European Women in Tech Conference - My Top 10 Messages

As Sky Betting and Gaming has started its journey leveraging Diversity & Inclusion, it’s been great to see the energy from people around the business. Last week, I attended the European Women in Tech Conference to learn from some of the biggest tech businesses in the world. Here are my Top 10 Messages:

1. IBM- soon we will be able to monitor our mental health on smart watches. Everyone has mental health, the same way we have physical health. Recognise it and look after it.

2. Ebay- don’t bring people into your organisation to tick a box and then let them feel excluded. They’ll just leave. There’s absolutely no point trying to widen talent pools & attract different groups of people to your organisation if they’re not going to stay, feel included and perform. Fix the environment not the individual.

3. Adidas- teach boys to change or we’ll still be having the same conversation in 20 years time. Gender equality will never be achieved until we change the position of men. Across Europe, the increase in women’s employment has not been matched by men’s contribution to care work and house work. We need to not just look at women and minority groups but the whole picture.

4. Microsoft- the curriculum teaches for the jobs of yesterday not the jobs of tomorrow. We’re not inspiring children, educating them for the future or breaking down restrictive gender stereotypes in schools.

5. Uber- have closed their pay gap for females and minority groups. They have raised the salary of employees paid less than the median salary for their role and increased it to the median level.

6. Shell- if you’re not actively including you’re probably accidentally excluding. It’s hard work and it might make you sigh when you read it but it’s true. People and organisations have been having Diversity & Inclusion conversations for years but if you’re not prepared to challenge your own mindset the conversations will just continue with little progress.

7. Shell- don’t think you’ve fixed gender balance by hiring lots of females into admin roles. Say. No. More.

8. Booking.com- are slowing down hiring decisions to attract Diverse talent for a sustainable and successful future. “Bring us a mix of people. It might take longer but it’s the right thing.” Yvonne Agyei, Chief People Officer

9. Intuit- accessibility is a creative challenge not a challenge for creativity. 15% of the world’s population is disabled and most of us will experience some kind of disability in our lives. I wonder how many more customers we could attract if our sites were accessible for everyone, for example, those with a visual impairment?

10. Sky Betting and Gaming- they don’t have teams they have tribes. Their unique business culture, agile ways of working and conscious effort to encourage Diversity & Inclusion will help them to be the best digital business.

Isn’t it great to see our name up there amongst some of the best tech businesses in the world?

But we’ve got to stay in the game. If we’re not proactive with Diversity & Inclusion we’ll be falling behind. It’s not being too PC, boring, banning fun or ticking a box. It shouldn’t have to be a thing, a network group or the name of a blog. Simply the way we do business. But that’s a huge mindset shift and a change in the way we work which will take generations. So until then…we’ve got work to do!