Inclusion in the Workplace

My interest in inclusion in the workplace started earlier this year when I attended a Women in Engineering conference. Encouraging more women to get involved in tech is something that FanDuel has long been a keen supporter of, but on a personal note, I knew very little about the topic. I found the event very inspiring, listened to some great ideas — and heard some startling facts:

According to the Women in Engineering Society, almost half of the working population is female — but just 6% of them are registered engineers and technicians.

I knew that the number of women in tech was low — I just didn’t realise how low. If we, as an industry, don’t look at and act upon the reasons why women are not getting into technology, we could be missing out on a huge amount of talent and skills. Just think of all those ideas and innovations that are waiting to be shared!

I work in the recruitment team at FanDuel, so I understand the challenge of finding people with the right technology skills and cultural fit. When that pool of people is reduced, it makes it even harder to find the right person — the industry is already growing at a faster rate than the time it takes to train people up.

But what if it’s not just women that we’re missing out on — what about everyone else that has fallen through the net? This is where diversity and inclusion comes in — making sure that everyone has the same opportunities, regardless of gender, sexuality, nationality, race or any of the other factors that make up our essence as individuals.

So what are we, as a company, doing about it?

Well, so far we’ve:

• Introduced a happy to talk flexible working logo to our job specifications, to show that we offer flexible working. FanDuel’s ethos is that we focus on productivity and not presenteeism, but we wanted to make it more evident to potential employees
• Rolled out unconscious bias training at Director and VP level
• Started a diversity & inclusion chat room where everyone can share their ideas — off the back of this, we’ve implemented a number of actions
• Appointed a Diversity & Inclusion Champion — that’s me — to act as a point of contact for all things inclusion-related

I have many, many more ideas on how we can make inclusion part of our everyday working practices and can’t wait to introduce a few more of these over the coming months. What I ultimately want to achieve is an inclusive environment where everyone’s individuality is recognised — making us better as individuals, as a team and as a company.

Andrés Tapia — author of The Inclusion Paradox: The Obama Era and the Transformation of Global Diversity — captures it perfectly in the line:

Diversity is the mix. Inclusion is making the mix work.

Emma, Talent Team