hi and welcome to Tech Talk where we take a look at what's going on in
technology news and weigh in with our insights I'm Ken Mingis executive editor
Computerworld I'm here with video content producer or Juliet Beauchamp
and CIOs Sharon Florentine it's Women's History Month which is a great time to
talk about women and IT so that's we're gonna be looking at stick around okay so
Sharon hey thanks for being here women's Women's History Month women NIT a
perennial issue and a perennial problem for women in IT so we thought it'd be a
good chance to talk to you and get an idea for sort of where things stand and
who out there in tech linen may be doing it right thoughts so many thoughts
subject that is near and dear to my heart I blog about this every about
every other week at diverse IT and try to write as much as I can about the
issue for CIO but thank you so much for having me I really appreciate it it's
been two years almost to the day since Susan Fowler's blog post heard around
the world where she called out the extremely toxic culture at uber and her
blog post set off a something of a chain reaction in tech it really opened the
floodgates for a lot more awareness of the lack of diversity and inclusion in
the industry but you know two years on how much progress have we really made
it's we're still fighting a lot of double standards we're still grappling
with a lack of women and other underrepresented minorities I don't
particularly like that term but it works as a kind of a blanket statement tech is
still very much a white male game at this point in fact I was just
a piece about how humour when used in the workplace by men is is seen to
increase men's status it's a signifier of better job
performance and leadership capability but the opposite happens when women use
humor in the workplace it leads to lower ratings of perceived status perceived
job performance and also it tends to signify diminished leadership capacity
you know I'm just gonna jump in real quick of course I don't where do the
mansplaining thing here but no no I mean you make the point and it's not just
humor you know I mean I've seen the same sorts of studies that you know for a
male boss who is strong-willed and domineering and whatever that's
considered a a good thing and hard-charging and success driven and yet
if you've got a woman boss who has the same qualities it that it tends to be
looked at as negative you know she's hard to get along with no one can work
with her I mean and it's a double standard that just seems to permeate not
just women it's obviously women in tech but also you know across the workplace
and I just wonder you know with that sort of perception how how can companies
go about changing that you know I mean it obviously person to person to person
but I mean companies it has to be a cultural shift here I think right yeah
that's that's exactly right and you know your your points are unfortunately right
on the money it's um it's definitely that double standard so a lot of
companies in the last two years have have realized not just that greater
emphasis on diversity inclusion is the right thing to do as a as a society as a
company as individuals but that there are a lot of studies that that really
prove with hard data that that companies with greater diversity and inclusion
show better performance they there's a statistically significant correlation
between diversity in their workplace and diversity and leadership and better
financial performance as well McKenzie did a great study back in 2015 and they
followed up on it last year in 2018 and that showed that companies in the top
quartile for ethnic diversity at the executive level are 33% more likely to
have above average profitability than companies in the bottom quartile and
when it comes to gender diversity companies in the top quartile are 21%
more likely to have above-average profitability so there was definitely a
business case there but there's also the just the general societal moral case for
doing what's right so Intel has done a great job in this area back in 2015 they
set some pretty aggressive goals for themselves as a company in that they
were trying to achieve full representation in their workforce by the
year 2020 so what that means is Intel's workforce would accurately reflect the
same percentages of women black latina Asian LGBTQ and Native American workers
as occurs in the u.s. population as a whole
so that was that's pretty aggressive and they beat that goal they actually
achieved full representation in their work in their workforce last year so two
years early if you're as bad at math as I am so how did they do that they first
of all they set the goal and then they took a number of different approaches to
doing so they've got aggressive source and recruiting strategies that go out
and look for underrepresented talent in a variety of places coming out of boot
camps different colleges and universities they have a very aggressive
on-campus recruiting program they do things like their Native American coders
program which works on reservations in the u.s. to get Native American
teenagers involved in tech and there's actually I wrote a blog post about that
program recently so you can check that out for more details so they really
approached it as a in a holistic way they weren't just looking at a single
pronged approach they've got employee resource groups it's it's it's a really
holistic full program the the other company that I'm familiar with is a
Capital One and Capital One focused on diversity and inclusion as a way to
further facilitate a digital transformation efforts that they're
going through and again I have a case study that I wrote about this you can
you can check that out as well but you know they also took a very
holistic approach they have different women in tech chapters across all of
their different campuses worldwide they do a lot with early education elementary
education programs to encourage more women and underrepresented minorities to
get into tech and they also do a lot of great measurement against the goals that
they've set so they're tracking their workforce demographics both their
current workforce and in recruiting and sourcing and it's also for
the top down from the executive levels as well as from the bottom up so they
have a lot of grassroots diversity and inclusion groups that work together and
excuse me but also all of the executive teams are
on board and understand what the goals are and why they're important to
business performance and also to digital transformation and then finally thought
works is a consulting company with offices across the u.s. they have in
across the u.s. in a lot of major cities Philadelphia which is where I'm based
New York Chicago and they have a really interesting approach because their their
viewpoint is that you don't necessarily need to have a hard technical background
to be successful in this field so one of the more interesting aspects of thought
works is that you can sort of create your own job I thought works you can
present the skills and experience that you have and then kind of make a pitch
to them about this is what I would like to do in tech with my specific skills
and experience and if they have a place that you would fit in well then you can
you know join their organization and kind of create your own role and so
that's one way that they've been really successful with diversity as well that's
really awesome and really great and it's encouraging as just a person who works
to hear that companies are really taking advantage of diversity and inclusion
measures and on top of that that there's real reason to do so there's real
tangible growth and tangible benefits that can come for all business that's
that being said it's not as though every single business has such aggressive
measures in place such as Intel and Capital One and thought work so what can
businesses be doing to implement diversity and inclusion practices
and then hopefully see these tangible wonderful results great question
so a lot of a lot of this starts with understanding both the the moral and
societal imperative but also you know sometimes the only thing that's going to
get through to executives is that business case so you can start out by
you know referencing these studies and presenting case studies that prove and
show that businesses like Intel or Capital One or others have seen business
performance improvements in this area so then once that case is made you can
start by forming or expanding upon if you already have
er G's or employee resource groups for you know your LGBTQ employees to have a
space where they can get together and share issues and trade tips and and
really just vent it's that's really important and that doesn't necessarily
have to have its own business imperative but that's kind of the inclusion part
right feeling that your your understood your accepted and you are valued for who
you are and then that can have kind of a ripple effect into the greater workforce
you know people are more comfortable bringing their authentic selves to work
because they know that there are others in the workforce that are gonna
understand their concerns and the challenges that they face and be able to
help them overcome that so employee resource groups are a great initiative
being able to show that business case you can also start encouraging
sponsorships or partnerships with organizations like black girls code
women who code lesbians who tech is an awesome organized
and they do super fun really inclusive events in a bunch of different cities so
that's another way to set up strategic partnerships with nonprofits and
organizations that might be in your city and see just pause there and go down
here to my other notes sorry no no what you know while you're looking at your
notes I just wanna weigh in with an observation and it just seems like you
know there is of course the moral issue and I wonder sometimes if that is the
emphasis that is made when it comes to seeking diversity and the bottom-line
issue which might be the one that actually moves companies to be smarter
about this you know it needs to be talked about more making making the
point that this is not only a moral imperative but it's a smart thing to do
for the company you know and it's interesting that the you know the way
you've been describing these companies they do take this multifaceted approach
the whole point is to have a happy employee who enjoys their job and well
theoretically then do a better job for you which is going to be good for the
company I don't understand why this isn't common sense you know again just
an observation based on what you're saying and what you've been seeing and
reporting then you know really a question but anyway let me let me let
you get back to your what you were saying no and that's a good that's
actually a really great point and it feeds into to Juliet's question as well
because so many companies especially in tech where you're facing a skills gap
and they're having problems finding people with the right tech skills and
the right soft skills so engagement is a huge huge concern and that's absolutely
one way to improve your employee engagement and and therefore your
retention so yeah it's it's kind of a no-brainer right should be seems to be
quality yeah it should be so yeah back to your question um I mean really those
are those are some pretty easy first steps
companies can take another another issue too to think about is that you know
while you're trying to measure this and and and make sure that you're achieving
these goals it's it's also important to remember that meeting a quota or you
know just saying and being able to point to oh look we have 14 black women in
this particular department that does not necessarily nor should it mean that you
have met your goal and now you can kind of ignore it for the next you know 12
months or the next quarter or whatever because that's that's not really the
point I mean that that speaks to your question can about you know making sure
that employees are happy because numbers are one thing but making sure that that
the it's the employee experience and that people are actually engaged and
feel supported and included in the workplace is is another story altogether
oh great great thank you so much Sharon really interesting insights and
certainly timely because of Women's History Month and it's gonna be really
interesting to see I mean this is gonna something that's gonna take years this
diversity and inclusion doesn't happen overnight but it's gonna be really
interesting to see what steps the tech industry and just business at large take
in the coming years to really make sure that they're promoting an equal and
equitable workplace yeah agreed thank you so much for having me I really
appreciate it thank you thanks Sharon yeah and thanks everyone for watching
this episode of tech talk if you like this video be sure to give it a like and
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around women in IT and women in tech be sure to check out the IgG Tech Talk
Twitter that's just at IDG Tech Talk where we have our growing to have
Twitter chats every Thursday this month surrounding discussion about women in IT
and we'll be monitoring the one this
Thursday the 14th which fittingly is on women in IT leadership so be sure to
check that out on Twitter I'll be there thanks so much for watching and we'll
see you next time