The importance of diversity

The technology industry is extremely competitive and a never-ending challenge is to attract and retain great people (often referred to as “talent”).

Those who have some responsibility or experience relating to people leadership and teams will understand that career progression & development opportunities are one of the key determinants of attrition. Attracting women within the technology industry is even more of a challenge with a much more limited pool of candidates available.

We know Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) positively impacts business performance; there is strong evidence supporting this. Michelle Redfern (introduced below) states that businesses who embrace D&I, have profit outperformance of 21%, long term value outperformance of 27% and outperform on an EPS basis of 2 times. In Australia, a 6% increase in female workforce participation would result in an 11% increase in GDP output. If you have time this HBR article discusses different views on the impact.

I’m far from an expert in this area, however as a leader of a team, and as part of a business that values D&I, it’s important for me to continue to learn, support and lead improvements in D&I. Personally, as my daughter gets older (feels like it’s happening more quickly!) I want to have confidence that her potential to achieve success in her career will be the same as that of my sons, so I am passionate in my view that businesses need to drive an equitable environment.

In my time at Iress I’ve tried to support our people and initiatives to raise awareness and improve diversity and inclusion, but I’ve probably not done enough. Recently I was at an event we hosted called “The Importance of Celebrating Women: How to create a workplace culture that attracts, engages and celebrates women” featuring Michelle Redfern. It was a way for me, as a male, to learn and understand more of the challenges in detail that women face, within a male-orientated sector, when it comes to working, equity and opportunities.

I came away with a clear message and perspective — something that strongly resonates with me. Less talk, more action. Or in Michelle’s words, Get $4!t done.

As I mentioned, Iress values D&I and works hard to continually improve. Of course, there’s always more that can be done but it’s not solely the responsibility of an organisation to change things, it’s up to us all to do something.

I, along with all members of the Leadership Team, have a winning step (KPI) to ensure our D&I strategy is understood and embraced by all. Reflecting on this, I’m probably not doing well enough. My action is now to bring D&I to my teams’ front of mind and actively work towards improvement. For me, this starts with data. But what data? Let’s keep it simple but meaningful as a first step.

• Gender pay — gap and sustaining equal pay
• Gender role balances — increasing the proportion of female representation across technology roles
• Percentage of women being promoted through roles

I feel it’s important to expand both traditional and learned thinking when we are making decisions relating to remuneration and role requirements (at a minimum). Are we analysing the outcomes of decisions and using a D&I lens? At Iress we do, however, I’ve not brought this into my team enough in terms of awareness. So it’s something that will be done.

Perhaps reading this you might think, wow, they’re small steps. But, they are steps and it is action. I’m encouraging more action from more people. Michelle shared a list of questions that could be asked in a workplace to learn more and encourage action.

• Do we have gender balance at the non-executive, executive, senior management levels across our workforce?
• How do women feel about working here? Why?
• Why do women leave our company?
• Why do women join our company?
• How many women have been promoted versus men?
• What is our parental leave policy for primary and secondary carers?
• What is our policy (and what actually happens) on flexible work?
• Do we have a gender pay gap? If so, where and why?
• Do we have a strong culture about combatting sexual harassment in the workplace?
• How diverse are our suppliers and are our procurement policies up to scratch?

When we think about these questions and the D&I lens I ask myself if we are being strongly considered and purposeful in how we design and operate activities and opportunities for learning and career development? We have made great progress and introduced key initiatives around these areas, but if we modified further how we think about opportunities to enhance D&I would we then increase the attraction and retention of women?

There is an opportunity for all people and leaders to think differently, to change behaviours and to do things differently. It’s not going to be easy but it’s important. It takes more than talking about the problem (sort of like this post!) — it needs some more action to be taken.