A DevOps-Principled Approach to Inclusion, Diversity, and Belonging

DevOps principles, typically associated with software development, are applied by organizations like PagerDuty to foster diversity, inclusion, and belonging within the workplace. The principles emphasized include investing in automation and tooling to reduce repetitive work, setting measurable goals, and encouraging continuous learning and improvement through blameless postmortems. PagerDuty invests in diverse hiring practices by using tools like Textio to ensure unbiased job descriptions and partnering with organizations to source diverse candidates. They also foster inclusion through employee-run programs like Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), which support underrepresented groups. The company sets clear diversity goals, measures progress, and adapts strategies based on feedback and experiences, such as refining company values through employee insights. The journey parallels the iterative nature of DevOps, emphasizing that change requires effort from both leadership and employees, and that learning from failures is crucial for continuous improvement.