March 8, 2023

International Women’s Day: Guest Blogger Lauren Salisbury on Embracing Equity in Tech

6 min read

In honour of International Women’s Day, we asked Lauren Salisbury, the General Manager of Digital Strategy at our parent company Accordant, to write a guest blog about women in tech.

Lauren has worked at the forefront of technology and innovation internationally for 19 years, working for large, industry-leading companies, before spending her last 5 years as an executive leader in tech organisations here in Aotearoa

Below Lauren shares her own personal experience of the industry, along with tips and insights into how the industry can achieve equality through equity. Check it out, and keep an eye out for more from Lauren, in our annual Job Market & Salary Report, where we spotlight Women in Tech. The report will be released at the end of March, but you can register for early access here.

Embracing Equity in Tech

Today is International Women’s Day and this year’s theme is #EmbraceEquity. So what is equity? How is it different from equality? And why is it important, especially in the tech industry?

The words equity and equality are often used interchangeably, and while they both come from the same root word meaning “even”, “fair”, or “equal”, they actually have different definitions.

Equality means ensuring that everyone, regardless of gender, is given the same opportunities, resources, and rights.

Equity means recognising that each individual has different circumstances, and then ensuring that everyone has the exact resource and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome.

So, equality is achieved through equity.

As the official International Women’s Day website puts it: “Equal opportunities are no longer enough, and can in fact be exclusionary, rather than inclusive.

The Need for Equity in the Tech Industry

Let’s paint the picture by numbers. According to a report by the Ministry for Women in New Zealand, women are significantly underrepresented in the tech industry. As of 2021, the representation of women in tech in New Zealand is as follows:

Women make up only 23% of the tech workforce in New Zealand.
Women hold only 25% of tech senior leadership roles in New Zealand.
Women make up only 14% of board members in tech companies in New Zealand.
Women earn on average 9% less than men in the tech industry in New Zealand.
Women make up only 5% of founders.

It’s a bleak picture.

As an industry, we need to give more consideration to what these numbers reflect, and why women are so underrepresented. I believe these statistics reflect the need for more equitable opportunities and resources in order to balance out the numbers and achieve true equality in the New Zealand tech industry.

For me personally, I have spent my career breaking down these barriers, and I am proud to be part of the group of women making up these numbers – I’m a founder, an executive, and a chartered director, yet after decades in the industry, I still experience inequality.

For example, a few years ago I was a keynote speaker at a tech event in Auckland, and yet I was asked multiple times where to find the tea and coffee; people automatically assumed I was a server because I was one of the few females attending.

And only last year, I pitched as a female founder to a room of male angel investors who would barely hold eye contact with me, and contradicted my knowledge of an industry that 1) they hadn’t worked in and 2) I’ve been recognised internationally for my contributions to innovation over 25 years.

The New Zealand tech industry may be ahead of the game in many ways, but clearly we still have a long way to go before we achieve equality.

Here’s a very confronting statement that I often reflect on, which comes from a documentary I saw a few years ago:

“There comes a moment in every young girl’s life when she realises she is not equal, and from that moment forward, she’s fighting for that moment to come later, for the next generation”.

We must work faster to create a world where young girls do not carry this burden and are unhindered by bias and unequal opportunities.

Promoting Equity in the Workplace

We must make diversity and inclusion a core value of the business, not just a checkbox. I believe we need to ensure that everyone’s voice is heard and valued, and that we create a culture that is agile and inclusive.

This starts with attracting and retaining talent:

Provide opportunities for everyone to grow and advance their careers, including leadership positions and highly visible roles. Attracting more women into the tech industry relies on them having more female mentors.
Flexible working is the norm now, so ensure it extends to the needs of working parents and caregivers. Be flexible all the time too, as kids get sick or have events parents shouldn’t miss. An outcome driven culture coupled with flexible working will promote a high performing team.
Create a feedback friendly workplace that values open and honest communication. Train managers to listen to understand, and speak to be understood. Encourage managers to act on feedback with a bias towards accountability.
Self-care and wellbeing should be encouraged – we all perform better when we are healthy, physically and mentally. This may take the form of wellness programmes, education, or other forms of support like free health insurance.
Ensure your physical environment is inclusive. Take a critical look at your workspace, especially if it’s been the same for years. Consider what could be done to improve it, and then take action (please don’t poll the female talent and ask if they’re ‘OK with it’, as it could make them feel pressured – if you’re not sure then I’d suggest it needs changing).

These should all be considered through an equitable lens, taking into consideration what each individual or group of individuals may need (whether that’s a certain type of flexibility or physical workspace) to ensure the outcome is equal.

A Profitable Imperative

It is well understood that this is the right thing to do as a human imperative, but embracing equality is also key for a profitable business strategy.

Here’s the facts:

Increased profitability

Top-quartile gender diverse companies have 25% higher likelihood of above-average profitability (McKinsey & Company study)

Enhanced Customer Understanding

Women make up half of the global consumer market, highlighting the importance of bringing in more female talent to better understand and connect with this demographic.

Better decision making

More women in leadership positions associated with higher profitability and better decision-making (Peterson Institute for International Economics study)

Improved innovation

Companies with more diverse management teams have 19% higher innovation revenues (Boston Consulting Group study)

However, the pace of progress towards gender equality in business remains slow, and urgent action is needed to accelerate change in the New Zealand tech industry. Only then can we unlock the full potential of gender equality and build truly successful and sustainable businesses for future generations.

Absolute IT

January 31, 2023

What is remote working doing to our IT sector?

7 min read

As we approach three years since the world first encountered the trials and tribulations of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s worth considering how these events affected the workforce, specifically the IT sector. There’s no question that earlier ways of working have been challenged, and new normal ways of working have been established.

The IT world has long been ahead of the curve regarding remote working. Even still, traditional approaches to working existed pre-2020 in the tech sector – notably that effective teams need to share the same physical workspace. While remote working existed, it was far less common, especially for those responsible for security, infrastructure and network management.

When COVID hit New Zealand, bringing lockdowns, organisations were forced to look at their entire way of working. Teams couldn’t come into the office or work close to each other. Organisations have had to fast-track transformation into the cloud to maintain business continuity. Despite the peak of the pandemic long behind us and the ability to work together again, there’s still a long-lasting effect – the popularity of remote or hybrid working teams.

In this blog, we’ll look back at some of the changes we’ve observed in the tech sector due to this paradigm shift.

Teams are better at having video meetings

If you’re anything like us, you’ll have gone through a period where the back-to-back video meetings started to get quite exhausting. While video meetings existed pre-2020, they were only complementary to preferred in-person meetings. In addition, there were significant teething issues when the industry suddenly had to rely solely on digital communications during the pandemic. These included difficulty focusing on the topic, inability to have a free-flowing conversation, and lack of body language, creating very transactional communications and technical issues.

Over time the workforce adapted to maximise the value of video meetings as the organisation depended on these to get things done. In today’s world, IT teams are collaborating via video calls with little to no thought on the medium. We’re conditioned now to hold meetings virtually. If anything, there is an adjustment to in-person meetings after long periods of working remotely.

The video meeting approach is crucial for a team based in multiple locations and remote workers. Losing out on context or key information by not being there physically is difficult for the staff member, and bad for the business as inefficiencies creep in, such as having to redo work.

And it’s not just work in progress (WIP) meetings that video calls are being used for. Job interviews, performance reviews and even Friday drinks have been adapted for remote teams.

Network infrastructure and security are managed with cloud solutions

Cloud-based infrastructure has been evolving for several decades, with many organisations having long-term programmes in place to migrate to this way of working. The ability to keep operations running in the face of civil defence emergencies, hardware faults and, more recently, lockdowns are just some of the reasons cloud architecture has become a priority. In today’s world, functions such as the implementation and management of firewalls, internet security, WAN and data warehousing can all occur on the cloud with close to the same level of performance as on-site infrastructure. In events like those mentioned above, reliability can be better.

At the time of writing, New Zealand has moved on from using lockdowns (for this pandemic), and there’s now the understanding that similar events can create a reality where we can’t get to the workplace. This has influenced businesses to ensure that their technology stack can withstand a remote workforce, with all IT staff able to access and maintain these systems from anywhere.

Employers are offering more flexible working arrangements

The IT sector at its core requires a computer and, in most cases, a combination of internal networking and internet access. For technical roles like development, there isn’t necessarily a requirement to be in the same building as everyone else. Code can be compiled, tested and version-controlled using web-based applications, and communication has never been easier between team members.

Even people-focused roles are manageable virtually for at least some of, if not all the work week. Nevertheless, Project Managers have had to adapt to the new way of working to keep projects delivered on time and within scope.

As teams incorporate more remote-based members, employers are opening their minds to different ways of employing talented individuals. Many job descriptions outline the flexibility of where the job needs to be based. It’s common for tech employers to offer ‘hybrid working’ arrangements where the work week is a combination of on-site and work-from-home.

Access to talent is less dictated by where in NZ people live

More tech employers are embracing a national search for talent, which is already in short supply, and are open to 100% remote staff. This provides businesses with far more options for hiring than they may have had previously, although this approach is not right for every role, team or business.

It’s common in this modern era of IT for a CTO to be in Auckland, a Senior Developer in Christchurch, and a UX Designer in Wellington – all working cohesively together, enabled by digital-based work practices. When the right person for a role is disqualified simply due to location, the business (and the project) can miss out. However, as businesses adapt to this as normality, job seekers and employers have plenty of new opportunities.

Project and workflow management software is crucial

There can be challenges around keeping track of what each team member is working on. For example, less information slips through the cracks when a team sits together and shares casual communications about work. Split that team up across the city (or country) and those micro-comms disappear. This means that managers need processes and systems in place to ensure everyone understands their responsibilities and the status of work at any given time. Examples of systems include instant messaging (e.g. Teams or Slack), Gantt chart project views, digital Kanban boards (e.g. Monday, Asana, Trello) and shared task lists.

There’s more effort required to build and foster interpersonal relationships

Without the dynamics of a team that sits together each day, tech professionals have to make more of an effort to get to know their colleagues. This favours the more extroverted amongst us, making this a slow process for the entire team to become well acquainted. It’s a common belief that staff that know and like each other produce better work and feel more comfortable with healthy challenges and debate.

It’s a good idea for managers to facilitate relationship building wherever possible and for staff to meet each other in person as regularly as possible. Even video calls don’t compare to the value of in-person contact. These relationships don’t just exist between staff at the same level but for management and their reports, senior leaders and business units.

Reliance on technology for informal communications

Emails, Slack, Teams – whatever the software, any remote-based IT team will need to find ways to communicate throughout the day. The challenge organisations face is the etiquette around the immediacy of instant messaging and the need to concentrate on daily tasks. This has led to teams developing agreed upon best practices for communications.

Clearer direction from management

The relationship between managers and their team members is important to get right and certainly a dynamic challenged by the evolving realities of remote teams. In person, trust is built daily, with multiple interactions and conversations across the week building to strengthen the relationship. With team members working remotely, the managers of IT teams have to manage the communication of tasks and expectations carefully . There is not the convenience of quickly clarifying something with a leader or co-worker as there may be in person. Working apart from teammates requires direction and checks by leaders to ensure the right outcomes are being worked towards. Lack of information rarely yields the right results – especially in the tech industry where detail matters.

Learn more about New Zealand’s IT industry

If you’re interested in reading more about our tech sector, head over to the Absolute IT blog, where you can find insights about a range of topics including skills in demand, pay and evolving technologies.

Explore our available IT roles today

Are you looking for a new IT role, in which you can enjoy a flexible working arrangement? Check out our latest jobs to find your next big career move.

Absolute IT