We need to talk about the lack of inclusion in tech professions*
Hugo Miguel Ribeiro, November 28, 2022
We are facing a skills gap that worries ‘IT business’ organizations worldwide, making recruitment and talent management an increasingly difficult/complex task. The international study “The Future of Work”, conducted among 3,000 HR and Talent Acquisition professionals, reveals, for example, that 9 out of 10 employers are finding it increasingly difficult to fill vacancies because they cannot find suitable candidates for specific roles.
At the same time, we find evidence that a strong culture based on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies underpins higher levels of creativity, performance, critical thinking, innovation, and competitiveness. In addition, it increases employee retention rates and enables organizations to generate above-average results and profits. Although the tech sector is still a world dominated (less and less, admittedly) by white men, there is a substantial investment by Big Tech in IED policies, bringing better results. There are numerous reasons and benefits.
Of course, inclusion and diversity include much more than race, gender, age, country of origin, religion, or sexual orientation. It is also “neuroinclusion” (see Dell’s hiring program for professionals with autism). It is also the combination of different talents, ideas, backgrounds, and experiences. Denise Young Smith, Apple’s former vice president for inclusion and diversity, tried to explain this (perhaps not in the best way) by stating, “There can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blonde men in a room, and they’re going to be diverse.”
Investing in a culture of FDI is not some ‘extra’ or corporate marketing action. Instead, it is a structural and priority part of organizations that have already understood what this means: from attracting talent (which is diverse and increasingly demanding, especially Gen Z, Millennials, and Gen X) to brand recognition (whose users/customers are various and also increasingly demanding). Moreover, as McKinsey points out, inclusion and diversity also act as a performance lever and results catalyst since more plural teams are happier and more effective, making their organizations more likely to have above-average financial performance.
Therefore, it is time to bring multicultural, multidisciplinary, multilingual, and multi-business professionals into the tech universe. These professionals can add all their knowledge and experience to the digital revolution. This is a trend anticipated by Gartner, which predicts, by 2024, that 80% of technology services and products will be developed by people outside IT – citizen developers. People from any business area may become creators of digital solutions in the organizations where they work. And in many cases, without the need for ‘extreme’ reskilling and upskilling processes that suddenly require a deep mastery of maths or programming. Instead, through intuitive platforms that can generate the necessary code automatically, for example.
Otherwise, and by not having representation in the workforce of technology organizations, which do not mirror the communities and markets in which they are embedded, how do we expect to design technology solutions and products that impact different realities and address the diverse needs of people?
The likelihood that we are perpetuating a non-inclusive tech industry that fuels biased algorithms and a complete innovation bias is real. This happens because your teams and organizations do not represent the real world. That’s why we need to talk about the lack of representativeness in tech professions. But more than that, we need to talk about what we are not doing (in universities, in organizations, and society in general) to attract talent from all areas and businesses and thus respond to this problem whose solution is ultimately within reach of ALL.
*This article was originally published on Human Resources Portugal.
