How To Diversify The MSP Workforce

When people think of male-dominated industries the technology space always springs to mind. Which is frustrating because technology businesses are constantly striving to cultivate more diverse workforces made up of the best talent.

However, as myself and my company have discovered, attracting female talent has been a struggle. This has nothing to do with the lack of talent. Far from it, there are brilliant women working across the technology sector. The issue is a lack of candidates. The biggest challenge we face today is getting female talent through the door, to help us to grow the business and make their imprint.

The managed service space isn’t renowned for its diversity, something that we’ve been looking to address for many years. We have seen positive changes across the business, to the extent that the company is well represented by women in marketing, legal and other aspects of the business. But the technical, engineering and developer teams are predominantly men.

Unfortunately, this is quite common. Recent research indicates that women currently hold just over a quarter of technology-focused roles. This is a massive shame, and a signal to all of us that a cultural change is needed. More needs to be done to remove any barriers preventing women from taking up technical roles, and to create a culture that actively encourages women, and girls of all ages, to pursue a career in technology. But where do we start?

Creating a career path

As a business we pride ourselves on offering a range of personal and family-oriented benefits to attract new candidates and provide a supportive and inclusive working environment.

This has contributed to the wellbeing of staff and a better work-life balance, but it hasn’t translated into a higher number of female candidates for technical roles.

This is just at a company level. I can only imagine our peers in the managed service space, the channel, and the wider technology industry are experiencing something similar. Which suggests the industry should be doing more to close the gender gap.

This could manifest itself in several ways.

To begin with, businesses like ourselves should be making more of an effort to attend jobs and careers fairs, especially those hosted by schools, colleges and universities, where hopefully by virtue of our presence we can start advocating careers in tech. It provides a platform to reach out and connect with school students, graduates, vocational students and apprentices, to open their eyes to the possibility of working in technology.

In addition, we can provide mentoring programmes and careers advice through visits to schools and colleges, across the UK, and even in other markets where we, our partners and peers, also operate, like the US. It’s no secret that girls and women tend to avoid careers in STEM – research suggests that only a tiny minority of 3% said technology was their top career choice. It’s not surprising when you delve into why that’s the case. Aspiring young women can’t point to many role models working in technology today. Very few women hold senior posts with the big tech companies, which isn’t very inspiring.

Identifying and nurturing talent

The situation is also compounded by the fact that women in technology tend to gravitate to development roles rather than networking or engineering roles. Or at least that’s what we’re seeing.

We have an excellent developer who joined us as a graduate, who has contributed enormously to the business. Katie is highly valued by her colleagues, our customers and our partners. She and the other women in our organisation bring a different perspective and dynamism. And although Katie followed a more traditional career path, studying computer science at university (noting that there were more men than women on her course), we are open to candidates from all backgrounds and walks of life.

There are whole generations out there that could add so much value to the current and future workforce. Historically, companies have employed candidates that were self-taught, who began writing code in their spare time, or mastered another skill on their own back. We need to create a culture and an environment where women are also encouraged to test their skills or see technology as a passion that they can turn into a profession.

That’s easy to say. The truth is there are whole generations of women out there the technology world is missing out on. Businesses, like ours, need to begin collaborating with each other, industry bodies, the government, schools, colleges, universities to reverse the situation and change the working culture.

Granted, it will take time, but it will need collective action to inspire new generations that a career in technology is a viable one. But these changes will only occur when women feel that they are supported and incentivised to learn, train and progress at every point during their career.

Which means creating an environment that offers aspiring female candidates choices and the opportunity to succeed, where they feel empowered, and able to work alongside other women and their male counterparts.