Stop trying to fix women: HSBC and Computing summit learns why cultural change is key to increasing diversity and reducing skills shortfall

The HSBC and Computing event Stem at the Source brought together a range of speakers, all possessing different areas of expertise including engineering, recruitment and entrepreneurship, to discuss how the industry can become more diverse.

It is common knowledge that STEM faces an acute skills shortage and that employers are having to expend considerably more effort recruiting and retaining people with the skills required. Longer term, the challenge is on to nurture a more diverse generation of employees and leaders in order to create feed the leadership pipeline of the future.

Earlier this week, speakers including Jen Goodison, CTO Engineering Platforms, HSBC, Joseph Castle, CEO of IT Solutions Partner Tecnologika and Lisa Holmes, Director at specialist tech recruiter Uniting Ambition took part in a range of panels, think tanks and fireside chats to share their insights and expertise on increasing STEM diversity and creating a culture of inclusion where diversity thrives.

The event kicked off with Jen Goodison of HSBC, setting out some of the ways that her team are trying to employ more women engineers and, crucially, create a culture where they are more likely to retain them. An interesting insight shared by Goodison was that she was changing the way that job vacancies were advertised reducing the list of "must have" technical skills and certifications to a much shorter list of absolute non-negotiables on the basis that it attracts more high quality and diverse candidates. There are also some occasions when Goodison will go to a recruiter to put together shortlists for certain roles where an agreed proportion of candidates have a very specific profile. This doesn't happen for every role but there are circumstances where a predominantly women shortlist is appropriate.

Goodison also shared her thoughts on how huge, complex organisations such as HSBC can complete with Fintech rivals in the skills marketplace.

"If you want to solve a really cool engineering problem then work for a fintech," she said. "If you want something where every day you have a little bit more of a puzzle to unravel, and problems that get you out of bed in the morning and groups of people around you who think the same then work for a bank. There are so many opportunities and so many different problems to solve."

Recruiting and retaining diverse talent

Goodison was then joined by Joseph Castle and Lisa Holmes to discuss how tech employers can find more diverse talent. From a recruiter's perspective, Lisa Holmes pointed out that salaries were only the beginning of what many candidates are now seeking. Employers can make themselves more attractive by offering greater flexibility, shared parental leave, four-day working weeks, leadership and returner programmes etc.

There was a panel consensus that tech employers are going to have to cast their nets more widely than they have tended to so far. Insisting on computer science graduates isn't going to get enough people with the right skills in the door, never mind allow an employer to build a more diverse team.

There was also a consensus on the importance of company culture when it came to nurturing and retaining talent. People are far less likely to take their highly sought and expensively developed skills elsewhere if they are provided with opportunities to speak freely with any concerns they may have and feel as if those concerns have been heeded.

Joseph Castle raised the interesting point that whilst culture was crucial, both employees and employers needed to be careful not to mistake beanbags, DJs and beers on a Friday for a healthy workplace culture. In fact, the presence of these baubles can be deployed to hide some quite toxic environments. Castle commented:

"Culture is really about being able to grow, to communicate an organisations vision, to believe in that vision. It's really important to create environments that are culturally nourishing to staff, and we need to take care not to confuse culture with benefits."

Both Castle and Goodison spoke of the importance of checking in regularly with staff either via surveys or just changing the way meetings begin, with a focus on everyone's wellbeing. In some ways it's an obvious point - an unhappy, stressed workforce is likely to also turn over fairly quickly - but perhaps so obvious that it's often completely overlooked. However, care should also be taken not to confuse happiness with comfort. Employees are likely to be happiest if encouraged to step out of their comfort zones - or at least push the boundaries.

A think tank on creating roles for women in STEM benefited from contributions from a highly engaged audience, and covered questions on the selective deployment of quotas, the challenges of changing culture, particularly in large organisations, and also the necessity of actually speaking to women rather than making assumptions about what they may or may not require from their employers. Jen Goodison lamented the focus that tech employers have often placed on "fixing" women as opposed to looking more critically at the system which is failing them. The necessity but also difficulties inherent in reaching out to potential employees in areas that have traditionally been overlooked by recruiters was also discussed. Apprenticeships remain underused by the sector.

The morning concluded with a talk from the science and technology writer, researcher, author and podcaster Gemma Milne who talked of her experiences early in her career. Her talk emphasised the importance of businesses looking outside of their organisations and looking at the broader social structure in which they operate. Larger enterprises in particular have a degree of power to educate governments and society abut the necessity of removing some of the barriers that prevent women engaging in the workplace as much as they might like to such as childcare costs and the desperately low rates of maternity pay, etc.

Expanding on the point raised by Jen Goodison earlier in the day about "fixing" women, Milne also challenged the idea that potential women leaders need to fit a mould of leadership that has been defined by men. Instead, notions of what a leader looks like and sounds like should change.

Computing and CRN will once again be hosting the Women in Tech Festival with content that doesn't shy away from the harsh realities of being a woman within the tech industry across the world. Join us in London on 3 November and online on 9 November.

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