Choose to Challenge: Changing mindsets can help build a diverse workforce

Changing mindsets guest post by Marie Moynihan, Senior Vice President of Global Talent Acquisition, Dell Technologies

Over the past year, we have witnessed the rapid acceleration of digital transformation across all industries and parts of society. The result of this has led to an increasing demand for people to equip themselves with the digital skills required to participate fully in the jobs market across all industries and career stages.

European data tells us that 90% of all jobs in all sectors of the economy require digital skills. Over 53% of companies looking for ICT specialists report recruitment difficulties and of the 9 million reported to be working as ICT specialists across Europe only 17% of them are women. Although Ireland rate higher than the EU average, only 21% of those within our sector are female.

Unfortunately, this lack of diversity is a pervasive problem that extends beyond the technology industries and into other sectors critical to fueling innovation. According to the UNESCO Institute of Statistics, fewer than 30% of researchers in science, technology, engineering and math around the world are female.

While the research is always focused on the scientist, the developers, the technologists what is changing now is that every sector needs technology to survive, compete and in many cases over the past year, simply exist.

It’s this change in society and understanding around the power of technology that excites me for the future.

Last week I had the pleasure of speaking at the annual I Wish event. Usually hosted as an in-person event in Cork and Dublin this year it was fully virtual. As a result, up to 10,000 girls from secondary schools right across the country tuned in. It’s events like I Wish that can play a critical role in helping to shape the minds of young students and the perception they have of the tech industry. Through the event, students hear the stories of many women working in STEM-related industries and learn what could be possible for them.

As we look to the future, we need to continue to focus on turning the ‘what’s possible’ into the next generation’s reality. We need to ensure we’re paving a different pathway for the next generation of girls starting school and sitting the leaving cert this year and for the young women that will graduate from third-level education.

As leaders in business, we also need to ensure we’re providing opportunities for those that don’t finish school or continue on to third-level education – to ensure as a society everyone can acquire the digital skills required to pursue a job in today’s digital economy.

In essence, we need a culture shift.

Globally, female representation gets lost at every stage of the talent pipeline, often leaving before they have the chance to excel. And if companies are going to keep them in the tech ecosystem, they need to embrace diversity and inclusion. This doesn’t just mean welcoming a wider variety of individuals into the workforce — it means changing the workplace culture from the ground up so that these individuals know they’re seen, heard and valued.

So how can companies cultivate inclusion, create change and transform the tech sector’s greatest threat into its greatest opportunity?

The simple answer is changing our mindset. We know from our recent experience that work is now not where you go – it’s what you do.

The Government has launched a National Remote Work Strategy to make remote working a permanent option for life after the pandemic. The Strategy sets out plans to strengthen the rights and responsibilities of employers and employees, to provide the infrastructure to work remotely, and sets out clear guidance on how people can be empowered to work remotely from the office.

It’s steps like this that will help to make our workplaces more inclusive and diverse and it will be important that we all work together to ensure we deliver a strategy like this effectively for employees and the organisation in equal measure.

In Ireland, Dell Technologies has operations across Dublin, Cork and Limerick. As a company, we have always embraced remote working and flexible working arrangements for our teams. However, never before did we all do it at the same time.

More than 90% of Dell’s workforce continues to work remotely. Over the past year, we’ve seen how technology has enabled many businesses to remain operational and competitive despite office closures. We’ve seen how technology can keep workforces connected and help maintain that comradery experienced in an office space, maintaining the spirit and culture of the organisation.

Families have had more time together and without the morning and evening commute have achieved a greater balance between work and home life. Jeff Clarke, Dell Technologies COO and vice-chairman, has predicted that around 50% of the global workforce will continue working remotely even after the pandemic.

I want to make sure we bottle the learnings from the past year and maintain the positives in a post-pandemic world to forge an ever more inclusive talent pipeline both within Ireland’s vibrant technology sector and beyond.

While the last twelve months have brought so much turmoil and sadness for many it has also been an incredible year of transformation for many organisations. So, this International Women’s Day I hope we all Choose to Challenge a more inclusive and diverse way of working into the future.

Despite everything we’ve achieved so much in the past year and my hope is that when restrictions fade, and we all return to some form of normality that we continue to remember what’s possible and choose to challenge the boundaries that we work in. By challenging the status quo now, we can change the future of work for ourselves, for our daughters and nieces and for the next generation coming through our schools and universities.