Aubrey Blanche (pictured), global head of diversity and inclusion at Atlassian Pty Ltd, is working to foster a new era of diversity at Atlassian through her innovative approach to team building. These efforts are not only improving internal processes and morale, but benefiting Atlassian’s ability to serve its consumers as well.

“It’s imperative for us to look like the customers that we’re serving, because it means we understand them and can help them do better work,” Blanche said.

Blanche spoke with Rebecca Knight (@knightrm), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing event in Orlando, Florida. They discussed some of her most successful methods for maintaining diversity at every level and how inclusivity is crucial for the health of an organization.

Rethinking employee engagement

Atlassian’s new methods for creating such an inclusive environment are far-reaching and include performance-review processes. “Women on average, when they have the same contributions as their male colleagues, tend to rate themselves lower,” Blanche said. “So last year we made a change to our performance review process that helps us get rid of problems that might be introduced by that.”

Analyzing employee data from a diversity perspective has created tremendous learning opportunities for Atlassian, according to Blanche. “We report on the diversity of our workforce at the team level. It doesn’t matter if you have 30 percent women in your company if all the women are in HR or marketing and the men are in engineering. What matters is that each of those teams is diverse, because it helps them build better,” she stated.

Blanche’s strategy is grounded in the notion that listening to your employees will give you a strong sense of what they truly need to benefit their work — and the business. After speaking to employees and reviewing interview data, Atlassian developed a few unique programs that have had a huge impact on retention and morale.

“Instead of just investing in recruiting, we created a variety of programs that helped women collaborate across their teams. Things as simple as a coffee dates or peer mentoring have actually helped drive retention for women,” Blanche said.

Atlassian’s efforts have enabled the company to improve hiring of women in technical roles by 80 percent over the past two years. With a deepened understanding of professional inclusivity, it seems that Blanche and Atlassian may be providing a roadmap for others to follow in diversity hiring.

“When you start talking about axes of diversity that are past gender, it turns what could be an ‘us-versus-them’ conversation into something that’s about ‘we,’” Blanche concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.

Photo: SiliconANGLE