'I walk into the room and I see the risk of burnout,' HSBC IT head

Charlie Walters: 'How do I help those teams and those people to recognise that they're trying too hard?'

"Sometimes I walk into the room and I see the risk of burnout." said Charlie Walters, head of engineering, foundation technology in WPB at HSBC.

"It's the guys who are perhaps not in the roles that aren't most suited to them."

She was speaking at Computin g's Women in Tech Festival yesterday, where she addressed the importance of teamwork in driving change in IT and helping individuals to be happy in their work.

"How do I help those teams and those people to recognise that they're trying too hard?"

Walters, who has worked in technology at financial organisations for more than two decades, was recently recruited to HSBC through a scheme designed specifically to bring in female talent. In common with many large organisations, the bank realised that while it had brilliant architects, integrators and engineers (mostly male) there was a need for people who could stitch the whole thing together, promote teamwork, and properly communicate the process of change.

"It was very much you build it and they will come type mindset," she said of one team she worked with in the past. "But no one was coming".

Despite her long experience and skills as a coder, Walters said she does not consider herself a hardcore techie. Instead, she found her niche as an agile team leader, helping other people to be their best. "Whether it's because I'm female, or because I bring a transformation mindset, I don't know. But I was able to leverage that and really think about handling things differently."

This means getting eyes away from screens, fingers away from keyboards and heads together to solve problems. Just the process of doing that consistently can be transformative, she said, both in addressing the issues that lead to burnout and improving the end product.

"Getting them to rally and come together was really powerful. They could then share ideas, collaborate and solve problems together, and it really made a difference to what we actually achieved. They were a good strong technical team anyway, but working together on pivoting to a problem and solving it together was very rewarding, even though it was tough."

Tough, because changing culture is always tough. Resources aren't infinite, even at a global bank. Priorities change, and teams must be flexible enough to meet them.

Like many organisations, HSBC has recognised the importance of diversity in tech, and has multiple initiatives to draw in women, ethnic and neurological minorities. But this is very much a work in progress, said Walters. Changing culture takes time.

"You go into offices in Canary Wharf, and there's lots of different events on diversity or on health and wellbeing, there's everything you'd expect to support the organisation and the people in it. But that doesn't mean it's without challenges. I'm not in there because it's going to be easy. I've not walked into a place where the culture is everything it says on the tin."

Particularly hard is the need for 24x7 IT support, which means gruelling shift work. This can mitigate against diversity. It's tough for women with young children for example. But said Walters, who admitted becoming "cranky when I haven't had enough sleep", a team that communicates well can works together can fill these gaps.

"I don't believe work is your family, it's not for me. But that sense of belonging, the sense of connection with other people around you, is so powerful to get stuff done. So that's what I try and bring.

"Of course, I'm going to have to be on call sometimes, that's part of the compromise. I'm going to need to solve that by enabling the people who are better than I am, and calmer and more level headed to be in place to do that work too."