Barclay: Don't make 'women in IT' like the Emmeline Pankhurst society

Microsoft's partner boss Clare Barclay says partners should take diversity on the whole more seriously, but insists it is not just an issue for women

Microsoft's partner boss, Clare Barclay, has urged partners to take gender diversity more seriously, but cautioned that the issue should be promoted alongside other diversity schemes in order to be successful.

Speaking to CRN as part of the Women in the Channel project, Barclay (pictured) said that promoting the benefits of a diverse workforce to the Microsoft partner community will become an increasingly important issue for her.

She said partners ought to think up their own diversity strategies, but stressed that focusing only on one area, such as women's issues, might end up putting men off joining in the debate.

"In my division, the person who runs diversity is Glenn Woolaghan," she said. "I said I don't want it to be a female, I want it to be a man because often [the role] can be stereotyped. The problem is, whenever we run diversity events at Microsoft, men think it's a women's thing.

"But actually, that's why I try and talk about diversity in the broadest range. Gender is one topic, but also young people, different races - it's all really important in the way you run your business. The important thing when getting a diversity strategy going is that you don't make it feel like a women's club. Try and pick a women topic for one [event], but maybe pick young talent [for another] so it doesn't become a little bit like the Emeline Pankhurst society."

Cloud culture

Microsoft, along with a number of other major vendors, has made big changes to its business model in the past few years, moving towards the cloud from selling transactional licences. Barclay said that this move means there is more demand than ever for a diverse workforce that has skills to match the new way of doing business.

Barclay: Don't make 'women in IT' like the Emmeline Pankhurst society

Microsoft's partner boss Clare Barclay says partners should take diversity on the whole more seriously, but insists it is not just an issue for women

"If you don't think about a diverse workforce - it could be females, it could be younger apprentices, we've done a lot of work getting apprentices into partners - then actually, they won't represent their customers well," she said.

"If you think, it used to be that you just needed hard-hitting sales guys and good techies, or whatever, but in the world of cloud you need to think about customer lifecycle management, customer retention, customer acquisition. You've got to blend technology, sales, marketing and operations. If you end up hiring the same profile of people, you won't be able to grow your business. It's not that females are better at those things, it really varies, but the diversity of experiences [is important]."

Throughout CRN's Women in the Channel project, CRN research shows that four of the top 50 UK resellers are run by women, and 14 per cent of board members at those companies are female. Some of the channel's leading women said that more needs to be done to redress the imbalance, but others said the figures are just a generational hangover, because a lot of the biggest resellers of today were set up 20 or 30 years ago when the business landscape was different.

"I think [for] many channel companies - it's unfair to say they're not sophisticated enough - but they've not really thought deeply about the business benefits of diversity and changing their business and servicing their customers."

Barclay agreed with this school of thought to an extent, but insisted some partners today need to broaden their horizons and look for a more diverse team.

"It's an interesting view and many [partners] are privately owned so the original founders are still in the company and grow and nurture them and so on," she said. "When you're looking for people - I can reference this from Microsoft - and you go out and interview, the default is that men's CVs come back. In sales jobs and technology jobs, that's the default. If you don't apply a different way of going about it and say we need more diversity, then it will stay the same.

"I think [for] many channel companies - it's unfair to say they're not sophisticated enough - but they've not really thought deeply about the business benefits of diversity and changing their business and servicing their customers. So when they put a [job description] out, what they get is male CVs and they find the best of those and they hire them, so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"I think it's a topic I am going to take a bit more seriously with partners. As they change their business, their people strategy and ability to hire and train, all that kind of stuff, if they don't do it, they won't be as competitive."