Gender Equality at Ksilink
At Ksilink, we agree that the STEM sector has to improve in diversity and inclusion. That’s why we’re committed to gender equality in the workplace, with the aim to contribute of changing industry practices and upholding our values.
Since its creation in 2014, gender equality has been naturally included to our processes thanks to our agile, flexible and open company culture. Recently, we have started to implement new processes nurturing gender equality, and plan to initiate other actions.
Most importantly, we are willing to maintain the standards already in place, implement new ones and keep on working on gender equality as the years go by.
In terms of resources, an internal working group meets at least once every quarter to talk about gender equality at Ksilink. This team includes 4 employees from support and R&D departments, in order to discuss all admin, operations, business and R&D matters in our gender equality plan.
Our recruitment process
Recruitment begins with a job description. We have drafted a gender inclusive job description template, available for everyone in need of a new employee in their team.
During the application process, we often observe a good ratio of female and male candidates, even for senior positions, which is worthy of note.
In 2022, we recruited one woman and one man in leading research positions.
As part of our desire to improve diversity in our process, we are willing to train managers and relevant employees to unconscious biases in recruitment. Such training for our managers is foreseen to be done before the end of 2023.
Career development at Ksilink
Regarding career development, one of our major goals is to train supervisors to general aspects of team management and leadership, including gender equality aspects. Such training for our managers is foreseen to be done before the end of 2023.
In addition, we recently launched our Scholarship Program and will be closely monitoring the number of female and male candidates, as part of our will to promote scientific careers equally.
At Ksilink, both female and male employees, may they be in leading or engineer positions, get to be directly involved in scientific outreach and networking by attending scientific conferences and being author in peer-reviewed publications. In 2022, 10 employees attended international conferences: 6 women and 4 men, including 5 in leading positions and 5 R&D engineers. It is crucial for us that everyone gets equal networking opportunities.
Since January 2023, we have implemented two annual interviews for every employee, which provides an opportunity to discuss career development. During these interviews, it is crucial that each employee, regardless of their position and gender, know their worth. That is why we are aiming to set a framework to ensure that employees know when and how to ask for promotion and to negotiate.
Building an inclusive environment
Since the beginning of Ksilink, gender equality has come naturally within the work environment. Indeed, as a small company with a strong open culture, our policy is quite flexible and well-established.
Occasional remote work is possible for health, family and practical reasons, regardless of your level in the company and your gender. For instance, remote work on a weekly basis has even been formalized in the contract of one of our male employees with family responsibilities. Ksilink does not expect more from mothers than fathers.
Staff representatives also play an important role in relaying employees’ concerns. The first elections of employees representatives outcome has been (1) lead representative : female and (2) substitute representative : male.
We plan to improve continuously our practice and raise our standards. Thus, we plan to implement a framework on the right to disconnect and on the conditions for remote work in the next 6-9 months.
Regarding internal communication, while Ksilink is located in France, our work language has always been English. English is the common language for researchers (all publications are in English). At Ksilink, we also recruit researchers from the international scene, and had several colleagues who do not speak French.
English being more gender inclusive than French, we are making sure that no one feels excluded when communicating to all employees.
Research and gender
As a drug discovery company, we are fully aware that research is often gender biased, which can come at a price for women and gender minorities. For the moment, it is not so easy for us to take concrete measures and include a gender dimension to our daily work in the laboratory and generally in our research work and processes. Indeed, we often depend on our partners, but also on the scientific criteria of our research material.
However, we keep that aspect in mind and our R&D team will communicate internally about this topic through studies, publications, and webinars.
Gender equality data at Ksilink
For the purpose of transparency, here are the gender-disaggregated data about Ksilink’s employees as of December 31st 2022.
Please note that as a small company, we took the liberty to display numbers and not percentages.
