 We are seeing more women promoted and hired into Citrix at higher levels.
— Donna Kimmel, chief people officer, Citrix
With more than 30 years of experience in creating and implementing successful global talent programs that drive business results, Donna Kimmel, chief people officer, Citrix, is a trusted human resources leader who believes in creating diverse and engaged teams that enable the extraordinary. Throughout her career she has delivered comprehensive people programs, led large scale end-to-end business initiatives (including corporate reorganizations, spin-offs, from public to private to public, and integrations for global M&A activities), and catalyzed cultural transformations.
In this edition of HR Talk Women in HR series, Kimmel discusses her journey of pursuing a nontraditional path for women. She also talks about how Citrix’s parental leave policy is even helping women at other companies. From recommending ways to support pay equity to ensuring voluntary attrition among women took a dive, Kimmel highlights how leaders can demonstrate respect and inclusion in how they work every day.
Key Takeaways on How To Empower Women in HR:
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- Use employee resource group to invite women to connect, educate, and empower one another, professionally and personally.
- Compare survey responses by gender for inclusion-related statements.
- When you interview candidates, have a diverse interviewer panel.
Here’s the edited transcript from our exclusive interview with Donna Kimmel:
1. How do you view diversity, inclusion, and equity in your organization today? What are some of the challenges you encountered as a leader at the nascent stages of your career?
In recent years, our organization has taken meaningful steps on the journey toward greater diversity, inclusion, belonging, and equity. But it is a continuous journey. Even as we reach certain landmarks along the way, we need to keep our focus ahead. I am confident that we are moving in the right direction for inclusion, which I see reflected in survey results and employee conversations, and I know we are working to further improve representation.
Early in my career, I rarely saw any other women in leadership, so I felt that I had to work twice as hard to prove myself. It seemed I was pursuing a nontraditional path for women. I applied an incredible work ethic and curiosity about business to build my experience, keep learning, and performing.
— Donna Kimmel, chief people officer, Citrix
2. Which initiatives at Citrix have empowered the women at workplace? How did you measure the success of these initiatives?
We focus on parents and caregivers, offering flexibility and benefits intended to help women stay in the workforce. For example, a few years ago we expanded our parental leave in the U.S. to 18 weeks for moms, dads, and partners to care for a newborn or newly adopted child. Because it includes dads, we like to think we are even helping women at other companies have more options.
We have an active Women’s Inspirational Network (WIN). This employee resource group invites women to connect, educate, and empower one another — professionally and personally. It’s about seeing, and supporting, other women’s success, and that builds belief about what’s possible for each woman. We’ve been rapidly expanding WIN with chapters in many countries, and it has an active executive sponsor.
We have formal and informal mentoring and sponsorship programs, too.
Our metrics indicate that our efforts are working. We are seeing more women promoted and hired into Citrix at higher levels. Since 2017, our percent of women executives went up 8% points. We also watch voluntary attrition among women, and as of the end of 2020, that has gone down more than 7% points since 2017, and it’s significantly below the benchmark for tech companies across genders.
— Donna Kimmel, chief people officer, Citrix
To monitor inclusion and belonging by gender, we look to our surveys. We compare responses by gender to every item. For inclusion-related statements such as, “I feel like I belong at Citrix,†and “I feel respected at Citrix,†we are encouraged to see that women rate these as favorably as men. In our most recent survey, women even rated them slightly higher.
3. In your opinion, what is the best way to create a culture that helps to retain and engage its diverse and inclusive talent?
Culture is grounded in values, so first check that your values support diversity, inclusion, and belonging. For example, our values are respect, integrity, courage, curiosity, and unity. Our values invite everyone to share their ideas, questions, and contributions — and to know that they can be themselves every day. They lead us to work across diverse populations to design solutions and programs, to drive active allyship, and to focus on inclusion. They encourage inquiry to generate solutions. Values are the foundation that helps drive culture, and we need to live those values consistently.
4. Programs designed to increase diversity and inclusion in the workplace often fail, according to the Harvard Business Review’s articleOpens a new window . What concrete steps should leaders take who are seeking to include female talent as an important part of their recruiting strategy?
First, leaders can demonstrate respect and inclusion in how they work every day. When they create a work environment in which women can contribute, succeed, and be rewarded for it, women will love what they do and their company — and they will recommend it to others.
In the hiring process, it starts with the job description. Identify—and remove—language that is limiting or exclusionary. There are even bias mitigation tools that can help you do this. When you interview candidates, have a diverse interviewer panel. It’s not just about a woman interviewer seeing candidates differently, it’s also about the female candidates seeing that they could work with other great women.
To support pay equity, do not ask candidates about their salary history, ask them about their salary requirements or expectations and then align these to your market pay practices. This is a way to ensure that you are not building on prior pay disparity, but rather paying for the role.
— Donna Kimmel, chief people officer, Citrix
Leaders can also hold themselves accountable to diversity goals. We established environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) goals that will be a modifier to our executives’ bonuses. It gives greater visibility to our progress and motivates leaders to be personally invested in the success of these initiatives.
5. Which are the top 3 tools, skills, and mindset women in HR need to embrace today to succeed in the workplace?
Some skills are becoming increasingly important to being effective in HR, and I don’t think these are specific to women.
First, it’s no longer enough to be an expert in one domain. We need to be great at systems thinking. Understand the implications of decisions and how they affect the rest of the business, locally and globally.
It’s good to be HR-savvy, but it’s great to be deeply business-savvy.
— Donna Kimmel, chief people officer, Citrix
That means we each need to be agile and open to change, too. That’s easier when we adopt a growth mindset — a commitment to continuous learning and growing. When we believe we’re capable of more and curious about how else we can improve and contribute, we’re well positioned to succeed.
Another of the top qualities we need from women in HR today is courage. In the past, it may have felt safer for women to stay quiet or go with the flow, but then they’re withholding their ideas and contributions. Ultimately, we want all employees to speak up and use their voices so that we have more perspectives and insights influencing decisions.
About Donna KimmelOpens a new window :
Donna Kimmel is the executive vice president and chief people officer of Citrix. She is responsible for all aspects of identifying, fostering and developing top talent as well as overseeing organizational strategies that maximize engagement and position the company to win in the marketplace.
About CitrixOpens a new window :
Citrix builds the secure, unified digital workspace technology that helps organizations unlock human potential and deliver a consistent workspace experience wherever work needs to get done. With Citrix, users get a seamless work experience, and IT has a unified platform to secure, manage, and monitor diverse technologies in complex cloud environments.
About HR Talk
HR Talk is an interview series that features top people and talent leaders from HR tech and Fortune 500 companies who are redefining the future of work. Join us as we talk to these HR tech and people analytics experts to get in-depth insights, and some pro-tips on how HR tech can best work for you and your people. If you are a people expert and wish to share your thoughts, write to [email protected]Opens a new window .
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