Paradigm Training Sparks Culture Shift at The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper, founded and continuously published in New York City since September 18, 1851, by The New York Times Company. The New York Times has won 122 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper, and it has long been regarded within the industry as a national “newspaper of record.”

Paradigm training resulted in a 26% increase in women in technology in a single year

650 Employees trained in 4 months

Partnership with Paradigm

Paradigm worked with The New York Times to design and deliver unconscious bias training, and to transform the company’s hiring process. First, Paradigm facilitated unconscious bias training across the company, starting with the technical organization and then training the newsroom and the company’s executive leadership team. The training was designed with two key goals in mind: (1) raise awareness about how unconscious bias comes into play at work, and (2) motivate people to engage in new behaviors to manage bias. Erin Grau, Vice President of Transformation, reports that employee response to the sessions was overwhelmingly positive, and teams made immediate changes that led to more effective decision-making, increased collaboration, and better management.

Beyond training, Paradigm also partnered with The New York Times’ digital team to recommend structural changes that completely transformed the company’s hiring process. With Paradigm’s support, the team rewrote every job specification and overhauled guidelines for writing the specifications, focusing on language that would make the company more welcoming and open to people from underrepresented groups. The team also introduced diverse interview panels, to ensure a range of perspectives are represented in hiring decisions. Grau explains, “We wanted to make sure we were living this value that we were now espousing. We believe in a diverse and inclusive workforce, and we wanted to show that was true.”