By reading this book you have made a deliberate decision to make a change in terms of women in technology within your organisation or establishment.

That is a great start. But are you prepared for the journey ahead? Do you have clarity on what you want to achieve and why? Why should you specifically set up a project to attract and retain more women in technology roles? Are such projects effective?

Where should you start? How do you determine the changes to make? How do you then set about making these changes? How will you determine whether the changes you have made will be or have been effective?

These are some of the questions that this chapter will help you to explore by discussing the steps required to set up a project (or perhaps a programme) to attract and retain (more) women in technology.

Whatever your role and the maturity of your organisation or establishment in terms of diversity, equality and inclusion, this chapter aims to provide practical strategies, ideas and tips for establishing a project looking to drive change and improved outcomes for attracting and retaining more women in technology.

READY FOR CHANGE?

Most businesses experienced an unprecedented level of change as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Organisations adapted at breakneck speed to change the way they operated. And in the UK, the challenges and opportunities presented by Brexit continue to need to be navigated at the time of writing.

With all this ongoing change, turmoil and chaos, a question that may arise is: ‘Is it worth starting a project or continuing to focus on diversity and inclusion?’

There has never been a more important time to (increase) focus on diversity and inclusion. Organisations should look to build diversity, equality and inclusion into their business plans and strategies. The pandemic helped to highlight that people are the heart of an organisation and the crisis helped businesses to better understand the importance of resilient leadership (explored more in an article by Renjen, 2020) and its importance in creating a more inclusive workforce. The cognitive diversity that women (and other diverse groups) can bring to help reimagine and reshape a business, the potential for access to new markets by having a more diverse workforce and the ability to better collaborate to solve problems through diverse experiences are some of the reasons why setting up a project focusing on diversity and inclusion and linking it to a business strategy are key to the future success of a business. The benefits highlighted in Chapter 1 are even more applicable in times of crisis and uncertainty, and in a post-recovery period.

Before you establish a project specifically focusing on attracting and retaining more women in technology roles, it is important to assess your organisation’s readiness to take on such a change project. In assessing organisational readiness for change, the following questions should be considered:

Is the business case for better diversity and inclusion understood and accepted by all of your teams, departments and leaders?

Effective communication is critical to the success of any organisation or establishment – and to an organisation’s engagement with its employees. If the benefits of improved diversity and inclusion are clearly understood across a business, the chances of buy-in to a diversity and inclusion strategy from a broader range of an organisation’s workforce are increased. This in turn increases the chances of delivering the benefits of the business case. Harvard Business School professor John Kotter’s research shows that 70% of organisational change efforts fail and that one reason for this is that executives don’t get sufficient buy-in from enough of their own people for their initiatives and ideas (Kotter and Whitehead, 2010). Clearly articulating your organisation’s diversity and inclusion strategy and the business case – and sharing this across the organisation with everyone from executives to entry-level employees – will help employees to actively feel a sense of responsibility and purpose in achieving the benefits of the business case.

Some practical tips for increasing buy-in by sharing the business case for diversity and inclusion are:

• Create a document or electronic content that explains the diversity and inclusion strategy and business case in a way that is easy for everyone to understand. This could be in the form of a video or series of videos, interviews with senior leadership or the project sponsor, or an interactive document.
• Share the business case through internal communications such as emails from the executive and senior leadership.
• Publish the information internally and make it readily and easily accessible – for example, you could host this information on your organisation’s secure intranet.
• Ask department and team leaders to cascade and share the diversity and inclusion strategy and/or business information with their teams. They could also hold discussions with their teams to consider the strategy or business case in more detail, answer questions, address concerns or solicit further input.
• Consider publishing this information externally on your outward-facing digital channels, such as your organisation’s website, and perhaps even sharing it with your customers. This helps to increase accountability. Organisations that share their ambitions and targets on their website externally may also find increased interest from a more diverse range of candidates who use this as a primary source of information to better understand an organisation when they research roles to apply for.

It can also be helpful to provide a mechanism to allow employees (and potentially customers) to provide feedback on the diversity and inclusion business case. Alternative views will always exist in an organisation so it is important that people feel able to (anonymously) provide this feedback, whether it be through HR, via line managers or directly to senior leadership. If such a mechanism does not exist, then it could be part of the project to set one up.

Is your organisation culturally ready, prepared to engage and committed to making a (lasting) change?

If the business case for improving diversity and inclusion is widely understood across an organisation, then the organisation’s readiness should be assessed in relation to different dimensions. A white paper published by the Project Management Institute provides a definition of change readiness as well as a framework for assessing readiness (Combe, 2014). It considers three key drivers that impact readiness: cultural readiness, commitment readiness and capacity readiness. While this chapter does not focus on change readiness specifically, it is a critical consideration when determining your preparedness for a project or programme of work focusing on attracting and retaining more women in technology. Many organisations seek external professional support to help them to assess change readiness before embarking on change projects and programmes.

Following is a list of some considerations when you are assessing your organisation’s readiness and commitment to implementing a new project on attracting and retaining more women into technology:

• Do you understand how this project will align with your existing organisational priorities, commitments and projects? Will it be seen as additive to everything you are already doing? Will it be seen as sufficiently different to drive the change that your employees want and need?
• Consider how you will acknowledge previous successes and failures with diversity and inclusion initiatives and share this with employees. What will be different (or indeed what you will refocus on) this time?
• Will you be able to provide team leaders, managers and employees with the opportunities to be part of the project while continuing to deliver their day-to-day responsibilities? It is important to acknowledge that any changes that are implemented won’t happen overnight and will require input and time (often in significant amounts) from a range of employees in different parts of an organisation. Therefore, commitment to providing your employees with time, opportunities and investment to enable them to be part of the change you want to see will be critical to the success of the activities and initiatives you will implement. This is especially true for middle managers, who are the cohort vital to the success of an organisation’s diversity and inclusion strategy. A paper published by Deloitte suggests that when this specific population is engaged, they should be assessed against the six different personas of strategic change as applied to diversity and inclusion – opposed, unaware, undecided (anxious), undecided (fatigued), supportive and committed – and engaged accordingly (Bourke and Dillion, 2018).
• How will the organisation’s senior leadership remain committed to the project, especially in the face of competing business priorities that also require resource and investment? The global COVID-19 pandemic forced many businesses to re-evaluate their priorities and change how they operate in very short timescales. As stated earlier in this chapter, diversity- and inclusion-based projects are even more important to progress during challenging times to help organisations create the right composition of workforce for the future. Continual engagement and support from senior leadership are recommended before, during and after the project is implemented. And reinforcing the benefits of increasing the diversity of the workforce and creating a culture of inclusion with an organisation’s executive and senior leadership will also help to reinforce commitment.
• How will you best manage your own expectations and those of others on how quickly the changes will be implemented and when they will demonstrate results? Organisations will all be at different stages of their diversity and inclusion journeys: some may not yet have a diversity and inclusion strategy, some may have been trying to make a change in this space for many years while others may be part way through a journey and experiencing varying degrees of success. Regardless of your own starting position, there is universal acceptance that full-scale diversity and inclusion programmes take many years to implement and should be considered much more of a marathon than a sprint. And, even when projects are ‘concluded’ and their changes become part of how a business operates, there will undoubtedly be new ideas, challenges and changes that need to be addressed. In this way, the diversity and inclusion journey will always be ongoing and it is helpful to shift to that mindset from the start of any project focusing on this space.
• Should you consider a global project or a local project on attracting and retaining more women into technology roles in a global organisation? While the level of ambition of a global diversity and inclusion programme is admirable, there will be many differences in culture, politics, society and economies to consider. The level of resource support for a global programme of change is also a significant factor to consider. However, there will of course be lessons that a UK organisation can benefit from – for example, from its operations in India. Open University research conducted in conjunction with NASSCOM (an industry association for the IT and IT-enabled products and services sector in India) stated that 35% of people with specialist technology roles in India were women (Raghuram, 2019). This compared with less than 18% of those in the technology workforce being women in the UK. For a global company, there will be many reasons why local organisations will achieve different results when implementing the same global initiatives locally. Many of these factors will be outside your organisation’s control. While learning from and sharing good practices across a global organisation are suggested and encouraged, do first think about your organisation’s local diversity, goals and context, and manage expectations accordingly.

Your responses to these questions will also help to inform the scope of your project. Once you have assessed and understood your organisation’s readiness for change, you can progress to the next crucial step of identifying a sponsor for the project.

PROJECT SPONSORSHIP

In its Pulse of the Profession report in 2018, the Project Management Institute (PMI) noted that its 10th Global Project Management Survey results showed that one in four organisations (26%) reported that inadequate sponsor support was the primary cause of failed projects (Project Management Institute, 2018). Relatedly, the PMI’s 2017 Pulse of the Profession report showed that 62% of successfully completed projects had sponsors who were actively supportive (Project Management Institute, 2017). Of the various organisations that have successfully improved gender balance in technology-related roles, most, if not all, have had projects with active (senior) sponsorship from within the organisation. Some of these people have also become public faces for the change they have sponsored, sharing their achievements and successes through social media, research reports and events such as conferences (including those focused on women in technology). Great examples of sponsors of women-in-technology programmes include Dr Sue Black (TechUPWomen, #techmums), Jacqueline de Rojas (techUK), Sheila Flavell (FDM Group), Anne-Marie Imafidon (Stemettes), Diana Kennedy (BP), Stephen Mercer (Deloitte), Angela Mitchell (Deloitte), Lopa Patel (Diversity UK), Russ Shaw (Tech London Advocates) and Dayne Turbitt (Dell). Computer Weekly’s annual Most Influential Women in UK Technology (published annually) is also a great list of inspirational leaders sponsoring and championing women in UK tech.

Finding a project sponsor

There are a number of ways a project sponsor can be sought for a project. Indeed, there may be several suitably qualified candidates who volunteer to take on the role.

Some ways in which sponsors can be selected are:

• Appointment by an organisation’s executive board: the project sponsor could be selected from a particular department where there is a need to increase and retain more women in technology. Or the project sponsor could have a broader role across many departments (e.g. chief operating officer, talent leader, diversity and inclusion leader or head of IT). It is recommended that the sponsor comes from the ‘business’ rather than the HR department. The sponsor will of course need to work closely with the HR department, which will be responsible for implementing some of the changes identified by the project (e.g. changes to policies or processes for recruitment or introduction of flexible working patterns). Having a sponsor selected by the board also demonstrates the commitment of the board to the importance of the project.
• Self-declaration of interest in being the project sponsor: if there are a number of sponsors who put themselves forward for the role, they could be interviewed by the board and HR leadership to ensure selection of a sponsor based on characteristics such as credibility within the organisation, understanding of the need for the project, personal motivation for wanting the role, and willingness to collaborate to solve the problems and challenges that the project may present. Further attributes of a great project sponsor are explored by Lonnie Pacelli (2005). It may also be possible to have multiple sponsors, though they would need to be aligned in their vision and execution of the project. If you do opt for multiple sponsors, a maximum of two sponsors is suggested at any one time. Another idea could be to rotate the role of the sponsor (e.g. every 12 months) to allow for more sponsors to actively support the project and bring new and different perspectives over time.
• Selecting a sponsor who has already been actively championing the cause of women in technology: it may be the case that there are suitable candidates within your organisation who have already, whether in their own departments or outside your organisation, chosen to actively support the cause of women in technology. For example, this could be through working with schools, giving talks focusing on women in technology at conferences, or implementing changes to diversity and inclusion within their own departments. If such a person exists in your organisation, they should also be considered and offered the role of the project sponsor. And, even if they are not able to take on this role, the project sponsor who is selected could benefit by connecting with this person and learning from their experiences.

The sponsor should also have enough ‘political clout’ to be able to achieve the goals and outcomes of the project. They should have sufficient autonomy to drive the project forward but they should also have the ear and respect of the organisation’s senior executive leadership. Without this, any such projects are unlikely to achieve their desired outcomes – and in the worst case they will fail and potentially regress an organisation’s progress in the delivery of its diversity and inclusion strategy. Selecting the sponsor is therefore a challenging task but one that is critical to the project’s success.

The role of the project sponsor

Sponsors should believe in and be vocal advocates of the change they are sponsoring. They have five key responsibilities.

Be an active and committed advocate of the project

This means making time and being involved at the appropriate level in working with the project team and steering the project’s direction and course. This will involve providing input on the project’s scope and definition and working with the project manager and the project team. This also means being the one who communicates and shares progress with peers, often at the board and executive level, as well as across an organisation, with clients and others, possibly publicly, to raise awareness of the project and champion its aims and ambitions.

Own the business case for the project and secure investment

Just as business cases are required for software procurement, securing funding in a start-up organisation or introducing a new service, so too should a business case be written and articulated for the diversity and inclusion project. This task of writing and agreeing the business case can be done as part of the project itself, but the sponsor should take ownership of the business case and report back on key performance indicators (KPIs) (more on KPIs later in this chapter) and benefits that have been agreed and are being realised. Sponsors should help to link the business case by translating the project’s benefits into business value and help to make sure the project retains focus as a business imperative. In addition, project activities, events and the procurement of solutions will require investment and it is the role of the project sponsor to secure the necessary investment. Some examples of investment that may be required include marketing spend to create a campaign to attract more women into technology roles, funding for awards sponsorship (to support brand enhancement) and bringing in the outside expertise needed to support the project.

Set and prioritise the goals and help to control the project’s scope

There are many things that a project focusing on diversity and inclusion and attracting and retaining more women in technology could address, but there is usually never a silver bullet or just one initiative or activity that a project needs to focus on that will have the desired outcomes. The job of the project sponsor, especially during the scope-definition phase of a project, is to help articulate, set and prioritise the goals and objectives of the project. The scope of the project may be to attract more women into a single department within the organisation within a 12-month period or retain a higher proportion of women who are considering leaving the organisation. Or it could cover a broad range of activities across the hiring process, such as securing new suppliers of talent, creating a women-in-technology community within the organisation, or implementing a range of initiatives to foster a culture of inclusion and to retain high-performing talent.

Whatever the scope, when there is a need to reprioritise or make difficult decisions about activities or initiatives to prioritise, this is where the sponsor can help and make the tough calls that the project team may be too involved to make. The sponsor should also help with controlling the project scope as there is too often a temptation to want to do everything and fix every problem, or pursue every opportunity that is identified over the course of a project. This won’t be possible (even with vast amounts of time, resource and investment) so controlling the scope of the project will be a critical factor for remaining focused on the changes that will make the most appropriate impact.

Be the point of escalation and an unblocker of challenges

The course of change never did run smooth. In any project, there will be times when unexpected challenges arise, blockers need to be removed and escalations need to be raised so that appropriate decisions can be made to help course-correct and continue to execute the project. For example, the project team may have competing priorities on attraction and retention activities; the project team may not be getting the input they need from key individuals within the organisation; managers may not be able to free up their time or people from within their teams to speak with the project team; or the ideas that the project team has identified may not have (sufficient) funding. Unblocking these and other challenges is another key responsibility of the project sponsor.

Adopt a continuous learning philosophy

While the benefits of increased diversity and inclusion across financial, skills, productivity, innovation and other dimensions are today much more broadly explored, communicated and acknowledged, new findings, interesting case studies and innovative ideas continue to emerge. The project sponsor and project team are encouraged to add topics relating to diversity and inclusion to the list of subjects they regularly enquire into and learn more about to help identify (new) ideas for the project.

Some suggestions for continuous learning about diversity and inclusion relating to women in technology are:

• Set up alerts on your news feed or sign up to receive regular communications (e.g. emails) from relevant bodies using keywords such as ‘diversity’, ‘women in technology’ and ‘inclusion’ to identify articles and research of interest.
• Visit the websites of organisations running projects or programmes focusing on women and diversity in technology. Some suggested organisations to research include Ada (the National College for Digital Skills), Black Women in Tech, Code First Girls, Diversity in Tech, Everywoman in Tech, Stemettes, Tech London Advocates, WeAreTechWomen and WISE.
• Attend physical or virtual conferences such as Women of Silicon Roundabout, the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, Wonder Women Tech, European Women in Tech and WeAreTechWomen.

GRASSROOTS INITIATIVES

The discussion on sponsorship perhaps seems particularly suited to organisations of a certain size, and grassroots initiatives may also have their place in making a meaningful impact on an organisation’s diversity. A grassroots initiative can be thought of as a self-organised, community-based initiative where a number of people, usually passionate employees, have come together for a cause, such as women in technology.

Some of these grassroots initiatives can lead to the formation of employee resource groups (ERGs). ERGs tend to have more formal support and close interaction with HR departments so they can actively influence and participate in recruitment and retention activities. Many ERGs have also achieved external recognition for their efforts and successes in various areas, such as:

• increasing the number of females joining their own organisations and building their women-in-technology communities;
• working closely with outreach organisations such as CoderDojo, Code First Girls, Stemettes, and schools and communities to encourage more girls to consider careers in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM);
• encouraging their members to apply for awards such as the WeAreTechWomen’s TechWomen100 and Rising Star Awards, the Everywoman in Tech Awards and the Women in Technology Awards.

Websites of the organisations mentioned above are provided near the beginning of this book and you are encouraged to explore these additional valuable sources of insight and inspiration.

Whether you already have some grassroots initiatives that have resulted in positive change for women in technology within your organisation, whether you have an existing successful ERG focusing on women in technology or whether you are starting from scratch, it is important to understand and be able to incorporate or build on the great work of those within your organisation who are already active and passionate about women in technology. Some grassroots initiatives, communities and networks may in fact be sub-projects within the overall project and be instrumental in driving a cultural transformation. Offering those involved in such activities the option to join a formal sponsored project or to be involved through consultation and collaboration, or making the ERG or grassroots initiative part of the project, could be a great way to help accelerate the outcomes the project is trying to achieve.

Organisations with lean structures and smaller numbers of employees may also prefer to follow more agile and grassroots-based approaches to driving change rather than setting up a large project or programme of work.

Grassroots initiatives and ERGs can therefore also result in positive change. The chances of success and the change actually ‘sticking’ are further increased with active and engaged senior project sponsors, as noted earlier in this chapter, and with passionate individuals from the grassroots initiatives forming a team to set up and execute a more formal project for attracting and retaining more women in technology.

ESTABLISHING A PROJECT FOR ATTRACTING AND RETAINING WOMEN IN TECHNOLOGY

There are a number of steps that can be taken to establish a project for attracting and retaining more women in technology. Many different methodologies and frameworks exist, but you may have a preference regarding how to set up a project based on previous experience or proven successful approaches within your organisation. Key to the project’s success, and before a project can be established, the project’s sponsor must be confirmed (as discussed earlier in this chapter). This is a precursor to establishing the project.

This section offers some guidance on steps to take when establishing a project. It covers the following areas:

• Build and establish the project team.
• Develop and sign off on the project plan.
• Manage and execute the plan.
• Communicate successes and failures.
• Follow continuous improvement and learning processes.
• Celebrate successes.

The final section of the chapter gives some specific suggestions on key questions to ask when focusing on important areas of impact.

Build and establish the project team

Building the team who will execute the project will be crucial to its success. Consideration should be given to the composition of the team, including whether an external team will offer a different perspective or whether a team built from different departments of an organisation (containing people with complementary skills and experiences) is the right option for the project. Factors to consider when setting up the project team include:

• Interest and passion: as discussed earlier in this chapter, your organisation may already have grassroots initiatives or an ERG focusing on women in technology. The leaders of such initiatives or even passionate members may want the opportunity to be part of the project. The project sponsor should ask these individuals whether they would like to be part of the project team. Alternatively, you may wish to launch a competition and ask people to explain why they would like to be part of the project team.
• Skills and experience: project management experience will be beneficial in the day-to-day running of the project, keeping track of different activities and reporting back to the project sponsor on progress. The project manager should have some experience of running projects (e.g. within their department or function) as this will increase the ability to deliver against the project’s deadlines. The project team may also need the following experience and skills: a communications specialist (to help put together messaging, updates for different stakeholders etc.), a data analyst (to help analyse the data – for example, on the current composition of the workforce) and a business analyst (to work with the different teams and departments within an organisation to better understand the challenges they face and the problems they are trying to solve with respect to attracting and retaining more women in technology).
• Diversity of experience and cognitive diversity: a project team focusing on attracting and retaining more women in technology should not comprise only those who identify as female. Ideally, team members should come from different backgrounds and experiences, including different education journeys, routes into the organisation (e.g. experienced hires, those who joined as entry-level employees), grades, and cultural and ethnic backgrounds.

Thus, the key roles suggested for the project team are project manager, communications specialist, data analyst and business analyst. The number of, for example, business and data analysts that the team requires will be dependent on the size and scope of the project and whether the project will be run by individuals from the business who are dedicated to it full time. If the project is to be run by individuals from within the business, then consideration should be given to how much time they should spend on it outside their ‘day jobs’. Care must be taken to manage the expectations of the project sponsor and line managers as to how the project team members will split their time between the project and day-to-day business responsibilities. For example, if the project is to be run part time by team members who work four to five days per week, and they are expected to commit 50% of their time to the project, then two to two and a half days per week should be allocated to their day-to-day responsibilities and the same amount to work on the project.

It should also be noted that the project team will need to work with subject matter experts (SMEs) from different teams and departments as part of the project. These SMEs will also need to provide time and input into the project and similarly be given the scope to be able to do so. For example, the following SMEs will need to provide input and support to the project:

• HR experts and leaders: to provide access to data as well as general HR knowledge about recruitment, rewards, performance assessments and so on;
• marketing: to help define (new) branding, design (new) recruitment campaigns and make updates to the organisation’s website;
• senior business stakeholders (e.g. team or department leads): to provide input on their requirements for the project;
• external experts: to provide insight and input on diversity and inclusion initiatives or independent reviews of plans and progress.

The organisation will need to decide whether there is sufficient bandwidth to dedicate a project team to the task or whether an external team, under the guidance and direction of the project sponsor, would allow for the project to progress faster. There are benefits to each approach. Whether the project’s initiatives are identified by an internal team or external experts (through collaboration and consultation with the organisation’s employees and leaders), the adoption of the changes will of course need to be by those within the organisation.

Therefore, the work of building and establishing the team who will set up and run the project is not to be underestimated or unduly rushed. Whichever approach is selected, team members should gel and work well together and with the project sponsor.

Develop and sign off on the project plan

Working together with the sponsor, the next step will be to set up and define the plan for the project. This may require some data gathering to understand the baseline, depending on where your organisation is in its journey in attracting and retaining more women in technology. Examples of the types of data that can be collected at this stage to help inform the plan include:

• HR data on the organisation (or department) and the composition of the workforce in terms of gender diversity and other factors, such as educational background, age and ethnicity;
• interviews with business leaders (e.g. senior leaders across the business or department managers) to understand their priorities in terms of women in technology;
• any employee engagement survey findings that help to highlight what is working well and what employees feel the areas are for improvement (e.g. culture, leadership, pay and rewards).

If this data is not available, then part of the project’s scope should be to implement new processes to collect it. For example, if your organisation does not collect data on employee gender or ethnicity, then you will need to ask employees to volunteer this information and make a change to the HR IT system to capture it.

There are various approaches organisations can take to developing a project plan. Examples of project management approaches from the world of software development include the Waterfall approach and the Agile approach. There are also other well-known methodologies, such as PRINCE2, PRiSM and Lean Six Sigma. The approach that is selected will be based on the preference or experience of the project sponsor or project manager as well as organisational and leadership preferences. Some organisations train their people in specific methods when they reach a certain position within the organisation or if they have a role that requires them to have formal training in a project management method. If your organisation does not have a preferred project management approach, The Digital Project Manager offers an overview of different project management methodologies as a starting point for finding out more about which approach may best work for your organisation (Aston, 2021).

There is a balance to be struck between spending too much time creating a perfect plan versus creating a plan that can be refined as more data and requirements become available.

The plan should include a prioritised list of activities and tasks, resource requirements (including which roles are required for each activity or task), estimated timescales for completion (e.g. two weeks, two months), any internal or external dependencies (such as data availability or completion of a previous task), and any investment (e.g. costs) required to deliver an activity or a task. Further detail on attraction and retention activities relating to women in technology are discussed later in this chapter as well as in Chapters 6 (on attraction) and 7 (on retention). The project plan will take some time to develop (e.g. from two weeks to three months – and perhaps longer – depending on the scope and size of the project and the organisation).

Whichever project methodology approach is followed, the plan should be tracked in order to understand progress, both for reporting back to the sponsor and to understand where adjustments are required. Tracking project progress is often the responsibility of the project manager. Depending on the size and complexity of the project, an additional team member may be required to help with management reporting and project plan administration. In addition, the plan should be developed and managed in a format that the organisation and project team are able to use and update. This could be done using project-planning-specific software, by showing the plan in presentations or using activity-based collaboration software.

The project plan will be iteratively developed, and discussions with stakeholders and the sponsor should occur throughout the development period. The final project plan should be signed off by the sponsor, who should also make sure this version of the plan is communicated with all stakeholders with a vested interest in the project, including the organisation’s senior executive leadership.

There are many areas of focus a project could home in on, including attraction, retention, culture, education, leadership, brand, training and more. For example, an attraction project, while primarily focusing on attracting more women to technology roles, could also provide unconscious bias education to employees and those involved in interviewing, and give refreshers on interviewer training.

Depending on the agreed priorities for the organisation, the plan should reflect the detailed activities and tasks identified for the areas of focus and consider what can be delivered within short-term (e.g. less than 6 months), medium-term (e.g. 6–12 months) and longer-term (e.g. over 12 months) timescales. The effort required to change gender diversity should not be underestimated. For example:

• Shorter-term initiatives could include changing job descriptions to use gender-neutral and female-friendly language as well as communicating the goals and outcomes of the project. Grassroots and ERG initiatives may already be in place, so seeking these out and amplifying their existence and achievements more broadly could also be achieved relatively quickly.
• Medium-term activities could include launching unconscious bias training and working with identified external organisations on outreach initiatives such as working with schools or training women to learn to code. Another medium-term initiative could be implementing new relationships with recruitment agencies and making changes to the recruitment process whereby candidates have the opportunity to meet a diverse range of people working in the organisation, including women.
• Longer-term initiatives could include organisation-wide culture change and the transformation of the composition of the organisation’s workforce to include more remote, agile and flexible roles.

The speed with which initiatives can be launched will be dependent not only on resources but also on the organisation’s ability to absorb the change. Rushing to launch an initiative without testing its design, considering any unintended consequences or thinking how the initiative links with others is not recommended. Some organisations will have been running their women-in-technology project for more than a decade while others will have only recently started their journey, and many organisations will be yet to start. Whatever your starting position, it should be noted that real, sustainable change takes many years to achieve and, even then, there will be opportunities to improve and evolve.

As part of signing off on the plan, you will need to define measures of success, KPIs and the progress reporting cadence, including internal and external communication of the project’s progress. Suggested KPIs for attraction and retention of more women in technology are discussed later in this chapter.

Finally, don’t forget to name the project. Giving the project a name – an identity – will help with buy-in across the organisation and help more people to engage directly with the project. And, if they are not involved with it, they may be curious as to how it is progressing.

Manage and execute the plan

Once the areas of focus, priorities, activities and tasks in the plan have been agreed and signed off by the relevant stakeholders and project sponsor, the execution of the plan can begin. This could start by communicating to the whole organisation who the project sponsor is, giving them a summary of the project plan and introducing them to the project team. This will help people to put faces to the change and also allow those who want to be part of the project to get in touch with the relevant people.

Executing and manging the plan will require the day-to-day management of smaller sub-projects. It will also be necessary to work with many different people within the organisation (e.g. HR, marketing, and specific teams or departments) and potentially outside it (e.g. recruitment agencies, schools, or external women-in-technology communities and organisations). There will also be external dependencies on achieving the timescales associated with the activities in the plan (e.g. signing contracts with new recruitment agencies to get access to a broader and more diverse set of candidates for particular roles). Managing external dependencies is often challenging and so providing clear dates and timelines to all parties is key to managing the plan. Also, when input is required from stakeholders within an organisation who also have their day-to-day responsibilities to meet, it is helpful to give them sufficient notice and alternative ways to provide the required information or insight (e.g. if they can’t attend a meeting, they can submit answers to questions in writing instead).

Project cadence and governance are key to allowing the team to remain focused on the goals and objectives of the project. This means regular meetings with the sponsor, regular check-ins on progress and assessments of actual versus planned progress, and regular reviews of the scope of the project.

Diversity and inclusion projects can also see scope creep (i.e. when additional or new work is added to a project in a usually uncontrolled way), because during the course of the project, new ideas and initiatives are likely to be unearthed. A potential way of capturing these ideas could be to set up a project mailbox where anyone in the organisation can make suggestions for initiatives they would like to see the project implement.

It is the job of the project team and sponsor to assess these new ideas against the scope of the project and adjust the plans (if appropriate). The project team will need to consider factors such as potential impact, cost and priority to key stakeholders. This will help to determine whether the current plan needs to be changed to incorporate the new ideas and, if so, what potentially needs to be removed from the current plan or whether additional scope needs to be added to the plan to include the new ideas. Any changes to the plan should be agreed with the project sponsor and, if required, the senior executive leadership of the organisation.

It may also be the case that some of the new ideas could be implemented by a grassroots initiative or ERG focusing on women in technology rather than the dedicated project team. In this way, the grassroots initiative or ERG and the project can collaborate more closely on delivering a broader range of linked changes.

Managing and executing the plan is the most challenging activity and so requires discipline and focus balanced with flexibility and adaptability. The project team will work together daily and have regular meetings with stakeholders and SMEs. The frequency of the meetings with the sponsor should be agreed up front. Meetings with the sponsor are likely to be more frequent at the start of the project (e.g. weekly), later moving to fortnightly or monthly (with updates continuing to be provided electronically on a weekly basis).

Communication, including of successes and failures

As part of the project plan, a communications plan is recommended. This will include how the project’s progress should be communicated internally and (potentially) externally. The sign-off stage of the plan should also cover how an organisation or individual (e.g. the sponsor, the project manager or anyone in the organisation who has taken it upon themselves to drive change) wants to be held account (or should be held to account) for the targets they want to deliver and achieve.

Should targets on the number of women in technology your organisation is trying to attract be included on your organisation’s externally facing website? Could your current workforce composition be made more visible internally and to your customers alongside your plans? Such decisions will need to be made by the project sponsor and the organisation’s senior leadership. Organisations will also benefit from signing up to charters such as the Tech Talent Charter and reporting their progress on the gender diversity make-up of women working in technology roles within the organisation at a point in time or over a given time period. This increased external accountability as well as the opportunity to learn from other organisations will help to improve the changes being driven by the project and the chances of the project’s success.

It is important to note that there will always be success and failures in the execution of the project, and how these are dealt with will also be a reflection of the organisation and its culture. If failures are treated as learning experiences and shared, then this could help to further increase buy-in to the project itself. An organisation that is willing to share its experiences openly and honestly could also be perceived by candidates and existing employees as one that is intending to be more inclusive and willing to hold itself accountable.

Follow continuous improvement and learning processes

Continuous improvement is when a process (or a product or service) is continually refined through ongoing effort and focus. For example, when project tasks have been completed, reflections on what went well and what could be done differently next time will help to improve future processes.

This could be done by looking at how long the task took to deliver, how much effort was required to deliver the task, feedback from stakeholders and SMEs on the engagement process, what approach was used and what data was gathered to support the task. If stakeholders weren’t able to provide timely input, could other stakeholders be identified in the future? If refinement of the job descriptions took longer than expected, could a software tool be purchased to make this process more efficient? If the time the project team had to spend on arranging interviews and recording insight from stakeholders was an issue, could tools already in use (e.g. by the IT department) be used next time? Following a continuous learning approach by asking such questions will help the project team to continually improve the execution of the project. Such an approach, if not already widely used within an organisation, also has the potential to be seen as the exemplar that other teams and departments may choose to follow as part of their own ongoing development and evolution.

Even when some of the changes that are being delivered as part of the project are underway, there may be an opportunity to assess them to see whether further tweaks or improvements could be made. If, for example, key data isn’t available and there is a risk that the task could be delayed, are there alternative sources or assumptions that, when agreed with the project sponsor, could be used instead? And, if input from many people is required (e.g. in a survey) but there are low take-up rates, can an alternative form of engagement (e.g. online focus groups) be used instead? A project’s continuous improvement process includes considering new ways of achieving a task in order to meet its deadline or assessing whether the deadline needs to be changed and communicating the impact of this.

Celebrate successes

Driving change is hard work and it is important to make time to celebrate successes, whether a small win when securing the data needed for some analysis or delivery of a brand-new recruitment process. Everyone involved in successfully completing a project element – the sponsor, the whole project team and all stakeholders – should make time to celebrate the wins, big or small. Ways in which to celebrate the wins include:

• sharing successes through team-, department- or organisation-wide communications, including sharing the outcomes that have been achieved;
• getting together (physically and/or virtually), perhaps over a meal, and acknowledging the effort and journey of achieving a project goal or milestone as well as the outcome;
• showing appreciation by thanking all of those involved in making an outcome a reality (e.g. the sponsor could send out a thank-you communication across the organisation);
• give the project team some time off before the next big project milestone needs to be delivered to allow them some time to rest and recharge.

Celebrations could take place with project team members, with the sponsor and/or with the stakeholders and other SMEs involved in the delivery of a task. Whichever option is selected, such celebrations should align with the organisation’s culture, values and ethos.

KEY QUESTIONS TO ASK

During the process of defining the plan, the key areas of focus will be identified based on the priorities agreed. There are many potential areas of focus for attracting and retaining women in technology, depending on the starting point of the change journey. Common areas of focus for diversity and inclusion initiatives include attraction, retention, culture, education, leadership, brand, training and more. Within each of these areas, changes may be required to policies, processes or systems underpinned by data and evidence. Tackling such change and deciding which areas your project should focus on is a complex challenge for business leaders.

The remainder of this chapter principally offers suggestions for projects aiming to attract or retain women in tech, although other areas of focus are also mentioned for the leader to consider. Whatever stage an organisation is at in its journey to attract and retain more women in tech, there are three key questions that need to be answered to address the project’s goals and priorities:

1. Where are we now? (For example, what is the status quo? What are the problems and challenges that we are trying to address?)
2. Where do we want to be? (For example, what is the organisation’s vision with respect to this area of focus? What do we want to achieve?)
3. How will we get there? (For example, what does the journey we need to take look like to get us from where we are today to where we want to be?)

Each of these questions is addressed below in relation to attraction and retention in a diversity and inclusion project to increase the proportion of women in an organisation. The text also suggests KPIs that should be considered for each of these areas.

Attraction

The scope of ‘attraction’ in this chapter is considered to be increasing the number of applications and new joiners for technology-related roles in an organisation. This can be across different types of recruit, from entry-level employees joining an organisation in their first role (apprentices, graduates etc.) to experienced hires with previous experience working in similar organisations to those who are returning and re-entering the workforce after a period of absence.

Where are we now?

Understanding where an organisation is in its diversity journey requires an understanding of the current status. Attraction data, a great source for knowing what the baseline is, often sits within the purview of the HR department, and senior business leaders should have regular sight of pipeline and people data to inform hiring and other decisions. Where this is not the case, it is recommended that the leadership works with HR to put in place processes where this data, at an aggregate rather than individual level, is made available to decision-makers. For example, if business leaders don’t know the percentage of females in each department or the number applying for a role but this data can be made available through summarising information from HR processes and systems, then the summary of this information should be shared with senior leadership.

In addition, the marketing team may have data relating to an organisation’s brand recognition, the locations where candidates are looking for roles, and the number of hits on the organisation’s website.

Different sources of attraction data that could be assessed to provide the current status of an organisation’s attraction landscape include:

• Talent supplier data: for example, data on the different recruitment agencies and organisations the organisation works with to source potential candidates (such as supplier performance in terms of the percentage of candidates provided by gender or the number of candidates from a talent supplier who have accepted offers to join the organisation).
• HR process data: this should be across the recruitment pipeline by gender, including:
  • number of applications (e.g. how many candidates are applying each week or month by gender);
  • number of interviews (e.g. how many candidates move from the application stage to the next stage of undertaking a (first-round) interview). If there are multiple stages in an interview process, then this figure would need to be captured at each of the interview stages;
  • number of offers (e.g. how many offers were made following successful interviews);
  • number of acceptances (e.g. how many candidates accepted job offers).
• Time-to-hire data: for example, how long it is taking for candidates to be hired into the organisation. A long time to hire could indicate inefficiencies or issues in the recruitment process, so this data can be used to understand whether there are parts of the process that could be improved and whether there are gender-specific differences in the time to hire that also need to be addressed. However, it is important to note that diversity hires will take longer to achieve given that the pool of potential candidates is smaller, and this fact should be taken into consideration when managing hiring for diversity.
• Jobs board data: for example, if you are using external websites to advertise job roles to women-in-technology communities, then data on the number of applications from these websites should also provide a view as to whether each website is effectively driving candidates to your organisation.
• Campaign data: for example, data from previous recruitment campaigns (if appropriate and available) on how women responded to each campaign. This could be, for example, a campaign that your organisation’s marketing team ran to attract more girls to consider technology apprenticeships and how successful this was in converting interest into actual job offers.
• Social media data: for example, comments about your organisation posted on social media (e.g. from prospective candidates or those who have gone through an interview process with your organisation). Your marketing team may be able to provide this data. It provides an indication of the organisation’s brand.
• Organisation website data: for example, number of queries about your women-in-technology community or your diversity and inclusion strategy from potential candidates, and feedback from recent joiners on their experiences of your recruitment processes. If this information is not captured as part of your organisation’s interaction with new hires into the business, then it is recommended that a process is introduced to collect it (e.g. through surveys within a few months of an employee joining or by asking managers to speak with their new hires and capture this information).
• Three-month failure rate: the number of new joiners who leave an organisation within three months. Looking at this figure holistically and by gender could reveal a mismatch between a job’s advertised requirements and the job itself, issues with how a new joiner has been inducted into your organisation, or even a mismatch between the culture that they thought they were joining and the reality.

In order to be able to set goals and determine where you want to be, the above data will need to be collated and analysed to determine where the current challenges are that need to be addressed as part of the project’s goals. If the data is not available because your organisation has not yet captured it, you may choose to include, as part of the project scope, initiatives to do so. This may require changes to the project plan and timeline for when tasks can be completed.

Let’s look at an example. Consider an attraction goal such as ‘improve the number of applications by those who identify as female to the software engineering team by X% in 12 months’. This could require the following data to be gathered and analysed:

• current composition and mix of the overall workforce;
• current composition and mix of the software engineering team;
• available job roles in the software engineering team;
• enquires by gender split from various sources (e.g. website, hits from referral sites and social media enquiries);
• current split of applications to the software engineering team by gender;
• list of suppliers and the gender split of candidates they provide;
• typical time through the application pipeline;
• offers accepted and rejected by gender split.

Sourcing attraction data may come with its own set of challenges and it must be remembered that GDPR (the General Data Protection Regulation) must always be complied with. However, if some of this data is not available due to current processes (such as pipeline management or provision by third-party suppliers), then, depending on the scope of the project, the requirements and availability, the data could potentially be requested. This of course would take time and resources so it may be necessary to simplify what data is required in order to drive progress.

If the project team is to have access to HR data, then this should be in an aggregated fashion and suitability anonymised so that no individuals are identifiable. Additionally, any data used for analysis purposes should be stored in line with the organisation’s IT data security policies. The project sponsor should assist in this process by helping to connect the project team with the right internal teams in the organisation to get the appropriate approvals in place. It should also be noted that any data collected using surveys, questionnaires, or other methods or tools (whether from staff or internal focus groups) should be gathered and shared on an anonymous basis.

There are other data sources that could be considered, including sourcing more data by running projects to seek feedback from, for example, the groups you are trying to attract. For example, the project team could work with your marketing team to use social media to ask people to complete an anonymous survey on what they think of your organisation’s brand, whether they are aware of the technology roles available and what would attract them to your organisation. You could also consider reaching out and working with some of the external women-in-technology communities mentioned in this chapter and book to see whether they could provide feedback or undertake surveys. Sourcing this type of data could become a whole project in itself, taking many months, so knowing what is available, speaking with other teams and departments, and factoring in known constraints (including time, budget and resources) will allow sourcing of the appropriate data on attraction.

By analysing this data and working closely with the relevant teams (such as HR and marketing), the project team will be able to assess the current talent attraction processes and share these findings with the project team, department leads and the project sponsor. Together with HR, marketing and the project sponsor, the project team can then identify the changes to these processes that need to be implemented. For example, if the project team identifies that the current data shows a lack of good progress with some of the current talent suppliers, then the HR team should be made responsible for sharing this feedback with the suppliers and asking them to address it, or deciding whether they want to explore new talent suppliers.

These and other such changes should be owned by the teams that will be accountable for their day-to-day delivery. The project team can support these teams in defining how the changes can best be implemented and, for example, conducting additional research and recommending new metrics to be captured as well as systems and tools to capture the data.

Where do we want to be?

In the UK, the average percentage of women in IT roles within organisations is around 17%, as stated in BCS’s 2020 diversity report (based on figures from the Office for National Statistics Labour workforce survey, conducted each quarter in 2019) (BCS, 2020). According to the Tech Talent Charter’s report on diversity in technology in 2020, women occupied 25% of the technical roles in the charter’s then 418 signatories (Tech Talent Charter, 2021). One might assume that those who have signed up to the charter are already on the journey towards diversity, given their willingness to be accountable as signatories. The KPIs that you set, then, will hopefully fall between these two numbers. They should be achievable and not off-putting in their scale or difficulty, but they should challenge your organisation to make a change.

These benchmarks should be helpful in enabling an organisation to assess itself and draw comparisons with broader norms, once its own specific context and baselines are understood. Of course, organisations may want to exceed these benchmarks too and set timelines for where they would like to be and by when.

As part of the business case and project plan goals, targets (or KPIs) should be defined for the outcomes that are you are aiming to achieve. It is important to set realistic and pragmatic quantitative targets that are proportionate to your current baseline; for example, it would be extraordinary (and probably unrealistic) to go from a baseline of 5% women to 30% in just 12 months. These pragmatic targets should also take into account the tasks and activities in the plan that are focused on improving the organisation’s diversity.

Attraction KPIs most commonly focus on pipeline, offers and acceptance rates, and a number of potential areas were mentioned in the ‘Where are we now?’ section above. Attraction KPIs (by gender and other diversity characteristics) include:

• Percentage of applications by source: for example, by recruitment agency, university, school, company website or other source from which candidates are applying to your organisation.
• Talent supplier performance: for example, the gender and other diversity characteristics of candidates provided by the different recruitment agencies your HR and business teams work with.
• Percentage of candidates at each stage of the recruitment pipeline: for example, numbers and percentages of candidates at the application, interview, offer and acceptance stages.
• Recruitment targets: based on your established baseline, defining where you want to be each quarter by gender and any other diversity characteristics.
• Time to hire: how long it takes to hire a candidate. If this is too long for your organisation, it could indicate issues with the recruitment process that need to be addressed.
• Job referral percentages: for example, if large numbers of candidates are referred from your organisation’s existing employees, this is an indicator of employee satisfaction.
• Three-, six- or twelve-month failure rate: for example, capturing how long new employees stay with the organisation.
• Organisation brand NPS (Net Promoter Score or Net Promoter System): Ipsos provides an overview of the NPS (Ipsos, 2016). The NPS is calculated as the difference between the ‘detractors’ and the ‘promoters’ to a question such as ‘How likely is it that you would recommend [brand] to a friend or colleague?’ On a scale of 1–10, detractors would score their responses 0–6 and promoters as 9–10. Understanding your brand’s NPS is a helpful attraction mechanism and further detailed questions will help to identify changes needed to improve this score.

You could also include qualitative attraction measures, such as:

• Interview feedback on the recruitment process: for example, qualitative feedback from successful and unsuccessful candidates to help improve the recruitment experience.
• Feedback on social media: for example, on attraction campaigns geared towards female candidates or feedback on your website from prospective candidates.
• Feedback on your organisation from others: for example, recruitment agencies, universities, schools and other sources where you are seeking talent, and from female (and all) candidates that these organisations and institutions source on your organisation’s behalf.

How will we get there?

The project plan should ideally cover the activities and tasks required to close the gap between where you are now and where you want to be. This will require a combination of short-, medium- and long-term actions to drive the changes identified as your goals (as described in the previous section).

In terms of attraction, it could be worth setting up sub-projects for the goals you wish you achieve. This doesn’t necessarily mean starting from scratch. For example, if you are trying to attract more female graduates to a particular department, it will be necessary to understand current recruitment processes and then determine where tweaks, enhancements or changes will need to be made to achieve the goals. In addition, it will be necessary to genuinely understand the views of existing employees on these processes and other policies, what is working well, and what needs to be changed in order to help make the organisation a truly inclusive place to work. The views of the current workforce, grassroots communities and ERGs should all be considered to help you both understand and improve processes, policies and culture in order to attract a diverse range of candidates who will want to progress their career within your organisation.

Some practical examples of ideas that could help you to achieve your attraction goals include:

• Applications: make sure your application processes are assessed to remove the possibility of unconscious bias influencing selection. There are a number of ways of assessing and improving application processes, including the use of specialised software, enhancing unconscious bias training for those who assess applications, and introducing blind CV screening by removing gender and other diversity characteristics from the application. (See Chapter 4 for more ideas.)
• Visibility: showcase a diverse range (in terms of age, ethnicity and educational background) of women-in-technology role models from within your organisation. Ask them to share their stories on your organisation’s website. This will help more (women) candidates to understand what your organisation can offer from the point of view of those women who are already working in the roles that candidates are considering applying for.
• Training and development: highlight the training and development you are able to offer, including further technology qualifications and certifications.
• Outreach: present to students at campus events virtually and showcase a diverse range of role models already working in your organisation.
• Marketing: change existing marketing campaigns or create a campaign to share with your target market (e.g. specific campaigns to target apprentices, students, those who have been out of the workforce and are looking to re-join or those whom you could train from different backgrounds).
• Alternative recruitment sources: look at alternative places to recruit talent from and work with specialist groups that have communities of women who are interested in working in technology, such as external women-in-technology networks and communities.
• Specialist education courses: research and work with specialist education courses that are synergistic to working in a technology role.
• Future pipeline: build the future talent pipeline by working with schools and organisations such as those mentioned in Chapters 4 and 6.
• Flexible working: consider how new work models, including remote (only), would allow for a more diverse workforce. This could be applicable to experienced hires and people who are returning to work, but equally it may be of interest to your current employees. Any new ways of working that are introduced should be available to all, not just to new employees you are looking to attract to your organisation.

Many of these activities will take time to put into place; the breadth of activities discussed highlights the need for interdisciplinary collaboration between diverse stakeholders, which is often time-consuming and complex to achieve in practice. Each activity should also have a way of being measured (e.g. in terms of time, investment, impact and return on investment).

A project looking to drive long-term, sustainable change will take time and is usually multi-year in duration. Typical recruitment processes can take between three months and multiple years depending on the specific role and availability of candidates. For example, graduate and apprentice intakes tend to be annual and linked to the education timetable. Implementing retraining programmes could also take a number of months, potentially a year. Attraction targets should be considered by role type, set through stakeholder discussion, and have a balance between pragmatism and aspiration.

Rome wasn’t built in a day and you won’t be able to change your organisation’s gender diversity composition overnight. However, with dedication, persistence and hard work, you can make real progress.

Measuring progress Of course, an important part of delivering on the gender diversity ambition is the continued focus on and measurement (and communication) of progress. KPIs and their frequency of measurement will have been set as part of the project plan (suitable KPIs were suggested earlier in the chapter). Progress against KPIs should be tracked and measured by various stakeholders outside the project team and project sponsor. It is necessary to have board- and executive-level monitoring and measurement of progress to help steer the project’s direction, as well as measurement of individual and collective KPIs by HR, recruitment and marketing. This will help to keep everyone focused on making progress towards and ultimately achieving targets.

Measurement allows progress to be assessed and helps to determine whether corrective actions or changes are needed to steer the project back on course. For example, if newly advertised job descriptions containing gender-neutral language that were sent to recruitment agencies and/or posted on your organisation’s website have not resulted in an increase in applications from women after six months, then the project will need to assess the effectiveness of this activity. This could be done by testing the job descriptions with a broader range of people (e.g. internal employees or a dedicated focus group) to understand whether the descriptions themselves need further refinement, whether visibility of them is an issue or whether another change is required.

Communicating progress is also imperative to the success of the project. Depending on the communications style, frequency and preference of your organisation, you may wish to share progress against key targets internally with all employees. Making your project progress updates part of an existing reporting and communications cadence is another way of helping to cement the importance of the project – not only in terms of what it is trying to achieve but also as part of the overall business strategy and performance.

Ideally, the ultimate aim would be to include project progress on attracting and retaining more women in technology in the same materials being discussed by the executive on the organisation’s financial performance, signifying the importance of the project. Updates on the project should be provided to the board and executive on a quarterly basis as a standing agenda item.

External reporting of progress on women in technology You may wish to consider externally reporting on your organisation’s gender diversity progress. This helps to increase accountability towards achieving the targets set. Signing up to charters (such as the Tech Talent Charter) that focus on improving diversity in technology and require reporting on the number of women in your organisation in technology-related roles will also provide access to best-practice insight and benchmarking so you can assess progress against other organisations (as a collective).

In addition, since 2017 in the UK, gender pay gap reporting has been mandatory (at the time of writing, this applies to employers with a headcount of more than 250) (Government Equalities Office, 2021). Gender pay gap reporting helps to highlight areas of inequality and potential areas to focus on, and organisations should look to use this data in addition to that collected during normal business processes as well as the project to see what additional changes are required. Whether your organisation meets the threshold for reporting or not, all organisations are encouraged to collect the data and voluntarily hold themselves to account to improve wage and pay parity for all, regardless of gender.

Retention and development

Attraction often feels more tangible as a concept in women in technology or any diversity project than retention. It is conceptually easier to set targets and measure progress around bringing more women into an organisation. Many organisations are focusing on attraction, including building the future talent pipeline and working with schools and organisations dedicated to attracting girls to study STEM subjects and consider careers in technology-related fields. Organisations are also creating returners’ programmes to encourage women back into technology roles and retraining efforts to create more female technologists.

Retention and ongoing development of talent within an organisation have always been more challenging.

‘Retention’, as defined by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) (2020), ‘relates to the extent to which an employer retains its employees and may be measured as the proportion of employees with a specified length of service (typically one year or more) expressed as a percentage of overall workforce numbers’.

Development in this context is considered to be part and parcel of retention, as development (support for skills development, opportunities for growth, promotion support, etc.) is critical to wanting to stay in an organisation. Retention of female talent in organisations could be the subject of multiple books and of course there are internal and external factors that influence affinity with a particular job, role or organisation.

Psychologist Abraham Maslow (1943) defined a five-stage ‘hierarchy of needs’. The model proposes that people are motivated by a hierarchy of different types of needs and that most behaviour is determined by more than one need. Maslow subsequently extended the model. The eight types of need in the model are:

• biological and physiological needs;
• safety needs;
• love and belongingness needs;
• esteem needs (e.g. for oneself and for reputation and respect from others);
• cognitive needs;
• aesthetic needs;
• self-actualisation needs;
• self-transcendence needs.

Understanding the needs and what employees want from their roles and the organisations they work for is key to understanding and improving retention.

Retention has also been made especially challenging by advancements in technology. New jobs, many which didn’t exist even a decade ago, are being created every day. Moreover, with global opportunities now made more accessible to a broader population, retention has become an even more complex challenge. Career paths are more diverse and unpredictable than ever before and are frequently disrupted by technology-driven changes. Organisations need to be able to adapt their career models and paths in order to both attract new and retain and develop existing talent. It is necessary to balance bringing in new talent from outside the organisation (with new ideas and different experiences, but requiring training in order to undertake their work) against the (necessary) ongoing development of talent in order to retain good people, knowledge and experience. The cost of acquiring a new customer is thought to be up to five times higher than the cost of retaining a customer (Morgan, 2019). By extension, the cost of attracting and hiring new employees would also be a multiple of the costs associated with retaining and developing existing employees. Organisations will need to find the right balance for themselves.

Further complexities (and opportunities) arise with multigenerational workforces and differing needs and expectations of organisations and their employees. For organisations, it is a constant challenge to manage the intricacies of needing to continually adapt to new technology-enabled changes, offer attractive career development opportunities and focus on business performance. As new roles emerge or roles require changes, businesses need to better understand and manage the needs and expectations of their workforce. People also have different needs from their roles and there is a development continuum from those who see the norm as having the same job for life to those who want to have many careers and continually develop and learn new skills.

The retention challenge is further compounded in technology-related roles for women, as evidenced by the relatively stagnant figures for women in technology over the past decade. According to a 2018 survey by Indeed of 1,000 women working in technology-related roles, the main reasons women cited for leaving their roles were lack of career growth, poor management and slow salary growth, with 46% of women saying they believed they were paid less than their male counterparts (Indeed, 2018). Other reasons include lack of senior role models, lack of flexibility and lack of support for women returning following career breaks or life events such as childbirth or adoption. In the period they are away, technology advances (ways of delivering work, and use of new software and tools) mean that they have to learn to work in a different way from when they left.

This is where diversity and inclusion projects are needed to better help us understand the needs of the workforce from a range of perspectives. Taking the time to understand and really listen to all voices in your organisation, especially those of women working in traditionally male-dominated technology roles, is critical in order to be able to address concerns, build on good working practices and make the organisation a more inclusive place for all.

Where are we now?

Better understanding the retention landscape within your organisation requires access to various types of data and insight. As above for attraction, much of this may be held by the organisation’s HR, people or talent department.

Different types of retention data that could be assessed to provide a picture of the landscape of an organisation, disaggregated by gender and any other diversity characteristics of interest, include:

• Retention rates for women in technology roles by department or team. The retention rate is calculated as the total number of employees staying in an organisation for a period of time divided by the number of employees at the start of the time period multiplied by 100. For example, if 80 people were working in your organisation on 1 January and 75 of those sample people were working in your organisation on 31 January, then the retention rate would be 75 ÷ 80 × 100 = 93.75%. Note that retention rates do not consider any new joiners during the period of interest.
• Gender pay gap data by role, team and department, and across the organisation.
• Distribution of roles (e.g. percentage of women in a particular job role compared with percentage of men in the same role) for organisations with a range of job levels (or at a certain level of the hierarchy).
• Take-up of flexible working options such as term-time working, part-time working and remote-only working.
• Performance management: where such data is available, a range of metrics should be considered, including:
  • promotion data (e.g. time between promotions);
  • performance ranking data (e.g. distribution of high performers);
  • business performance data (e.g. gender distribution of who gets to work with top accounts or customers, on special assignments or on key projects).
• Leavers’ data, including voluntary and forced redundancies.
• Bonus distribution (if applicable in your organisation).
• Training take-up: for example, who is taking up the training available, especially optional training that people have to put themselves forward for or are nominated by managers to attend.

In addition to quantitative data of the types listed above, qualitative feedback and insight data should be included to better understand the status quo in terms of retention. Some suggestions for qualitative data to assess and collect, disaggregated by gender and other diversity characteristics, include:

• Feedback on retention and development initiatives, including training opportunities: this insight would need to be gathered by speaking with people within the organisation to understand their views on current processes and support in relation to performance management, personal and professional development, and opportunities for growth. Note that it is important to capture the positives and organisational strengths as well as the areas that need further improvement. Therefore, if take-up of unconscious bias training has worked well in a particular department or team, exploring what lessons can be learned as to the reasons for the success will be important to help replicate success in other areas of the organisation. If mentoring is not working well, it is important to understand this so alternative ways of matching mentors and mentees can be considered.
• Employee engagement data: for example, understanding employee sentiment and motivation by seeking feedback and insight from employees. This should focus on how engaged employees are feeling, what would inspire them to stay in the organisation and so on.
• Feedback from cultural audit reports: the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales has published a guide titled How to Audit Culture, which provides details on conducting an internal audit of an organisation’s culture (ICAEW, n.d.).
• Feedback from leavers: this can help you to understand why people, especially women working in technology-related roles, choose to leave the organisation. This could help you to identify changes to policies and ways of working that could be needed to encourage more people to stay in your organisation.

If the types of retention data described above are not available in your organisation, then the project team may be able to help implement changes to processes that will enable you to collect the data. Note again the time and effort involved in undertaking this. The resourcing and scope of the project should always be considered. There are specialist organisations that help companies to transform cultures, so it is a good idea to consider when and which areas of the project would be best served by bringing in additional resources.

Where organisations do take the time to conduct employee engagement surveys, feedback and engagement data are often glossed over in favour of numerical measures. However, overlooking this data, which is a truly valuable source for understanding an organisation’s specific challenges, is a mistake and such surveys should be conducted regularly. At the time of writing, the global pandemic has meant organisations have had to change the way they work and support their customers incredibly quickly. The pandemic has also highlighted the need to much better engage with the workforce in a more virtual way. This requires regular discussion and refinement, and this approach should also be used to understand the views, thoughts and feelings of the workforce to help support better retention and development. At the time of writing, the pandemic has disproportionately impacted women relative to men. According to the 2021 Report on Gender Equality in the EU, reasons for this included women being over-represented in the sectors most affected by the pandemic (e.g. retail, hospitality, care and domestic work), with women on average taking on more unpaid care and home-schooling responsibilities while continuing to work (European Commission, 2021). Moreover, according to Statista (2021), as of 31 December 2020 in the UK, more women were furloughed than men. While the pandemic allowed for some gains to be made in terms of women in technology-related roles, with more women joining and taking up work, sufficient attention should also be given to continuing to develop and retain those already working in technology-related disciplines.

Any data gathered and analysed should be benchmarked and looked at in the context of the department or organisation as a whole and – where possible – against industry or other benchmarks. Signing up to charters such as the Tech Talent Charter and reviewing data on various research sites (such as WomenTech Network, Computer Weekly and various other sources) will provide access to a range of information on how others are progressing in this space, and this will allow you to determine relevant benchmarks. You could also consider employing specialist services to provide this data. Consider speaking with your competitors or companies in the same or similar industries to understand their retention rates. Many organisations will be on the same journey to try to attract and/or retain more women in technology, and learning from and sharing with these other organisations may be mutually beneficial. All of this additional insight will help you to form a better assessment of your current retention status.

Where do we want to be?

Establishing your organisation’s goals in terms of retention and development is a balancing act. Factors including the performance of the business, changing strategies, the need for new types of skills and the trainability of existing employees (both groups and individuals) need to be balanced with managing a healthy rate of attrition (e.g. percentage of employees who leave an organisation over a certain period of time) to bring in new and different skills and experiences through new hires.

As mentioned above, it is relatively straightforward to set measurable KPIs to tie the achievement of a goal to specific initiatives or activities when it comes to attraction. It feels more tangible. In contrast, setting targets for retention is often more challenging as it may be difficult to map the direct impact of an activity or a group of activities onto improved retention. Retention targets linked to promotion (e.g. into senior grades), average number of years to progress between grades and number of women in technology staying in the organisation are good places to start. In addition, if scores can be assigned to employee feedback, then you can also consider making changes to processes in such a way as to increase scores. Commonly cited reasons for the ‘leaky pipeline’ and women leaving jobs once they reach middle management include culture, lack of belonging, bias (unconscious or otherwise), lack of female role models in senior leadership positions, lack of opportunity for internal mobility within an organisation, and lack of job or role flexibility.

Goals in the retention space may be more based on relative improvements above the baseline (e.g. X% reduction in female attrition – i.e. fewer women leaving the organisation). They may also be linked to:

• Retention rate for women in technology roles: for example, moving from 70% retention to 80% retention within 12 months.
• Attrition or turnover rate for women in technology roles: for example, reduction from 25% attrition to 20% attrition within 12 months.
• Employee engagement scores: for example, improvement in scores since flexible working was introduced or since new training on specific technology or unconscious bias training was undertaken by all managers.
• Gender pay gap: for example, reduction compared to the previous year.
• Promotions: for example, year-on-year improvements in promotions to senior roles.
• Impact of changes to processes: for example, an increase in people calling out others for inappropriate behaviour could indicate an improvement in culture as more people feel comfortable doing so.
• Job referral percentages: while this metric was mentioned in the attraction section, it is also a good indicator of retention. The more employees refer others to your organisation, the higher the chances they are doing so because they are satisfied with their role and work environment.
• Improvements in internal mobility: supporting employees to transfer between teams and departments is more cost-effective and beneficial to the organisation than letting good performers leave and having to replace them with new hires. Improvements in the number of transfers with all other conditions being equal (e.g. transferring due to opportunities to progress or learn new skills, and not because another department has a better culture) is another way of measuring improvements in retention.
• Increase in women taking up (technical) training: women often deprioritise training in favour of continuing to get work delivered. Encouraging and supporting women to take up training opportunities (e.g. line managers providing time to take up training) and seeing an increase in take-up should also support an increase in retention rates.
• Mentoring: feedback on the impact of mentoring on career development and progression.
• Other feedback: feedback from employee engagement surveys, cultural audits and listening to women, including feedback from grassroots women-in-technology initiatives and ERGs. For example, if suggestions and ideas have come from these groups around changes to flexible working, better support for mental health and wellbeing, increased access to leadership or new training, then assessing the benefits of these changes once they have been implemented could be linked to improved retention.

How will we get there?

Retention initiatives are often multi-year in nature, depending on how endemic issues are that need to be resolved to improve retention. However, there are also some quick wins that can be put into place that will help to start positively moving the needle in improving retention of women in technology-related roles. Examples of shorter- and medium-term (e.g. three to nine months) initiatives for improving retention could include introducing mentoring schemes, providing new training opportunities and introducing new flexible working models. Changing and improving communications to be more open and transparent, while not straightforward, could be a change that leaders and teams make in a short time frame. And, if you have role models who are happy to share their stories and experiences, then organisational leadership, the project team and the project sponsor can relatively quickly amplify the voices of female role models already in the organisation to help inspire and motivate others.

Of course, the speed with which these changes can be implemented is dependent on the size and complexity of an organisation, and the need to navigate compliance and HR processes and policies.

Initiatives to improve retention and create more development opportunities are rarely about increasing technical competence – although if there is genuine interest in gaining or developing new technical skills or gaining a certification, then this of course should be encouraged. The ability to have employees move within the organisation and train a high-performing employee from a completely different role into a technology-related one offer both the employee and the organisation many benefits. Indeed, many organisations offer such technology reskilling and retraining, and of course there are dedicated initiatives (such as the Institute of Coding) that offer technology-focused higher education conversion courses for those joining or already in the workforce.

Addressing retention challenges tends to require more focus on human behaviours and skills than is required in attraction. Improving retention isn’t about an individual (unless there are specific issues that need to be addressed for an individual) but the organisation as a whole. For example, a retention initiative supporting (more) women through promotion processes is actually more about supporting the organisation in creating an environment where every individual, regardless of gender, is able to have the same opportunity to progress and develop to their highest potential. According to the Deloitte report The Social Enterprise at Work: Paradox as the Path Forward, survey respondents rated belonging and wellbeing as two of the most important human capital issues that organisations needed to address (Deloitte, 2020a). Moreover, 93% of the organisations surveyed agreed that a sense of belonging drives organisational performance. Similarly, a report from BetterUp states that workplace belonging can result in a 50% reduction in employee turnover risk (BetterUp, 2020).

Speaking generally, while some women may benefit from support in areas such as confidence and resilience, the real benefits of a project focusing on retention will come when the organisation as a whole is in a place where everyone can bring their true, authentic selves to work and contribute without worry of how they may be perceived or judged due to their gender or any other characteristic. Indeed, much work still needs to be undertaken to reduce micro-aggressions in the workplace. According to the report Women in the Workplace 2018, published by Lean In and McKinsey & Company, 64% of women are subject to micro-aggressions at work, with non-White women experiencing micro-aggressions more than any other under-represented group (Lean In, 2018). Some examples of micro-aggressions are women receiving comments on their age and appearance and being interrupted by men more frequently in conversation (see Chapter 4 for more detail). Organisations should look to introduce ways for people to feel comfortable calling out unacceptable behaviour (either anonymously or by being able to seek support from trained team leaders or HR). In addition, unconscious bias training can help to raise awareness of the range of biases that people need to pay attention to and the types of micro-aggressions that need to be avoided. More details on unconscious bias training are covered in Chapter 4.

The importance of creating a truly inclusive culture for all cannot be overstated or underestimated, and the various initiatives mentioned (plus others that are right for your organisation) should all focus on improving organisational culture and, consequently, retention. Therefore, depending on your organisation’s current status and progress and your defined priorities for retention, some additional practical ideas for retention initiatives include:

• setting up a women-in-technology community to create opportunities for women to share experiences and learn from, motivate and inspire each other;
• designing and launching a sponsorship scheme to enable women to have formal sponsors to support them in developing and progressing their careers;
• improving access to and visibility of role models;
• reducing unconscious bias through dedicated training programmes as part of a broader programme of change;
• introducing more flexible working policies for all to retain (and attract) a more diverse workforce;
• introducing more gender-friendly policies, processes and facilities (consider employee safety for those working late in an office environment, introduce breast-feeding rooms etc.).

Further detail on retention initiatives are discussed in Chapter 7.

All of the above initiatives also provide great benefits from an attraction perspective. For example, having a women-in-technology community that is advertised on your organisation’s website could attract more women to join. Improving flexible working for your current employees will also benefit future joiners. In this way, improved retention is a great attraction mechanism.

Setting up a women-in-technology community Communities, networks and ERGs are known to have many benefits not only for members but also for the organisation as a whole. One of the sub-projects discussed earlier in this chapter was to establish a women-in-technology community within your organisation. Such a community, grassroots initiative or ERG can help to drive your attraction and retention (and other) initiatives and support the project team in achieving the objectives identified. Or the aim could be to create a community where employees can come together (perhaps with those of other organisations), support each other, and share experiences and best practices in an open and inclusive environment. The time and effort involved in setting up such a community can be significant as it is often an additional task on top of day-to-day responsibilities. If an organisation wants such a community to be set up, then discussions with line managers and other relevant leaders need to occur to make sure those involved in these activities are suitably supported. For example, organising events, speakers and relevant content for meetings all take time. Therefore, line managers and others should allow time for people to participate and contribute to the community without detriment to their career progression. HR and other departments should also provide support to the women-in-technology community in areas such as recruitment, training and policy design.

Therefore, building a community focusing on women in technology is a great way to support retention from a business perspective as well as to allow more people from different departments and functions to meet and learn from one another. This of course has its own benefits (e.g. increased visibility of different roles, increased appreciation of types of work others have undertaken and shared understanding).

There continues to be a debate about female-only networking groups or those with ‘women’ in the title and how this may put off some men from being part of the community, sponsoring and supporting the network, or attending its events. Networks and communities can benefit from sponsors of any gender. We can’t fully solve the problem of the lack of diversity in technology with only 50% of the population working to make a difference. More men are becoming allies and better understand the business case and benefits of a more gender-balanced organisation. Therefore, men should be encouraged to participate in, sponsor and contribute to women-in-technology communities. Exemplary women-in-technology networks within organisations have been recognised by awards from WeAreTechWomen (TechWomen100 Awards), FDM (Everywoman in Technology Awards) and the Women in Tech Awards.

Launching a sponsorship scheme Another factor affecting retention or lack of progression of women in technology is the lack of access to personal sponsors. Men often have greater informal networks and access to leaders, and so they often benefit from sponsorship without a formal scheme or even seeking formal sponsorship. In this way, sponsorship schemes help to equalise access to leaders, with sponsors providing public advocacy and career progression support by ‘being in the room’ when key promotion and other decisions on the sponsored person are being made.

Women also tend to less naturally seek out sponsors, so having a formal scheme where women are matched (e.g. by HR or by interviewing prospective sponsors and being able to select the most suitable sponsor) also means that women are more likely to participate in the sponsorship scheme.

Executive leaders, directors and other senior leaders who are decision-makers or able to gain access to decision-makers can make great sponsors. Of course, sponsors should want to undertake the role, commit and make the time to build meaningful relationships with the person they sponsor. Given the number of suitable sponsors in an organisation and the number of women potentially requiring sponsorship, sponsors may need to sponsor more than one woman. You will also need to consider how to best implement the sponsorship scheme. Some suggestions include:

1. Start with a small group of high-performing (identified through performance reviews and nominations by teams and line managers) people receiving sponsorship to pilot the sponsorship scheme.
2. Create a sponsorship scheme with HR or the project team providing guidelines to both sponsors and sponsored people in terms of meeting expectations (e.g. frequency) and goals and objectives for the sponsored person.
3. Sponsors and sponsored people should first meet and build rapport. In subsequent conversations, they should jointly set up the objectives of the relationship (e.g. achieving promotion to the next role).
4. Meetings should then continue regularly with the sponsor providing access to other influential leaders (within and outside the organisation) and publicly and privately advocating for their sponsored person – for example, in key meetings where their work and role are being discussed.
5. At any point, if the relationship is not working it should be possible for either party to speak out and change to an alternative pairing.
6. Evaluate the success of the sponsorship scheme after three months, six months and one year by seeking feedback from both the sponsored person and their sponsor on the success of the relationship and the goals and objectives achieved.

Sponsorship schemes need to be designed to be inclusive, and criteria for selection to join or be invited to participate in a sponsorship scheme need to transparent. It should also be acknowledged that (some) men in addition to other under-represented groups would benefit from participating in sponsorship schemes. If an organisation is willing and able (time, commitment and resource wise) to provide sponsorship to a broader range of people, this is something you should consider.

It may not be possible to roll out sponsorship to all the women working in technology-related roles across an organisation. In this case, it is suggested to have different groups or cohorts participate in the sponsorship scheme. The first cohort may be women in middle-management technology roles or those three to five years from senior leadership positions. Or perhaps both of these groups could be in the first cohort. The talent and succession pipeline should be assessed to determine which group of roles it would be best to focus a women-in-technology sponsorship programme on and when new groups should be introduced.

Improving access to and visibility of role models ‘You can’t be what you can’t see’ is a commonly heard phrase referring to the lack of visible role models within an organisation. It is also an oft-cited reason for women choosing to leave an organisation (usually at the middle-management stage of their career but also early on and as they progress towards the proverbial glass ceiling).

It is important for women’s retention and progression that female role models are visible in an organisation and can authentically share their stories, which may often surprise those in the ranks below and help them to realise that their own stories are not dissimilar. Women sometimes don’t consider themselves role models or put themselves forward for roles unless they know they can already do 100% of the role (where is the growth opportunity in that case?). Organisations can help to improve the visibility of their women-in-technology role models in various ways:

• Share their profiles and stories (with their permission and in their own words) with teams, departments and the whole organisation. This could be done via newsletters, through emails, on the organisation’s internal website and/or through videos.
• Consider offering them a more visible role within the organisation (if they are suitably qualified to take on the role).
• Create opportunities for them to speak at internal meetings and external events (e.g. to represent the organisation). This has a dual benefit of attracting more women to the organisation.
• Provide opportunities for women in technology to inspire the next generation of female technologists by giving talks in schools and working with other organisations as your organisation’s ambassadors. This not only helps women to give back to communities but also helps youngsters to see that there are women working in IT and technology professions.
• Support women to apply for external women-in-technology awards and help them to build their brand externally. This helps them to be seen by others as role models too.
• Encourage female leaders to step into leadership roles within the organisation and support them in building their brand both internally and externally.
• Hold monthly meetings where those identified (self-nominated or selected) as role models can meet others and share their career journeys. This is a great way of providing access to role models already in the organisation.

And, of course, there are many external women-in-technology groups and networks that hold events (physically and virtually) where role models are available for questions, share their inspiring stories and provide guidance. Some examples of great role models leading the charge to pay it forward, create the next generation of women in technology and encourage better diversity in technology include Dr Sue Black (TechUPWomen), Beverly Clarke (BCS) and Anne-Marie Imafidon (Stemettes).

The project team or your women-in-technology network can help to set up the above suggestions and could put together a calendar of events that women in technology roles can attend throughout the year. Organisations should think about paying fees for women to attend these events, for example as part of their training and development budgets.

Reducing unconscious bias through training programmes As shown in Chapter 4, unconscious bias is a huge topic. Everyone has unconscious biases informed by past experiences and judgements. The term usually refers to judging and decision-making processes based on preconceived notions stemming from previous personal experiences.

Raising awareness of unconscious bias and trying to minimise this (and other types of bias) in an organisational context helps to create psychological safety for employees and allows people to bring their authentic selves to work. This in turn helps people to feel and be more included. And when people feel more included, this has a positive impact on improving retention.

There are many training providers that offer specific and specialised advice and training on unconscious bias. Some organisations may also choose to develop their own training if they have the in-house resources and expertise to do so. Many organisations have begun to implement this as core training in their businesses. However, poorly implemented unconscious bias training can also have negative unintended consequences and even result in increased biased behaviour (Noon, 2018). Therefore, whichever route you decide to take, it is important that it is well researched and thought through, and perhaps even piloted before it is rolled out further.

Some suggested ways of rolling out unconscious bias training include:

• Start with the board or executive leadership. By undertaking the training themselves, the senior leadership will be more likely to ‘get it’ and therefore sponsor the broader rollout of the training.
• Roll out the training to those involved in the assessment and/or recruitment of others to improve the performance management of existing employees and the hiring of new staff. Middle management is another good group to target.
• Share content in newsletters, provide access to materials on your organisation’s intranet and run ‘lunch and learn’ sessions.
• Use a ‘train the trainer’ approach. For example, members of your ERG or women-in-technology network could themselves be trained as trainers who could then deliver the training to others. This provides the trainers with new skills, which may also improve retention.

The training itself can be delivered in various ways. For example, in-depth training for leaders may be conducted face to face or in virtual workshops that enable individuals to delve deeply into conversations and debates over a period of time (several hours to a number of days, perhaps with refresher training each year). For broader groups, it may be that e-learning is an option (developed and purchased externally or built in-house within your own organisation). And of course there are books you can purchase and materials that can be accessed digitally that you could provide to your employees and business leaders.

Unconscious bias can exist across the hire-to-retire lifecycle and other business processes, so driving real cultural transformation will of course take time. As part of the project, organisations should examine all of their key business processes across attraction, recruitment, and learning and development, and challenge where unconscious biases could exist. For example, when employee performance is assessed at the end of an organisation’s review cycle, are the evaluations that need to be conducted too subjective and open to interpretation (increasing the risk of unconscious bias in the process)? Providing clarity in the feedback that is required for all employees and making sure that feedback is clear and specific for all genders is a step to reducing unconscious bias in those giving the feedback and using it in their decision-making (e.g. regarding promotions).

Introducing more flexible working policies Flexible working has become a given from an attraction perspective. Flexible working means working in any one of a number of different ways and is usually focused on when and where work gets done. There is a continuum of different work models, including remote only, hybrid (office/home), part time, flexitime and term-time only. Flexible working is increasingly becoming the norm, especially since the start of the pandemic. The CIPD’s 2019 report MegaTrends: Flexible Working offers some further definitions of the different types of flexible working arrangements organisations may wish to consider (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 2019).

Flexible working can affect retention as well as attraction. In a December 2020 survey of 400 working women across nine countries, Deloitte found that 70% of those women who said they had experienced adverse changes to their daily routines believed those shifts had prevented or would prevent them from progressing in their careers (Deloitte, 2020b). Moreover, 29% questioned whether they would want to progress in their current organisation due to a lack of flexible working arrangements. A variety of predictions have been made about how much of the workforce will work remotely in the future. It is likely that most organisations will need to have multiple work models as business needs evolve but also to attract and retain the right talent. With the market for software engineers, AI specialists, data scientists and cyber security specialists unwavering, organisations that both invest in their talent and offer greater flexibility are more likely to have a more loyal workforce who want to stay and progress their careers with the organisation.

While it may not be possible in every role and organisation, the global pandemic has shown it is possible to work in a more flexible way than was happening even 12 months prior in the majority of businesses (in the UK and elsewhere). New work models have been implemented overnight and it will be interesting to see which practices persist and how organisations take the lessons from this unprecedented time forward to the ‘next normal’. It will also be interesting to see how these practices help to attract and retain a more diverse workforce in technology-related roles.

Introducing more inclusive policies, processes and facilities In order to retain diverse talent, organisations should consider introducing new policies and processes and (where possible) providing access to facilities that will not only benefit women but also help to make the organisation more inclusive for all. Some suggestions to consider include:

• enhanced shared parental leave (and encouraging fathers to take up the leave by sharing more stories of the experiences of those who have taken this up);
• increased maternity and adoptive leave for those with caring responsibilities;
• breast-feeding rooms and creche facilities;
• late-night transport for those who work late in an office environment;
• anonymous employee hotline where people can raise concerns or seek advice without fear or prejudice;
• female-only training courses (not for all training, but this could offer a different experience and opportunity for more women to build new relationships – for example, across departments);
• gender-neutral toilets;
• prayer rooms and facilities;
• relaxation, quiet rooms and similar facilities for working (some people prefer working in quiet spaces and are more productive when working in this way);
• gym facilities or access to gym memberships (e.g. at subsidised rates);
• office (and online) facilities that encourage connection, collaboration and creativity.

Whatever the policies or new processes you think about introducing, include the people you are making the changes for, consult with them and seek out their ideas, opinions and suggestions. Look to listen to both the workforce you are trying to attract and your existing workforce, and together you will be able to create changes that will make a difference for all and allow you to have a more diverse workforce.

SUMMARY

The ongoing and increasing need for a digitally skilled technology workforce and the well-understood range of benefits of having greater diversity in organisations to help shape and implement solutions to (future) problems are reasons why organisations should look to focus on diversifying their technology workforce to include more women. Setting up a project to attract and retain more women in technology roles can be a big undertaking.

Before embarking on designing a project, it is important that an organisation understands whether it is culturally ready and committed to making a change. Sponsorship of the project is critical, as is accountability at the very top of the organisation. Having a visible and engaged sponsor who is passionate about the cause as well as a dedicated and experienced project team will contribute to the increased chance of success of the project. Consideration should be given to bringing outside help in to shape and design the project. Communication (both internal and external to your organisation) is also key to gaining buy-in, increasing awareness and making everyone feel a part of the change that is or will be happening.

As with any business change, the project should have a defined scope and a plan. The plan should be developed with the project sponsor with input from other stakeholders such as HR, marketing and other departments. The project should be appropriately staffed, with sufficient time provided to implement activities, and there should be appropriate funding. Existing ERGs or women-in-technology communities within the organisation are invaluable sources of experience and advice. With support (e.g. in terms of time commitments and recognition of contribution), these groups can be part of the project, driving forward some of the changes that are needed.

Activities identified in the plan should be prioritised (e.g. by their impact or by what change is needed in the organisation most urgently). It is critical to establish the KPIs, targets and measures of success that will be used in determining whether an initiative or a change has been successful.

When designing a project to attract and retain more women in technology roles, there are three key questions to consider: ‘Where are we now?’, ‘Where do we want to be?’ and ‘How will we get there?’

When assessing where you are today, it is important have access to the right data. Activities to understand the status quo may therefore include changes to processes and systems to enable you to capture and access this data (e.g. changes to HR processes to collect data on gender and other characteristics, or to understand the diversity of candidates considering joining your organisation). It is important for the project team (along with business leaders) to have access to the data they need to be able to help and to determine the KPIs and targets that are right for individual departments as well as across the business. Data should be suitably aggregated and anonymised so it is not possible to identify individuals. In addition to understanding what the data is saying, it is critical to understand what your people are saying about your organisation in terms of both attraction and retention. Insights and data available from your own workforce are invaluable in understanding the challenges and opportunities for improvement.

Once you have established the status quo, you can determine the aspirations and targets for where you want to be in the future. This can be in terms of short-term, medium-term and long-term changes you wish to see in your organisation. Benchmarks from different departments and other external organisations will be valuable in helping you to set targets (e.g. the percentage of women working in technology roles in a particular department or a particular role group). Taking the insights and inputs from your own workforce, listening to what your own employees want, and researching the good practices of other businesses and experts are also ways to help establish where you want to be.

The journey of bridging the gap between where you are today and where you want to be in the future is defined in the ‘How will we get there?’ stage. This is where you will define the changes needed to systems, processes and data to be able to achieve the good practices, the KPIs and the measures of success you identified in the previous stage. It should be remembered that the initiatives required for each change will take time. Some initiatives may be implemented quickly while others will take longer to implement. In any case, this stage should include understanding how the effectiveness of each change will be measured, learning from what has worked, acknowledging what has not worked so well and learning from failure. There are always new developments and research in the topics of diversity and inclusion, and it is important for the project team and sponsor to have a continuous learning mindset in order to benefit from, refine and adapt to these new insights as and when appropriate. The ultimate measure of the success of a change is when that change becomes part of how the business normally works and no longer needs a project to drive it.

Attraction and retention of diverse talent, including more women in technology roles, are areas that all organisations need to pay attention to. Many organisations tend to focus on attraction as it is generally better understood (e.g. increasing the number of female candidates applying to the organisation or increasing the number of experienced female hires who join the organisation). But equal if not more attention should be paid to retention and development of talent within an organisation. Not only does this make business sense (as the cost of replacing talent is high because new talent needs to be attracted) but retention and development of talent offer many benefits including increased morale, productivity and brand reputation. Indeed, retention of high-performing female talent who become an organisation’s role models (and share their stories) also helps to attract more women to an organisation.

The ideas and suggestions offered in this chapter on both attracting and retaining more women in technology roles are further expanded and augmented in Chapters 6 and 7.

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