'This crisis has given us the opportunity to build a better normal' - Tech Talent Charter CEO

Debbie Forster talks to CRN about expanding beyond gender diversity and how the pandemic has given companies tools to create more inclusive working environments

Companies should be using what they have learned and implemented throughout the pandemic to build a more inclusive culture for employees, according to Tech Talent Charter (TTC) CEO Debbie Forster.

The tech sector is one of the few that has thrived under lockdown restrictions and this has resulted in firms realising that policies that had to be implemented due to lockdown restrictions, such as flexible and remote working, can become long-term and be used to attract talent to the industry, Forster explained.

"We've always had a talent shortage; some people have woken up to realise that they are in more vulnerable professions or jobs that may not be around in five years time," she told CRN.

"I do believe if companies are smart and lean into something that we've been talking about for several years now - the retraining, the returning, the career conversion piece - we could bring together the huge need that we are going to see from people who have been displaced in the UK as a result of COVID."

Forster also said that the ability of managers to get a glimpse into their employees' home lives as a result of remote working has helped change corporate attitudes towards flexible working, childcare and mental health.

"Diversity is a journey that companies are on and this is a journey that we've got buy-in from people, but now is the time to gear up," she elaborated.

"Everything's been thrown in the air by COVID and there is going to be a human nature side of things of wanting to get back to normal - whatever that was - though many of us would argue that what we had wasn't normal to start with and needed to be fixed.

"As we start coming out of the crazy and creating a new normal, we need to take the lessons we've learned and we need to now start digging in. This is about gender, intersectionality and inclusion as a whole. This is about understanding the necessity of equity, accountability, data, safe spaces and psychological safety, because it is the right thing to do and has a really strong business case.

"This is how we innovate, this is how we get people back to work, this is how we create great products and services. This is how we create a new, better normal."

The latest edition of the TTC's Diversity in Tech report tracks ethnicity data for the first time, though that information was disclosed voluntarily by almost half of the 555 signatory companies to the Charter. Next year disclosure of ethnicity data will be a compulsory requirement.

Forster said that reporting ethnicity data was always going to be a part of being a signatory company, but that it the campaign started with gender diversity because "we had to start somewhere".

Companies were starting to look at other elements of diversity in their companies themselves in recent years and she felt it was time to start including ethnicity and socioeconomic backgrounds into the report.

"We started seeing companies make that journey from diversity - just getting people in the room - to inclusion and asking ‘How do we keep them there and how do we help them grow?'" she said.

"In 2020, some of our members really wanted to look at ethnicity and social inclusion, as well as the other diversity lenses COVID has put to the test. We strongly encouraged them to submit ethnicity data, but it was not a requirement. I was really pleased that 45 per cent of our signatures collected the data and shared that with us."

Gathering this kind of data is the first step for any company's diversity and inclusion process and contributes to meaningful schemes and initiatives internally, Forster added.

"The TTC is free to join, the one price of admission is you must share data and if you don't submit data, we remove you as a signatory," she stated.

"Every year since we started, we have removed between 10 and 15 per cent of our signatures and they cannot rejoin for a year if they don't submit data. The reason is that data is the first part of the journey to understand your starting point and to understand where the problems are. Then you can use data for targeted interventions to make progress.

"If you don't have the data, you won't know if you're making progress and you won't know what does or doesn't work. The steps that we've taken in terms of ethnicity and gender is just part of the journey of what we'll do across all of the diversity lenses."