Nitsch Engineering: Championing DEI and Driving Inclusion

As a women-led company in a male-dominated industry, our company has been working to address workforce diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEI&B) issues since our founding in 1989. We are dedicated to fostering an environment that respects and values people from diverse backgrounds and enables all employees to bring their full selves to work. 

Our commitment to truly making change was recognized by the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce with the 2022 Small Business of the Year Award in the Diversity & Inclusion category. We were also recognized by The Boston Globe as a DEI Champion among the Top Places to Work winners in both 2023 and 2024.

In alignment with the CRE Pledge for Action, Nitsch is continuing to drive DEI&B work in the following ways.

Success in increasing the talent pipeline and recruiting diverse teams 

While raw numbers won’t ever fully define diversity, as a company full of engineers, land surveyors, and planners who base their design decisions on data, we think that numbers provide the most unbiased way of measuring progress. We determined benchmark metrics in 2016 and assess these metrics annually. Nitsch’s employees in 2024 were 40% women and 16% minority.

In 2023, we implemented an applicant tracking system that allows for blind screening, which helps remove unconscious bias from hiring decisions.

As a result of our efforts, we’re happy that we achieved a Level 2 score for Workplace Diversity in the Just 2.0 program, a voluntary disclosure tool for organizations to elevate internal discussions, policies, and procedures and create a common language and measurement framework for social justice and equity issues. We will continue our work to move up another level!

Internal programs/policies related to DEI&B

Nitsch has taken an intentional and strategic approach to driving continuous improvement on DEI&B initiatives throughout our history, including: 

• Began holding mandatory Respectful Workplace training for all employees (1990) 

• Established DEI task force and started training on how to integrate DEI into the workplace (2017) 

• Established the DEI&B ERG and began hosting “Community Circle” meetings to create a safe space for employees to discuss a range of topics (2018)  

• Introduced an option to include pronouns in email signatures (2019) 

• Began sharing monthly education pieces about a variety of DEI topics, to broaden awareness about important issues (2019) 

• Began mandatory Unconscious Bias training for all employees (2019) 

• Launched enhanced Flexible Work Policy (2019)

• Incorporated diversity initiatives in our Strategic Plan (2020)

• Established a formal Affirmative Action Plan (2020) 

• Established the Council for EDI, a leadership team that guides corporate financial investments in training and education, assessments and remedial actions of both recruiting practices and current employee policies, and spending diversification to benefit smaller women- and minority-owned businesses (2020) 

• Established the Parenting & Caregiving ERG (2020) 

• Reviewed all corporate policies for bias and updated our mission to integrate DEI (2021) 

• Joined the Boston Chamber of Commerce Pacesetters Program (2021) 

• Signed the Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW) CRE Pledge for Action (2021) 

• Developed EDI Job Posting Process (2021) 

• Established our Women’s ERG (2022) 

• Established Pride@Nitsch, our LGBTQ+ ERG (2023) 

• Implemented blind hiring system to reduce unconscious bias (2023)

• Pursued and achieved Just 2.0 certification (2023) 

• Launched enhanced paid parental leave policy that provides more paid leave for all parents (2024)

• Established our BIPOC ERG (2024) 

Through our participation in the ACEC Research Institute’s Diversity Roadmap – an annual survey that helps engineering and design services firms benchmark themselves against other firms in the industry and determine what level the firm is at in a maturity model – we learned that Nitsch Engineering is much more effective at implementing our DEI policies and practices than the majority of other industry firms.

External program successes related to DEI

Engineering is well-known for its lack of diversity: a 2019 Georgetown University study found the US STEM workforce is 65% white, 15% Asian, 16% Hispanic or Latinx, and 3% Black; the overall US STEM workforce is only 16% female. We want to help change this by addressing a range of intersecting issues and have proven to be a leader in this space.