'There's still a place for women-only groups, but if we're going to move the dial they need to be mixed' Tech Talent Charter CEO
Debbie Forster discusses working together to boost diversity
The number of women working in the technology industry will only increase if both men and women aim to boost diversity, the CEO of the Tech Talent Charter has told CRN.
The Tech Talent Charter launched in 2015, but started to gain traction at the end of 2017 and has since seen its signatory members shoot up from 17 to around 370 of the biggest tech companies in the world, including HP, Cisco and Dell.
Speaking to CRN, chief exec Debbie Forster said that great strides have been taken over recent years to raise awareness of the gender imbalance in the tech industry.
She said that it is important for men and women to champion diversity, claiming that while women-only groups are effective, they are not the long-term solution.
Every signatory is required to nominate one employee to be their representative on the charter, with the gender split of the representatives 50/50 at the moment.
"I think there still is a place for some of the women-only groups and the women only organisations," Forster (pictured) explained.
"But if we're really going to move the dial, from an employer standpoint, it has to be a mixed room. This has to be something that we're working on together. It is not us versus them.
"I sometimes have companies calling me quite worried, asking if it is a bad thing to have a man [as the representative], but allies and champions are huge to what we do.
"I was delighted from the beginning that it was about an even split."
Forster said that over recent months the charter has been working on building a nationwide presence, rather than focusing on just London.
It has hosted events across the country, including in Manchester, Gateshead, Cheltenham and Bath, and plans to hold its first Scotland event in the autumn.
A recent event in Leeds, supported by Channel 4, Accenture Digital and Lloyds Bank, discussed how more work can be done to retrain women for roles in technology.
The charter has also partnered with CRN and our sister publication Computing for the Women in Tech Festival, which will be held in London next month.
"The focus is now not on growth, but engagement and impact," the CEO said.
"We're really circling back to members to make sure that we're engaging, that we're sharing practices, and we're going to take our mapping - which is 300 initiatives that companies are doing - to make that user-friendly."
Forster said that great progress has been made in the UK to improve equality in the workplace over the last few years.
However, she added that some organisations still need to change the way they are approaching the issue if they want to see genuine positive results.
"When I'm talking to companies and to individuals, I find that we need to start flipping the conversation," she explained.
"Three years ago, it was exciting to just get companies to start talking in a practical way about diversity. But since the gender pay gap and some of the work that has gone on, some of the companies I'm encountering - not our members - are scared and they want a quick fix.
"I joke that it's almost like a fast food approach: ‘I need an order of diversity, three men three women, some disability and some chips, to go'. That's not the way to do it.
"Whereas we're seeing companies that are starting with the idea of how they can be an inclusive organisation. How can they have an inclusive culture and start building from there? It's helping them with recruitment, it's helping them with retention, it's helping them in growth and it helps them be able to look at the different strands of diversity."
Forster said that the charter is going to start thinking about other areas of diversity over the next few months, but that this by no means a step away from the issue of gender. Instead, she plans to speak to the charter's members about how they are addressing other areas, and link them with other benefits to start sharing knowledge.