Recruit and Retain More Women in IT

Gender diversity is directly correlated to IT performance.

EXECUTIVE BRIEF

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

Technology has never been more important to organizations, and as a result, recruiting and retaining quality IT employees is increasingly difficult.

• IT unemployment rates continue to hover below 2% in the US.
• The IT talent market has evolved into one where the employer is the seller and the employee is the buyer.

Common Obstacles

• While the number of jobs in IT has increased dramatically, the percentage of women in IT has progressed disproportionately, with only 25% of IT jobs being held by women.*
• The challenge is not a lack of talented women with the competencies to excel within IT, but rather organizations lack an effective strategy to recruit and retain women in IT.

Info-Tech’s Approach

To stay competitive, IT leaders need to radically change the way they recruit and retain talent, and women in IT represent one of the largest untapped markets. CIOs need a targeted strategy to attract and retain the best, and this requires a shift in how leaders currently manage the talent lifecycle. Info-Tech offers a targeted solution to help:

• Build a Recruitment Playbook: Leverage Info-Tech tools to effectively sell to, search for, and secure top talent.
• Build a Retention Strategy: Follow Info-Tech’s step-by-step process to identify initiatives and opportunities to retain your top talent.

Info-Tech Insight

Retaining and attracting top women is good business, not personal. Companies with greater gender diversity on executive teams were 25% more likely to have above-average profitability.1 In the war on talent, having a strategy around how you will recruit and retain women in IT is Marketing 101. What influences whether women apply for roles and stay at organizations is different than men; traditional models won’t cut it.

*– McKinsey & Company, 2020; 2 – CIO From IDG, 2021

Diversity & inclusion – it’s good business, not personal

Why should organizations care about diversity?

1. The war for talent is real. Every CIO needs a plan of attack. Unemployment rates are dropping and 54% of CIOs report that the skills shortage is holding them up from meeting their strategic objectives.

Source: Harvey Nash and KPMG, 2020

2. Diversity has clear ROI – both in terms of recruitment and retention. Eighty percent of technology managers experienced increased turnover in 2021. Not only are employee tenures decreasing, the competition for talent is fierce and the average cost of turnover is 150% of an IT worker’s salary.

Source: Robert Half, 2021

3. Inability to recruit and retain talent will reduce business satisfaction. Organizations who are continuously losing talent will be unable to meet corporate objectives due to lost productivity, keeping them in firefighting mode. An engaged workforce is a requirement for driving innovation and project success.

ISACA’s 2020 study shows a disconnect between what men and women think is being done to recruit and retain female employees

Key findings from ISACA’s 2020 Tech Workforce survey

65% of men think their employers have a program to encourage hiring women. But only 51% of women agree.

71% of men believe their employers have a program to encourage the promotion or advancement of women. But only 59% of women agree.

49% of women compared to 44% of men in the survey feel they must work harder than their peers.

22% of women compared to 14% of men feel they are underpaid.

66% of women compared to 72% of men feel they are receiving sufficient resources to sustain their career.

30% of women compared to 23% of men feel they have unequal growth opportunities.

74% of women compared to 64% of men feel they lack confidence to negotiate their salaries.

To see ISACA’s full report click here.

Image: Statista, 2021, CC BY-ND 4.0

The chart to the left, compiled by Statista, (based on self-reported company figures) shows that women held between 23% to 25% of the tech jobs at major tech companies.

Women are also underrepresented in leadership positions: 34% at Facebook, 31% at Apple, 29% at Amazon, 28% at Google, and 26% at Microsoft.

(Statista, 2021)

To help support women in tech, 78% of women say companies should promote more women into leadership positions. Other solutions include:

• Providing mentorship opportunities (72%)
• Offering flexible scheduling (64%)
• Conducting unconscious bias training (57%)
• Offering equal maternity and paternity leave (55%)

(HRD America, 2021)

Traditional retention initiatives target the majority – the drivers that impact the retention of women in IT are different

Ranked correlation of impact of engagement drivers on retention

* Recent data stays consistent, but, the importance of compensation and recognition in retaining women in IT is increasing.

Info-Tech Research Group Employee Engagement Diagnostic; N=1,856 IT employees

The majority of organizations take a one-size-fits-all approach to retaining and engaging employees.

However, studies show that women are leaving IT in significantly higher proportions than men and that the drivers impacting men’s and women’s retention are different. Knowing how men and women react differently to engagement drivers will help you create a targeted retention strategy.

In particular, to increase the retention and engagement of women, organizations should develop targeted initiatives that focus on:

• Organizational culture
• Employee empowerment
• Manager relationships

Why organizations need to focus on the recruitment and retention of women in IT

1. Women expand the talent pool. Women represent a vast, untapped talent pool that can bolster the technical workforce. Unfortunately, traditional IT recruitment processes are targeted toward a limited IT profile – the key to closing the IT skills gap is to look for agile learners and expand your search criteria to cast a larger net.
2. Diversity increases innovation opportunities. Groups with greater diversity solve complex problems better and faster than homogenous groups, and the presence of women is more likely to increase the problem-solving and creative abilities of the group.
3. Women increase your ROI. Research shows that companies with the highest representation of women in their management teams have a 34% higher return on investment than those with few or no women. Further, organizations who are unable to retain top women in their organization are at risk for not being able to deliver to SLAs or project expectations and lose the institutional knowledge needed for continuous improvement.

Source: Bureau of Labour Statistics; Info-Tech Research Group/McLean & Company Analysis

Improving the representation of women in your organization requires rethinking recruitment and retention strategies

Info-Tech’s approach to improving gender diversity at your organization

Info-Tech takes a practical, tactical approach to improving gender diversity at organizations, which starts with straightforward tactics that will help you improve the recruitment and retention of women in your organization.

How we can help

1. Leverage Info-Tech’s tools to define your current challenges and opportunities for gender diversity to improve your recruitment and retention issues.
2. Employ straightforward and tested tactics to increase talent acquisition of women in IT by optimizing how you sell to, search for, and secure top female talent.
3. Take a data-driven approach to measure and increase the retention and engagement of women within your IT organization, and know how and when to involve your staff for optimal results.

Leverage Info-Tech’s customizable deliverables to improve the recruitment and retention of women in your organization

RECRUIT Top Women in IT

If you don’t have a targeted recruitment strategy for women, you are missing out on 50% of the candidate pool. Increase the number of viable candidates by leveraging best practices to sell to, search for, and secure top women in IT.

Key metrics to track:

• Average number of female candidates per posting
• Average time to fill position
• Percentage of new hires still at the organization one year later

RETAIN Top Women in IT

The drivers that impact the retention of men and women are different. Take a data-driven approach to improving retention of women in your organization by using best practices to measure and improve employee engagement.

Key metrics to track:

• Voluntary turnover rates of men and women
• Average tenure of men and women
• Percentage of internal promotions going to men and women
• Employee engagement scores

Info-Tech’s methodology for Recruit and Retain More Women in IT

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

"Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful."

Guided Implementation

"Our teams knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track."

Workshop

"We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place."

Consulting

"Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks are used throughout all four options.

Guided Implementation

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization. A typical GI is 6 calls over the course of 1 to 2 months.

1. Tactics to Recruit More Women in IT

Call #1: Develop a strategy to better sell your organization to diverse candidates.

Call #2: Evaluate your candidate search practices to reach a wider audience.

Call #3: Introduce best practices in your interviews to improve the candidate experience and limit bias.

2. Tactics to Retain More Women in IT

Call #4: Launch focus groups to improve performance of key retention drivers.

Call #5: Measure the employee experience and identify key moments that matter to staff.

Call #6: Conduct stay interviews and establish actions to improve retention.

Workshop Overview

Contact your account representative for more information.

workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

Phase 1

Enhance Your Recruitment Strategies

Phase 1

• 1.1 Sell
• 1.2 Search
• 1.3 Secure

Phase 2

• 2.1 Engagement
• 2.2 Employee Experience
• 2.3 Stay Interviews

Consider key factors within the recruitment process

Key Talent Pipeline Opportunities:

• In today’s talent landscape IT leaders need to be highly strategic about how they recruit new talent to the organization.
• IT professionals have a huge number of options to choose from when considering their next career.
• IT leaders need to actively market and expand their search to attract top talent. The “where” and “how” to recruit men and women in IT are different and your strategy should reflect this.
• Partnering with your HR department to help you improve the number of applicants, expand your search criteria, and optimize the interview experience will all directly impact your talent pipeline.

1. Sell

How do you position the value of working for your organization and roles in a meaningful way?

2. Search

How can you expand your key search criteria and sourcing strategies to reach more candidates?

3. Secure

How can you reduce bias in your interview process and create positive candidate experiences?

Info-Tech’s Sell-Search-Secure recruitment model

Follow these steps to increase your pool of female candidates.

1. Sell Tactics:

1. Develop an employee value proposition that will attract female candidates.

2. Understand how your job postings may be deterring female candidates.

2. Search Tactics:

3. Identify opportunities to expand your role analysis for job requisitions.

4. Increase your candidate pool by expanding sourcing programs.

3. Secure Tactics:

5. Identify tactics to improve women’s interview experience.

6. Leverage behavioral interview questions to limit bias in interviews.

Please note, this section is not a replacement or a full talent strategy. Rather, this blueprint will highlight key tactics within talent acquisition practices that the IT leadership team can help to influence to drive greater diversity in recruitment.

Understand where leaks exist in your talent pipeline

Start your recruitment enhancement here.

Work with your HR department to track critical metrics around where you need to make improvements and where you can partner with your recruitment team to improve your recruitment process and build a more diverse pipeline. Identify where you have significant drops or variation in diversity or overall need and select where you’d like to focus your recruitment improvement efforts.

Enhance your recruitment strategies

The way you position the organization impacts who is likely to apply to posted positions. Ensure you are putting a competitive foot forward by developing a unique, meaningful, and aspirational employee value proposition and clear job descriptions.

Sell the organization

What is an employee value proposition?

An employee value proposition (EVP) is a unique and clearly defined set of attributes and benefits that capture an employee’s overall work experience within an organization. An EVP is your opportunity to showcase the unique benefits and opportunities of working at your organization, allowing you to attract a wider pool of candidates.

How is an employee value proposition used?

Your EVP should be used internally and externally to promote the unique benefits of working within the department. As a recruiting tool, you can use it to attract candidates, highlighting the benefits of working for your organization. The EVP is often highlighted where you are most likely to reach your target audience, whether that is through social media, in-person events, or in other advertising activities.

Why tailor this to multiple audiences?

While your employee value proposition should remain constant in terms of the unique benefits of working for your organization, you want to ensure that the EVP appeals to multiple audiences and that it is backed up by relevant stories that support how your organization lives your EVP every day. Candidates need to be able to relate to the EVP and see it as desirable, so ensuring that it is relatable to a diverse audience is key.