Closing the gender gap

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This year we pledged to address our representation issue and make our primary focus in Recruitment to hire more women. We interviewed our Chief Operations Officer, Simon Greed, on how Fabric Group plans to close our gender gap.

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Isabella: Only 28% of the Australian IT workforce is female, how do you plan to impact this representation issue?

Simon: We’re hoping to encourage more women to join the industry through an internship program designed for women that allows university students to come into contact with the industry before looking for job opportunities. The program aims to empower women by providing access to mentors and industry connections while also adding experience to resumes. Ultimately, increasing confidence levels and providing a support system that will give women a boost up into the tech industry.

Isabella: In a male dominant industry, how can we ensure that the opportunities we provide reach an equal amount of women?

Simon: We intend to make women more aware of the job opportunities we provide by increasing our presence in the women tech community. We are attending meet-ups aimed at women’s growth, posting in online communities and curating a Women In Tech event. This provides us with a women-based platform for us to share our job opportunities. We also need to be mindful of how women react to our job advertisements, by using gender-neutral language in our job descriptions we aim to reduce the unconscious bias that currently exists in most job ads. We’ll also continue to include women in our interview processes to normalise the experience.

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Isabella: How do you plan on attracting and retaining female employees?

Simon: The company benefits we offer contribute the most towards attracting and retaining employees. We have a flexible return-to-work schedule that helps our employees return part-time and work from home after taking maternity leave. We also encourage our female staff to shape our company culture and traditions, getting them to plan activities that aren’t just drinking beer and playing Dota.

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Isabella: What effect do you think this initiative will have on our organisation as a whole?

Simon: It’s common sense that diversity drives creativity, innovation, and productivity. Introducing more variety to our teams by increasing female representation will provide us with the ability to bring more innovative people, processes and products to our clients. Initiatives like these will have greater impacts beyond our organisation, with the end goal of creating a fairer industry that provides equal opportunities. The ultimate effect will be that it will help us achieve our vision that talent with technology enriches humanity.

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Sources:

Chief Executive Women (2019). ASX200 Senior Executive Census 2019.

Professionals Australia (2019). Tech’s woman problem: more than just a pipeline issue.