Girls in Tech fights to close the gender gap in the workplace with Asana

Closing the gender pay gap in tech – and beyond – is a work in progress. Global nonprofit Girls in Tech has played, and continues to play, an important role in this fight. Sponsored by companies like Nike and Amazon, leaders across the globe take strategic guidance from Girls in Tech on diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) issues. 

With a membership of more than 130,000 women and allies in 38 countries, Girls in Tech runs a number of initiatives to champion their cause. This includes an annual conference that shares inspiring ideas on erasing the gender gap, a jobs board that connects talented women with positions at top tech companies, and events like hackathons and startup challenges.  

Co-Founder & CEO of Girls in Tech, Adriana Gascoigne, leads the charge and ensures everyone has the resources they need to keep pushing for positive change. Girls in Tech has a global team with 10 to 15 full-time staff, plus vendors and contractors. 

While the organization was running well, Adriana noticed there could be an improvement in cross-functional collaboration. Chapter leaders, vendors, and consultants weren’t using the same platforms as internal staff which resulted in extra time spent coordinating work through email and spreadsheets. 

The Anatomy of Work Index reveals managers spend 62% of their workdays coordinating work. Girls in Tech needed to bring work into one platform to streamline collaboration, save time, and develop a clearer picture of everything happening across the organization. 

Finding the best solution for their global team

The Girls in Tech team is selective about the platforms they use. Adriana and the team vetted the top work management platforms to determine which would: 

• Allow for easy collaboration between internal and external groups 

• Be intuitive and simple to use for fast adoption 

• Make project management easier for everyone 

The team was impressed with Asana's intuitive interface and, as an added bonus, their external marketing team was already using the platform. Seeing that major brands successfully use Asana sealed the deal for Girls in Tech, and the platform was chosen to help the team in their fight for gender equality. 

Asana has an impressive track record working with major brands at some of the largest and most complex companies in the world. The variety of fields Asana is used in made us sure that our unique challenges – as a tech-centric, non-profit, global organization – could be properly addressed.”

A fast implementation: no formal training required 

Girls in Tech implemented Asana without formal training. Hilary George, HQ Operations Coordinator, set up the platform with the help of their Asana account manager. Once Hilary understood how Asana worked, she identified the most beneficial features for the team to begin using first – such as projects, automations, and forms – and shared best practices during the training session. Very soon after, the team and external vendors started collaborating in Asana. 

Asana is now ubiquitous in our organization. It makes our lives easier when working with vendors because everybody knows how to use it. Our new expectation is that all employees learn how to use Asana when they start because it’s central to how we work.”

How internal staff and external vendors work together in Asana 

All employees, chapter leaders, and Girls in Tech vendors now work together in Asana. This has saved the organization 13 workdays, or the equivalent of nearly three weeks for a full-time employee, per year that would have otherwise been spent coordinating work. According to Adriana, using Asana has led to a huge increase in productivity, efficiency, and collaboration across the organization. Team members are now communicating and completing work at a much faster pace. 

Here are three key ways Asana is being used: 

• Project management is centralized in Asana so everyone is communicating, collaborating, and coordinating work in the same place. Project templates enable the team to kick off new work faster, tasks with clear deadlines keep timelines on track, and rules automate workflows by eliminating manual steps and decreasing response time.

• Work intake is better managed and tracked because new requests are submitted through one channel – Asana forms. Vendors and internal staff use forms to share briefs and requests that capture important information upfront so work can be actioned faster.  For example, chapter leaders use forms to request things like website updates and email creation. A team member then triages the request to the appropriate employee to work on.  

• Collaboration with agencies is smooth because internal and external teams are working off of the same information in the same place.  Responsibilities and deadlines are clear with tasks, and they use comments to communicate about work right in Asana rather than email. This helps ensure everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goal.

I’m really grateful Asana exists, it’s become a core part of our organization. As a leader, it gives me peace of mind because I can see work is moving forward. From an organizational standpoint, we have become much more productive.”

Continuing to fight for gender equality 

Girls in Tech has ambitious plans for the future. The organization will keep working on expanding its presence in boardrooms and advising CEOs on how to properly establish DEI practices so that it makes a real impact in their companies. The team will keep using Asana, and looks forward to evolving with the platform.