At Strawberry and eBerry by Strawberry, we seek to create a workplace that allows people to grow and develop over time. A study led by Accenture and Girls Who Code showed that half of women abandon technology careers by the time they reach 35 years of age. Moreover, women are leaving tech roles at a much higher rate (45%) compared to men (Forbes). We want to do what we can to change these statistics! Regardless of gender, the key thing is to provide a workplace where people can feel safe, seen, represented and respected for their skills, competencies and character. We care about you as a person.
In order to create a workspace where everyone can feel comfortable and safe, it is essential that people feel validated when entering a room. Everyone has experienced that awful feeling of not fitting in and the insecurity that comes from being the odd one out. This is where diversity plays a key role. By promoting diversity within our companies, we are also able to create more effective and productive workplaces.
“With diverse teams, we can create greater innovation with different perspectives and with better outcomes. We need to make sure that we inspire each other and keep growing as individuals by learning from people who have different perspectives than ourselves. This is the key to both innovation and to create more sustainable technology.” Kari-Anna Fiskvik, VP of Technology Strawberry
Room for All are the three words that define our core values here at Strawberry/eBerry by Strawberry. Not only do we want to offer rooms to anyone that might like to stay at one of our hotels, but we also want to make room for all kinds of different employees within our organization. We are constantly inspired by what other companies do and we also hope to be able to inspire others by attending and hosting events on such matters. In 2022, for example, we chose to sponsor the Nordic Women in Tech Awards (NWiTA). Their mission is also to inspire, educate and support women/non-binary pursuing careers in IT, and to create a safe environment where everyone feels they fit in. During the event, we awarded a prize for “Diversity Leader of the Year”; this year won by the very talented Sara Shaifee Co-founder and CEO/ Assistant Professor, DivERS/ Technical University of Denmark. You can read more about the other winners here: https://nordicwomenintechawards.com/winners-2022/
The day after we collaborated with Women in Tech Gothenburg and hosted a Breakfast Club event, with the aim of creating an open discussion place to talk about the importance of diversity and the perks of actively working with it. It’s absolutely essential to us that we create diversity for the right reasons. It’s essential to us that our people always know that while being careful to always pay attention to maintaining a diverse culture, we also pay close attention to choosing the best people. It’s really not very hard to do both at the same time - in our opinion - it’s a classic win win.
“It's not just about gender equality strategy. We recruit by taking into account many diverse factors, where personality and competence plays a key role in setting the dynamics of a team and is the main motivation for choosing a particular candidate.” Linda Arvidsson Dahlman, Head of Architecture & Information
