Diversity is one of those words that gets chucked around a lot. “We need a more diverse workforce”… “We need more women in tech”… “We need more insert minority here” — but why does it actually matter?
Faith in the workplace
I’ve been in tech for 2 years now, and in the beginning years it was extremely apparent to me that I was not in a minority just because I’m a woman, but also because I’m a Muslim and come from an ethnic minority. It’s no secret that the technology industry tends to revolve around booze. Once I went to an event only to find out that my free drink token could only be exchanged for alcohol. I did receive an apology from the event organisers after I kicked up a bit of a fuss, but the damage was done — I felt extremely unwelcome. It was probably an oversight on their part but small things like that are indicative of wider issues. Having a diverse workforce is a good first step to avoid problems like this. Customer bases are diverse and if your staff is diverse then they can tap into the needs and understanding of that customer base.
Makers Academy is a great example of a diverse workforce, and this makes me super grateful to work here.
Last week I was asked by Evgeny, our CEO, if I’m okay and I feel safe with all the post-Paris, anti-muslim sentiment. It was very touching, and made me feel even safer than I already felt. As well as this, it led to a really interesting discussion about diversity. For example… about potentially having blinds on our transparent meeting room to get a private space for students and staff to pray.
Women in Tech
Now we have dads on the team but we don’t have a mum yet we were taken a little off-guard when one of our new students, Sara requested a private space where she can pump breastmilk for her baby and in a way our lack of understanding is similar to the oversight I experienced at the event. I’m grateful that we were made aware of this unique requirement from new Mums, and I’ll be making sure that we’ve got a private space for her and any mums that come on the course in future.
There are currently 4 women out of 22 people in our team. We also recently had our first female coachineer join us which means nearly 20% of Makers Academy staff is female — but none of us are mums, so we haven’t quite figured out our maternity policies, simply because we haven’t had to cross that bridge yet. We could just leave it and deal with it when we have to, but now being part of the TechTalentCharter we want to be pioneers of a forward thinking parental-leave policy before it’s even needed — because it’s important to us not just to recruit diverse talent but to retain it as well.
The TechTalentCharter’s aim is to take positive action to increase the ratio of women working in tech to reflect the makeup of the UK population.
Originally published at blog.makersacademy.com on November 30, 2015.
