The UK technology and recruitment industry united today with a commitment to improve the diversity and inclusion of the tech workforce with the launch of the TechTalent Charter. The Charter, initiated and written by Monster.co.uk with the support of Code First Girls and a number of industry influencers and organisations, outlines a series of key measures which aim to help organisations to think differently to encourage and support a more diverse tech workforce.
Last year Caitlin Moran highlighted that “If 90% of coders are men, developing and owning the language of the future, women won’t be part of the conversation”. With this sentiment, and the looming digital skills, gap front of mind, Monster.co.uk launched its Girls in Coding campaign earlier this year. The campaign consisted of a series of initiatives and events aimed at raising awareness of the low ratio of females in the tech workforce whilst inspiring females to consider technology related roles.
From this initiative, and inspired by conversations with leading organisations such as Stemettes, the TechTalent Charter was born with Monster bringing together numerous key figures within the industry to support and form the working groups of the Tech Talent Charter. The charter encourages businesses to sign up to key measures which aim to increase the amount of diverse talent within their organisations.
The charter's initial focus will be both recruitment and retention of female tech talent, as encouragement of candidates to these roles is essential to deliver the skills required to fuel our economy. The initial programme of work completed by the charter will address the challenges around gender parity in tech roles, with a longer term view to address the wider issues around diversity in tech.
The current landscape
Currently there is a requirement in the UK for 745,000 tech workers by 2017 and 1 million by 2020, yet there is a reported shortfall of skilled tech workers with open positions left unfilled and not enough people being trained.
Alarmingly the representation of females in these all important roles is disproportionally low - only 17% of tech and telco workers in the UK are currently women. Females have a vital role to play in ensuring the UK continues to have a role in technological and digital innovation. These stats highlight that businesses need to do all they can to bring female talent into their organisations and recognise the valuable contribution they can make.
What The Charter aims to do
The TechTalent Charter’s aim is to take positive action to increase this ratio to reflect the makeup of the UK population. There are two stages to the Charter’s evolution which aim to effect a meaningful change. Firstly at the launch on November 26th 2015, those who sign up as founding signatories are agreeing in principle to aspire to the protocols and commitments detailed in the Charter, detailed below:
- Commit to best practice in recruitment by implementing the ‘Rooney Rule’ – interviewing at least one female candidate (where available) as part of the recruitment process
- Encourage and support adoption of diversity best practice by adhering to the ‘tech inclusion’ accreditation scheme
- Explore and collectively support initiatives to address longer term programmes to build a strong tech talent pipeline among the younger UK generation
- Appoint a senior level, named representative with responsibility for the Charter commitments from each signatory organisation
- Work collectively with other signatories to develop and implement future protocols that support the practical implementation of the aims of the Charter
- Establish a set benchmark for measurement – signatories agree to share and publish the diversity profile of UK employees and any other work on equality, diversity and inclusion
- To measure and monitor progress of the Charter and its protocols, publishing an annual joint report based on contributing data shared from all signatories
Secondly, the Charter has established six workstreams: Best Practice in Recruitment; Best Practice in Retention; Marketing & Promotion; Annual Reporting & Measurement; Eco-system & Policy and Education & Talent Pipeline. These workstreams, headed up by members of the Charter’s founding steering group, will work in the coming months to provide the support, information and guidelines needed to help organisations implement the protocols above. With that in mind and to ensure change starts to happen, in June 2016, signatories will be asked to sign up to fully embrace and implement the Charters protocols.
Sinead Bunting, Marketing Director UK & Ireland at Monster.co.uk, commented: ‘With a looming digital skills gap that is critical for our economy’s growth, we need to show young people, current professionals and in particular, females, who are worryingly underrepresented in the tech workforce, that tech skills are increasingly essential to jobs and careers. We also need to highlight and remind industry that a diverse workforce will deliver tech solutions and services that will meet their customer base needs much better and as such not only be more representative of the UK population, but more commercially successful.
There are so many excellent initiatives and organisations working in and around this area to raise awareness and make progress, but we recognise that to truly move the dial and effect change we are stronger working as a unified collective. We have a need and an opportunity to build a dynamic, representative and commercially successful tech workforce. However we do need to rethink and change how we build our talent pipelines, how we recruit and how we retain our tech staff. The Tech Talent Charter is a way we can all work together to make that happen and that is something we at Monster and in the Tech Talent Charter steering group are incredibly excited about. Please join us to make that change a reality. We really need your participation.”
The people involved in the Steering Committee for the TechTalent Charter are:
- Andrea Bertone, Monster Worldwide
- Sinead Bunting, Monster Worldwide
- Amali de Alwis, Code First: Girls
- Debbie Forster, Apps for Good
- Anne Marie Imafidon, Stemettes
- Jacquelyn Guderley, Stemettes
- Jess Tyrl, Centre for London
- Jo Portlock, RBI
- Rashi James, Michael Page Group
- Kim Stringer, Funding Circle
- Jeanne Le Roux, JLR Solutions
- Ruth Nicholls, Young Rewired State
- Will Bentinck, Makers Academy
- Sarah Luxford, Tech London Advocates
- Nikki Hayford S3 Group
- Danielle Ahmed, Computer Futures
- Alan Duncan, S3 Group
- Owen Roberts, Thomson Reuters
- Marily Nika, Geekettes
- Lauren Mitchell, Plotr
- Hannah Jones, Monster Worldwide
- Claire Lock, Monster Worldwide
- Alice Heaton-Ward, Renovata Partners
Amali de Alwis, CEO of Code First Girls said, “Encouraging talented individuals to enter the technology sector, whether as graduates or at a later stage in their career, is something I believe passionately in, and is very much at the heart of the work we do at Code First Girls. Vital technology skills, whether in coding, data science, data security or UX/UI, now play a critical role in the way we live and work. With the UK looking at a needing further 1 million tech workers by 2020, we all have to take a serious look at how we manage talent in our companies and update restricting incumbent behaviour which are holding us back from continued success.
This is the reason I became so heavily involved with the Tech Talent Charter. We need to ensure we are doing all we can to support all our businesses, whilst giving the candidates themselves the confidence to get involved in this dynamic and fast growing sector. I look forward to having you all join us on that journey, and working together to drive change in UK Business to supports our continued status and a global leader in tech, innovation and talent."
Debbie Forster, Co CEO of Apps for Good added, “It’s no secret that there is a digital skills gap in the UK, and ensuring young people and in particular women are playing a part in helping to fill this is crucial if we are to maintain our position as a leader in the digital and technology space. An important aspect of achieving this is thinking carefully about how we build the talent pipeline by working with schools and businesses to ensure we are encouraging and educating girls and boys from the word go, looking at how we engage and communicate the messaging around technology careers and how we are presenting the options available to them. The Tech Talent Charter is an important document to help guide businesses through this and I’m really excited about watching the movement grow, and help shape it as more organisations get involved.
To find out more, become a signatory and pledge support to the principals outlined in the Tech Talent Charter, please visit: www.techtalentcharter.co.uk