We visited the London HQ of Puppet to shoot a series of films talking about diversity and DevOps; looking at how businesses can achieve Agility Through Diversity. The third in this series looks at embedding diversity in the organisation. Guests included Rachel Neaman, Non-Executive Board Member and Advisor and Marianne Calder, VP & MD for Puppet. We asked them

• What does industry best practice look like?
• How do you attract and retain new talent?
• What can be done to reach people that might not have considered tech as a career?
• Why do you think fewer women consider a career in tech?
• How can we enable progression?
• Is tech accommodating for women coming back into the workforce?

You can watch the third of our Agility Through Diversity films above and we’ll be publishing the rest of the series over the course of the Summer. To give you a flavour of the discussion we’ve pulled some insights from the film offered by our panel.

>Read more on Puppet exec on the gender gap within the tech industry

Embedding diversity in the pipeline

I think it’s absolutely critical that we make sure that we’re building a diverse pipeline. What I’ve seen often happen, is that you open up a job role and you don’t necessarily get the diversity in the pipeline. We have to continue as leaders to insist that there is a diverse pipeline and then as we get female talent coming into the recruitment process address that with a diverse perspective also. Making sure that interview panels are diverse, making sure that we actually have some of our diverse leadership throughout the organisation interviewing the entire candidate pool. As we get talent on board and then we also reflect that in how we continue to develop and promote women through the organisation. So one thing is bringing women in but the other thing is making sure that we also reflect that diverse perspective as we go through and develop and promote.

Marianne Calder, VP & MD for Puppet

>Read more on AWS championing diversity in technology

How can we help engage girls with STEM?

It’s a very complex issue but we know that girls interest in STEM subjects goes down as they hit puberty around about the age of 13 and 14. I think there’s an issue of stereotypes, I think there’s also an issue that young girls don’t necessarily understand how central technology now is to absolutely every sector, every industry and every type of role. All roles require some form of understanding of technology not necessarily to be a technical person. I don’t have a techie background, you don’t have to have that, but you need to have an understanding of how technology advances, whatever it is that you’re trying to deliver. I think we need to be much broader in the way we talk about tech to young people. We need to get more diverse role models to start to speak to young people and start to break those stereotypes, this isn’t about being a nerdy man.

Rachel Neaman, Non-Executive Board Member and Advisor

Nominations are now open for the Women in IT Awards Ireland and Women in IT Awards Silicon Valley. Nominate yourself, a colleague or someone in your network now! The Women in IT Awards Series – organised by Information Age – aims to tackle this issue and redress the gender imbalance, by showcasing the achievements of women in the sector and identifying new role models