
10+ Ways Companies Are Supporting Muslim Employees at Work During Ramadan (and Beyond)
In 2022, Ramadan runs from April 2nd to May 1st. As one of the 5 pillars of Islam, Ramadan isn’t just about fasting. It’s a time of spiritual discipline, prayer, charity, and introspection– and it’s important to keep in mind that people might celebrate Ramadan in different ways, namely by praying more frequently, engaging in charitable activities, and spending time with family and friends to celebrate.
So how can you show your Muslim employees and colleagues you support them during this time?
One easy way to get started is by using the greeting Ramadan Mubarak, which translates to “Blessed Ramadan.” It’s commonly used to send well wishes to Muslims observing Ramadan and the traditions that come with it.
But supporting Muslim employees and colleagues at work is not just thinking about what to say to someone celebrating Ramadan, it’s about and considering how you can better support them every day. We asked some of our partner companies to tell us how they're supporting Muslim employees during Ramadan and all year-round. Keep hearing to hear what they had to say in their own words.
BlackRock— host a virtual Eid celebration
“Last year, BlackRock's Asian & Middle Eastern Professionals (AMP) Network put together a virtual Eid celebration. This year, AMP is holding a virtual Spring Parade that will acknowledge the way different cultures celebrate Spring during the month of Ramadan. During the parade, colleagues will share photos, videos and educational presentations about Nowruz, which many of our Muslim colleagues also celebrate. AMP hopes to continue to provide opportunities for employees to gain cultural awareness and celebrate with one another during events like these throughout the year.”
Learn more about BlackRock here.
1Password— allow flexible working hours to accommodate fasting and prayer schedules
“As a remote-first company, 1Password has valued the importance of work-life balance since our inception in 2005. We want everyone's health, happiness, and fulfillment to be a top priority at work and at home. That means providing as much flexibility as possible for the wellbeing of all our employees, including our Muslim team members. Whether fasting, praying, or taking some time for introspection, we encourage our team to take the time they need to celebrate or practice during both Ramadan and all year round.”
Learn more about 1Password here.
Procore— learn how your team can join in on the celebration
“Ramadan (April 2-May 2) celebrates prayer and reflection among Muslims worldwide. Procore encourages all Procorians to bring their whole selves to work and make adjustments to support their family, faith, and community throughout the year. Tas Sachak shared how her Customer Support team supported her during Ramadan, including joining her to “open [her] fast” and ordering a prayer rug for Tas to use in-office. Tas explained, “these efforts to enhance inclusion helped me to feel respected even though I’m the only team member who practices Ramadan. My colleagues’ efforts to embrace and include me as an individual was extremely touching."
Learn more about Procore here.
Moody’s— create awareness around the significance of Ramadan
“Moody's recognizes and supports Muslim employees, and actively encourages flexibility to Muslim colleagues to choose their work hours during Ramadan. Moody’s Multicultural BRG promotes articles and newsletters that help create awareness around the practices and significance of this month and provides information for team members interacting with colleagues who observe Ramadan, regardless of their geographical location. Also, Moody’s is hosting two events; one will focus on Eid to mark the end of Ramadan and the other will highlight of the importance of Ramadan and its traditions.”
Learn more about Moody’s here.
Pluralsight— be mindful when scheduling meeting and setting project deadlines
“At Pluralsight, we celebrate the diversity that powers our teams. We recognize Ramadan as a time of hope and reflection for our Muslim team members. Our unlimited paid time-off policy is designed so that team members can take time away to rest and recharge, including any time needed for our Muslim team members around the world during the month of Ramadan. We also encourage our people leaders to provide flexibility in scheduling meetings, setting project deliverables, and other tasks as appropriate to support our Muslim team members from sunrise to sunset during this holy month.”
Learn more about Pluralsight here.
Cummins— set apart an in-office prayer space
“I have been at Cummins for about 12 years now based in Huddersfield UK. As a practicing Muslim every year I practice Ramadan (fast) which is 1 of the 5 pillars of Islam. Ramadan lasts for a whole month and during daylight hours practicing Muslims are not permitted to mainly eat or drink during this time. During the summer periods the fast can last for 21 hours in the UK.
Since the introduction of flexible working hours, I’ve been able to change my work patterns to help me work and rest during the month of Ramadan without affecting my work.
There is a multi-faith room on-site and this has helped me to pray my 5 daily prayers. The local diversity council have held Ramadan awareness events to talk with our colleagues for awareness and helped to celebrate Eid together”.
Malik, Customer & Product Quality leader, Cummins
Learn more about Cummins here.
SoftwareOne— launch an educational campaign with best practices to support Muslim colleagues and customers
“Inclusivity and belonging are a few of the cornerstones of the SoftwareONE experience. In order to further develop culturally proficient employees, SoftwareONE provides extensive learning opportunities to facilitate an accepting and informed workplace. For the upcoming Ramadan holy month, we launched an educational campaign highlighting best practices to support our Muslim colleagues and customers. Additionally, in partnership with our Muslim employees, we’ll host a roundtable discussion that encourages dialogue about Ramadan, its religious significance, history, and cultural practices. By utilizing multiple communication platforms, SoftwareONE works to ensure our Muslim employees feel celebrated, included, and supported throughout Ramadan and beyond. ”
Learn more about SoftwareOne here.
PagerDuty— allow employees to choose where they want to work: at home, in office, or hybrid
“At PagerDuty, we offer a flexible work model that allows employees to choose where they want to work - hybrid, office, or anywhere. This provides space for employees to observe cultural and religious practices in an atmosphere that is comfortable to them. Those working in the office are offered a supportive and inclusive workplace, allowing for private areas to have a moment of pause. We have prayer rooms in our Atlanta, San Francisco, and Toronto offices, as well as prayer mat storage. Additionally we offer generous paid time off and a floating holiday that can be taken to observe/celebrate holidays for various religions.”
Learn more about PagerDuty here.
Splunk— encourage a work / life blend to take time for suhur and ifter and rest when needed
“Splunk is a people-centric company, putting supportive measures in place so employees can bring their best and most authentic selves to work.
During the holy month of Ramadan (and year round) Splunkers are supported with a healthy, connected, flexible and sustainable work environment, encouraging time to recognize suhur and ifter.
Splunk supports diverse and flexible options and locations where we work with an emphasis on inclusion. It’s Splunk’s over 8,000 employees around the world whose values shape our ever evolving company culture.
If you would like to learn more about life at Splunk, please visit splunk.com/careers #WeAreSplunk ”
Learn more about Splunk here.
Workiva— encourage Muslim employees to connect and celebrate together
“Here at Workiva, our Asia-Pacific teams are putting together a virtual Eid celebration to commemorate the end of Ramadan. In this way, Workivians who celebrate will be able to connect with others across the world who also commemorate Ramadan and share their experiences. We also support our employees who celebrate by providing the flexibility to schedule their working hours and the possibility of remote work so they are able to accommodate the traditional Iftar meal and prayers after sunset. This also allows them to travel, gather with their loved ones, and attend celebrations.”
Learn more about Workiva here.
Equinix— celebrate spiritual diversity through learning sessions
"Equinix is committed to supporting our employees’ wellbeing, including their needs to worship in accordance with their faiths. Bolstered by our employee resource group, FaithConnect, whose mission is to inspire a culture of learning and respect for all faiths, non-faiths and worldviews in the workplace, we look to lay a foundation of belonging and holistic wellbeing at Equinix.
We know that by celebrating spiritual diversity, employees can bring their whole authentic self to work. Ramadan is just one example. Employees have access to quiet rooms for prayer, which is supportive every day, but certainly during Ramadan. We have hosted learning sessions open to everyone to hear more about this holiday—some employees even chose to join their fasting colleagues. In short, we encourage people of all beliefs to connect and better understand each other."
Learn more about Equinix here.
Elastic— encourage employees to come as they are
“At Elastic our "Source code" helps create a culture where individuals from all faiths have the freedom and flexibility to practice their religious beliefs, which is especially important to our Muslim employees during Ramadan.
One part of our source code is "Home, Dinner'' where we encourage employees to make their work timetable fit around their own needs such as Iftar. Another aspect of our Source Code is for people to come "As you are'' where we want Elasticians to bring their whole selves to work; as employees, parents, citizens of the world and as Muslims.”
Learn more about Elastic here.
How Elastic’s Tiffany Witwer Built a Career from Civil Engineering to Customer Service
Tiffany Witwer from Elastic is a proud mom of three.
“I enjoy being a parent because it teaches me patience and it gives me a different perspective,” she shares. “It allows me to be more present, laugh more, and appreciate the small things.”
In between her duties as a mom, she keeps herself mentally and physically healthy by running, biking, swimming, or doing yoga — all activities that help her start the day with gratitude. "It gives me the right perspective and attitude to go into the day,” she says.
With an overall positive outlook on life, Tiffany brings that same energy to her customers at work as the Head of Customer Service for Elastic.
We sat down with Tiffany, who shared with us her career journey from civil engineering to customer service. Keep reading to learn top tips for creating happy customers.
Starting a Career in Engineering
Tiffany pursued an undergraduate degree in biological engineering.
“I was always really good at math and science, especially chemistry. And I love being outside in nature and learning about it,” she shares.
It was a college professor’s research on stormwater runoff that motivated her to pursue her master's degree in biological and civil engineering. “I liked his energy and attitude toward learning. It was contagious,” she describes.
While working alongside this professor at North Carolina State University, she presented her work at a conference that helped lay the groundwork for her career. “I met a man who liked my presentation," she says, "and was hiring a civil engineer for a consulting company.”
Taking on this new opportunity, she moved to New York City where she discovered her love of being surrounded by diverse people and cultures, in addition to her new job.
“I enjoyed doing the design work and meeting the customers,” she explains. "I was always the one on the proposals, winning the design work, and building relationships with customers.”
While emerging in the complex realm of storm waste engineering, Tiffany saw how the world was progressing and thought that knowing software and technology would be beneficial.
“So I learned to code, networked, and got a job at a business analytics and software company as a pre-sales systems engineer,” Tiffany says.
Pivoting into a Customer Success Role
As she dedicated more time to customers, her interest in working with them soon began to increase. “What I loved most was that I was using my mind to solve problems, but I also got to interface with customers. I got to meet customers and hear what they were doing and hear how we could help them.”
Tiffany spent 10 years in pre-sales engineering and sales. She then took a job in a different company where she helped build out their advisory services business.
It was there that she built a successful team with coworkers who would lead her to her position at Elastic.
Elastic is the leading platform for search-powered solutions. They help enhance customer and employee search experiences, keep mission-critical applications running smoothly, and protect against cyber threats.
As the Head of Customer Service, Tiffany is responsible for making sure customers are getting the most value out of their software. "It's not only about how customers are using the technology," she explains. "It’s, ‘how is a customer's experience with Elastic? Are we meeting their need for technology?’ And, ‘are we meeting their needs from a support and empathy standpoint?’”
In order to meet her customers’ complex needs, she emphasizes how crucial communication is.
The Importance of Communication in Customer Success
Quality communication is a skill that can often be undervalued. “I think people underestimate how much time is needed for clear communication,” she points out. “Just because you put a message out there, it doesn't mean it’s clearly understood. You need to think through how people are going to respond to the information.”
With the complexities of communication, Tiffany relies on setting clear intentions when communicating in meetings. “I always ask at the beginning, ‘what is your goal for this meeting and what does success look like for you?’" she explains.
Communicating clearly what success looks like for both parties allows for a better outcome. “I think for communications, it's making a lot of time and clearly defining what you want to get out of the interaction.”
Advice for Clear Communication with Customers
Tiffany’s career journey has been a mixture of understanding technology and building relationships with people — learning how to explain the technology to customers and problem solve in an empathic way. This has led to overall customer success. To create clear communication, Tiffany offers this advice.
- Be empathetic and listen to your customers: “If you think about it, you've been trained in your technology, you know it inside and out,” she explains. "But when you meet with a customer, the technology may only be a small part of their job.” Taking this perspective can help you to communicate with more empathy. “It's understanding people's vantage point and then using that to communicate to them.”
- Defining success and clearly communicating it: “I'm a strong believer in getting on calls and confirming the goals and what people want to get out of the call," Tiffany shares. "This way, you know, you are aligned on what success is no matter what type of call.”
- Be genuine: “At the end of the day, people will remember how you made them feel," she shares. "I think for me, it's about being a good human and making the world a better place. And if you can do that in your job as well, that's a win-win.”
- Get to know people: “Getting to know people, their perspectives, and growing with them is what has led me to customer success and to where I am in my career,” Tiffany advises.
Careers in Web Development: Which One's For You?
We all have our favorite websites– the ones we frequent, bookmark, and recommend to others. You might even enjoy some website features so much that you’ve found yourself wondering why they aren’t more popular. Or maybe you’ve experienced times where you were frustrated with a website and wished you could add features or even design your own!
If you’ve ever found yourself intrigued at the prospect of designing and developing your own websites, then a career as a web developer might be just for you!
As a web developer you would be responsible for coding, designing, optimizing, and maintaining websites. Today, there are over 1.7 billion websites in the world and, in turn, the demand for web developers is on the rise. In order to figure out what kind of web development work best suits you let’s start with an introduction to the three main roles in web development that you can choose from.
The Three Types of Web Development Jobs
Front-End Web Development: The Creative Side
Think of front-end development as the décor of a house. The color scheme, furniture, manicured lawns, and overall aesthetic. In terms of a website, front-end development is laser-focused on the appearance of a website and its presentation on different devices. If you’re considering a role in front-end development, it’s important to learn programming languages such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. These three languages go hand-in-hand. HTML allows you to create user interface elements, CSS helps you with stylistic elements, and JavaScript allows you to incorporate online tools and connect your website to back-end functions.
In addition to programming skills, front-end developers need to be detail oriented, creative, willing to keep up with the latest trends in web development, cyber security conscious, and geared toward user-friendly designs. The median salary for a front-end developer can reach well into the $90,000 to $100,000 range.
Back-End Web Development: The Logical Counterpart
While a house can be beautifully decorated, it’s incomplete without a solid foundation and efficient infrastructure. Similarly, a well-designed website depends on logical and functional code to power the features of that website. Back-end web development is code-heavy and focused on the specifics of how a website works. If you enjoy the analytical challenge of creating the behind-the-scenes code that powers a website, then back-end development is for you.
Since this role is more code-heavy, it’s important that you learn numerous programming languages and understand algorithms and data structures. Some languages that are essential to back-end development are Ruby, Python, SQL, and JavaScript. Back-end developers also ensure that users can successfully retrieve and access data. This requires creating and using APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) which act as messengers that relay data related requests. Additionally, developing the code for the inner workings of a website also requires back-end developers to be conscious of the user interface features designed by front-end developers and to internally mitigate potential security risks. Due to the increased technical aspect of this position, back-end developers normally earn higher salaries than front-end developers. The average median salary for this role is around $118,000 per year.
Full-Stack Web Development: A Little Bit of Everything
A full-stack developer is essentially the Jack (or Jill)-of-all-trades in web development. Full-stack developers need to be knowledgeable about both front-end and back-end roles. This does not necessarily imply that you would need to be an expert in both roles, but you should fully understand the different applications and synergies they each imply. In order to work in this position, you will need to know the programming languages used by front-end and back-end developers. In addition to these languages, full-stack developers also specialize in databases, storage, HTTP, REST, and web architecture.
Full-stack developers are often required to act as liaisons between front-end and back-end developers. Full-stack developers need to be both problem solvers and great communicators. The end goal for a full-stack developer is to ensure that the user’s experience is seamless, both on the front-end and on the back-end. In return, you can expect to earn a median salary of $100,000 – $115,000 a year for this role.
Taking the Next Step
Web development is both in-demand and lucrative! All three roles described above contribute to specific aspects of web development and the scope of each one can be customized to the industries and positions you feel best suit you. Regardless of which role you choose, all of them need a foundation in programming.
To gain the programming skills needed in each role, you can enroll in courses or learn independently. Coding bootcamps are a great way to boost your skillset quickly and efficiently.
Click here for some of our highly rated programming bootcamp options! Make sure to check out the discounts available to PowerToFly members.
5 Tips to Build a Career in Technical Writing: Insight from Moov's Josephine Roh
Josephine Roh loves brunch. Particularly hosting it — and bringing special dishes to life to share with her friends.
The latest recipe she’s mastered is for lemon ricotta pancakes.
Cooking is part art and part science, which might be why the senior technical writer for fintech platform Moov is such a big fan of it.
“I’ve always liked using both sides of my brain,” says Josephine, who studied English literature in college, in line with her right-brain strengths, but also added an economics major to sharpen the analytical left side of her brain. She credits this double-barreled approach with setting her up well for her current career.
“It prepared me to be a holistically well-rounded person when it comes to how I think and work,” she says.
We sat down with Josephine to hear more about how she found her way into a career in technical writing, as well as the tips and tricks she has for people interested in following in her footsteps.
A Career Exploration
Josephine started her tech career in customer success at an edtech startup. “It was great training because at a startup you wear lots of hats,” she recalls, noting experiences in user research and operations. After trying a more quantitative-heavy role that gave her exposure to fintech, she realized she wanted something more creative, with an innovative, distributed company.
That’s how she found Moov.
“I was looking for a place with a remote-first culture, and Moov stood out. Some places were hybrid, or said, ‘Maybe we’ll go back to the office,’ but Moov originated without an office and intended to stay that way,” she says. “But I didn’t want it to just be remote — I also wanted it to be very human.”
To Josephine, that meant a culture of coworkers getting to know each other, respecting each other, and caring about each other — which is how she’s experienced Moov’s culture.
“There’s a lot of mutual understanding,” she says. “Something kind of sweet Moov does is this monthly “unbemoovable” meeting where someone shares their story, with pictures, to the extent that they want to. We’ve heard a lot of nontraditional, exciting stories, including from career switchers, and it lends itself to an angle of diversity and creativity that feels like a very healthy, human-first culture.”
Her first few months on the job were spent learning about the product, coming up the curve on technical writing, and pulling together documentation. After finishing the first set of docs, Josephine decided to start focusing on making Moov’s documentation better.
Her manager saw and appreciated Josephine’s initiative and promoted her to senior technical writer, which made her feel like she had chosen the right environment for her growth.
“Moov has let me run with this, building our docs from the ground up because there wasn’t red tape. There weren’t people standing in my way saying, ‘No, this is not how you do it.’ Me being comfortable with that ambiguity and trusting that people like my manager were supporting me, allowed me to be able to grow in my career to where I am now,” she says.
Technical Writing: An Intro and 5 Tips
Josephine explains what technical writing is by referencing a multi-layered puzzle. “You have to understand a certain level of technical stuff, then be able to build a translation layer and explain it in a way that anyone can understand,” she says.
“It’s about writing guides and documents that help developers implement or integrate with different software. It requires some level of knowledge of how developers think and speak, as well as the tools that they're going to be using to make things happen.” That can take the form of API-heavy reference documents, which are more technical, or more “prose-y guides” that explain more holistically what a feature is and how to use it.
Here’s what Josephine recommends to others interested in the field:
- Make sure you have the right skill set. “Tech writing is good for folks who like writing, and don't mind writing about things that they don't yet understand, who are comfortable with ambiguity or diving into the challenge of learning something new and very specific.” Other key skills, per Josephine: interviewing, talking to people, process management, research, relationship building, editing, writing (duh!), and empathy (to imagine the final product from different audiences’ points of view).
- Brush up on key tools. “I’d recommend that future tech writers learn the suite of tools they’d work with. It’s almost imperative that you would know Markdown, which is kind of like HTML, but it's the language that formats text. It’s what most tech writers type in, basically. It would be good to know how API references are generated, too, and also helpful to know how to work with GitHub.”
- Interview other tech writers! “People are super open to talking about their experiences and because it's different at every company, you may want to get a more holistic perspective and talk to a couple of people. The company really makes or breaks your experience.”
- Practice, practice, practice. “Look at the world of open source. If you want hands-on experience, look for a project with incomplete documentation and ask the owner if you can help with documenting it!”
- Find communities to learn with. Josephine says that the online technical writing community is active and generous. “There are communities for any question you might have about tech writing, as well as free resources. I definitely recommend them.” As far as specific resources and communities go, Josephine personally suggests the following:
- Google’s Technical Writing Courses
- Git and its own reference documents
- The Product is Docs: Writing technical documentation in a product development group, a book by the Splunk Documentation Team
- The Write The Docs Slack community, with job postings, recommendations, and channels for sharing other resources
If Moov sounds to you like an interesting place to work, check out their open roles!
Want To Make A Career Move? These Tips Will Help You!
💎To make a successful career move, you need to follow some steps. Watch the video to the end to get ideas on how to achieve it!
📼Wondering how to make a non-traditional career move? Play this video to get three top tips that will guide you through the process. You'll hear from Lindsay Syhakhom, Cloud Solutions Architect at Logicworks, who shares her own experience in moving from a non-technical role into a technical role.
📼 Make a career move inside your company! Tip #1: Cross team boundaries. Volunteer for tasks that cross teams at your current organization. A lot of people assume that to change careers, they also have to change employers. And that's not always the case. You can lay the foundation at your current job for the career that you want to have. Look for teams in your organization that either partially align or even fully align to the position that you want. And then think of creative ways to interface with that team.
📼 Make a career move using your institutional knowledge! Tip #2: Become the expert. If you are applying to another team in your same company, one of the advantages to your company hiring you versus hiring somebody else is that you know what the company sells, you know how teams function and take seriously that that institutional knowledge is very important. Every company has its quirks. Knowing those things is going to help you when you're applying for the next job.
Make A Career Move Confidently! - Tip #3: Ask For What You Want
Before she applied to become a cloud solutions architect, Lindsay Syhakhom had conversations with members of her team and reached out to people on other teams at Logicworks that she really trusted and had the conversation with them first. This helped take the edge off of her first conversation with HR, and with a hiring manager about her desire to move into this other field, and get their feedback. Remember that you have to apply for the job. No one can read your mind and know that you want to make this non-traditional career move!
📨 Are you interested in joining Logicworks? They have open positions! To learn more, click here.
Get to Know Lindsay Syhakhom
If you are interested in a career at Logicworks, you can connect with Lindsay on LinkedIn. Don’t forget to mention this video!
More About Logicworks
Logicworks helps customers migrate, run, and operate mission-critical workloads on AWS and Azure with security, scalability, and efficiency baked in. Their Cloud Reliability Platform combines world-class engineering talent, policy-as-code, and integrated tooling to enable customers to confidently meet compliance regulations, security requirements, cost control, and high availability.