English | EN Is Girl Power enough?
Oct 15, 2014
Every ICT company with respect for themselves has a program for improving their gender diversity. That can be quite a difficult goal to reach. According to Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda, only 3% of women with a first degree have it in an ICT-related subject. For men it’s closer to 10%. Plus, women tend to drop out of those careers earlier and don’t come back in. There’s a huge potential with our economy for more women in the industry. If women took part in ICT careers as much as men, it would, in Europe alone be around 9 billion euros.
In Sogeti Norway, we are 46% women and we have never been lower than 42% women since we started the company seven years ago. We strongly believe that this is not enough – we need to prepare for the future with a global ICT industry with team members working around the world. Therefore diversity for us is about gender, age, cultural background, and personal style. We are quite proud of what we have achieved:
How did we reach our goals? What have we experienced?
- The positive goals for diversity should influence decisions every day.
- It is what you do every day that matters.
- The candidate’s name and background must not be part of the discussions when building the teams.
- If the candidate has the right competence, experience, talent, and seems to be a good team worker, he or she should be in the team!
- It is easier to work across country borders when we can learn about foreign culture from our local co-workers.
- Everyone can be afraid of heights. The boundary of what is “high enough” varies. We must support each other and push the limits with respect.
- Most women are not attracted to companies focusing (too much) on gender diversity, but they appreciate a workplace that focuses on diversity in general.
With the team in house – are we ready? Will all projects deliver creative, fun, and innovative solutions? I think it helps a lot to make decisions on that too. For example, in 2012 one of our projects was Top 5 in the Testing Innovation award competition in Capgemini Group with the innovation “Model based regression test suite with test automation”. We made the following decisions in the start-up phase:
First decision
“We shall win the Capgemini Group Testing Innovation Award!” We also dared to say it out loud.
Second decision
Composition of the team. “We need a global team”:
- Women and men!
- Team members with «young» and «old» minds
- International team with team members from India, the Netherlands, and Norway – creativity will increase
Third decision
We will do an evolution and not a revolution. It is natural for humans to do improvements and innovations every day. We will build on what we already have in our processes, methods, and tools.
Conclusion
Diversity in itself is not profitable. It’s the way you manage the diversity that makes it profitable. Diversity leadership is about using diverse knowledge, expertise, and resources properly. It’s about making differences a strength.
So is Girl Power enough? No – not at all! You have to win every day. Never give up. And pick your battles.
Agenda:
- October 15-17: For the third time, Capgemini has renewed its partnership with the Women’s Forum: Our delegates will facilitate a hackathon about education challenges with Jean-Michel Leclercq from CNED and a Master Class about best practices in networking
- November 24-27: The EuroSTAR conference 2014 has the theme “Diversity Innovation Leadership” and together with my appreciated college Trude Rosendal I will held the speech “Is Girl Power Enough?”. Meet us in Dublin to hear more about our experience in how to build testing team focusing on Innovation, Diversity and Leadership.
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