‘There’s no competition here’ – channel rivals to sheathe swords at TC4RE event

The UK’s top vendors, distributors and channel partners will be putting aside their rivalries at an event aimed at collectively tackling the IT channel’s racial diversity gap.

The Technology Community for Racial Equality’s (TC4RE’s) Race to Tech Summit will be held in London’s County Hall on 27 September.

Places are limited, with more than 70 of the 150 slots already filled.

“We’re ready to expand right across the industry”

The event will see rivals sheathing their swords in their efforts to work collectively to build a more racially diverse workforce.

Founded in 2021, TC4RE’s 12 founding members include Computacenter, Insight, boxxe and Softcat, as well as TD Synnex, Exertis and Microsoft (see full list, bottom).

Talking to IT Channel Oxygen, Julie Simpson, who is CEO of founding member ResourceIT, said the non-profit is ready to take on new members.

“Those 12 founding members have given the last four years of their time, resources and money to get TC4RE created and off the ground,” she said.

“We’re now ready to expand it right across the industry,” she added, stressing that AWS, NetApp, Redstore and Cisco are among the firms sending representatives to the event.

“We are collaborating as businesses to advance our DEI strategies,” Simpson said.

“What we’re finding is that, while Computacenter and Softcat may be competitors in a commercial sense, they don’t compete around racial quality.

“You’ve got [Exertis CEO] Tim Griffin and TD Synnex [UK&I Senior VP] David Watts side by side. There’s no competition here. This is about how we’ve all got to better support and help each other.”

Preparing for ethnicity pay reporting

Following a keynote from Sir Trevor Phillips, the day’s programme splits into three streams aimed at C-suite, HR leaders and the TC4RE community, respectively.

Softcat’s Head of Employee Engagement, Diversity & Inclusion, Anushka Davies, who will be taking part in the middle stream, said she will be dishing out tips on how companies can best introduce ethnicity pay reporting (which the new government plans to make mandatory).

Building confidence across your organisation to gain the necessary pay data can be tricky, Davies warned.

“We pulled some communication together to build that confidence, and got 95% of the data. Now we have 99% of the data, so it’s been really easy for us to continue producing the ethnic pay gap reports,” she told IT Channel Oxygen.

“Other organisations will be at the very beginning of even attempting to collect the data, so in my breakout session I’ll be covering that piece off.”

Softcat’s ethnicity staff percentage has risen from 13% to 18% over the last four years, Davies said.

Also appearing on the panels will be Tech Talent Charter Founder Debbie Forster, who will be giving her response to the recent DE&I rollbacks witnessed across the IT sector, as well as Computacenter’s security CTO Dr Colin Williams (pictured below).

“Holding up a mirror to ourselves”

TC4RE aims to provide a safe environment for people at all organisational levels to share information with their peers.

But it also ramping up efforts to boost the pipeline of ethnic minorities applying for apprenticeships or internships in the tech sector. It wants to increase the number of students applying for its grant programme from under 100 to 1,000 or even 10,000, Simpson said.

“If you’re considering diversity in your next generation of staff or early-in-career pipeline, then TC4RE is a great way to feed and support that,” she said.

Simpson concluded: “For anything that’s to do with diversity, I’ve always had the message that it should be non-compete. It’s all about working together collectively to change processes, change behaviours and change our outlook – almost holding a mirror up to ourselves.

“Collectively, we can create a better industry that is more diverse. We’ve done it when it comes to gender, and this is now our opportunity to do it when it comes to race.”

Find out more about the event here.