+% satisfaction scores and many have gone on to be promoted within a year of the program.

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