This International Women's Day, we interviewed some of our team asking them to share their thoughts on how we can #ChooseToChallenge.
We can all choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. We can all choose to seek out and celebrate women's achievements. Collectively, we can all help create an inclusive world.
Meet Mark Thomas, partner and director in our technology team.
1. Which assumptions or preconceptions would you like to challenge about women at work in 2021?
There is a massive assumption in technology that woman and young girls aren’t interested in technology and it’s a ‘male dominated’ sector. This may be the case now, but it certainly shouldn’t be. We need to make all types of jobs and industries more accessible to women; diversity of approach can only bring even bigger and better innovation to the world.
2. Within your market / industry sector, what progress have you seen businesses take to progress gender equality?
The tech world is attempting to bring more women into the fold, but there is still so much more to be done, especially in the more hands-on technical roles like software engineering. We need to start at the bottom and encourage children to become more tech aware, encourage young girls to explore careers in technology and invest time in highlighting the skills that are transferable to tech.
3. What is one action companies can take to further balance their talent attraction strategies?
I’ve always been a huge fan of ‘blind’ CVs. No name at all. Which can completely take away any bias around gender (or race etc). Every company should start employing this approach.
4. What can organisations do to shift pre-conceived conceptions about flexible working?
Covid has all but diminished this in the tech world. The old adage of not trusting your people to work from home has reduced massively, mainly due to the success of productivity over the last 12 months. Companies need to trust employees and work against results rather than time in/out of the office. The results in employee retention and engagement will be great if they can get this right.
