When real estate services firm CBRE Group Inc. released its latest , Jill Tipping recalls her team at the B.C. Tech Association was taken aback by what it revealed.
Out of 50 cities measured, 麻豆传媒映画had the worst representation of women in the tech sector at just 18.3 per cent of the workforce.
鈥淲e were sort of struck by the statistics,鈥� said Tipping, CEO of the industry association representing the province鈥檚 technology sector.
And in fact a CBRE report that followed in November revealed that in Canada鈥檚 tech sector in terms of gender representation.
The only city to perform worse was also in B.C., with women making up just 15 per cent of the technology workforce in Victoria.
The B.C. Tech Association, determined to do something to change those numbers, embarked on a series of workshops, panels and roundtables in the months that followed the July CBRE report as part of its initiative.
In December the industry group in a bid to create an ecosystem much better at recruiting and retaining women.
Among the recommendations curated from the workshops:
路听听听听听 Set targets and publish the results. Ask if your employee diversity mirrors that of your customers.
路听听听听听 Leverage your team鈥檚 network: ask women in your organizations to identify people they鈥檝e worked with in the past and would like to work with again.
路听听听听听 Ask yourself if talent is promotable before someone takes parental leave 鈥� consider promoting before they take leave.
路听听听听听 Put in place salary bands for each role, track and communicate pay vs. industry averages (compa ratios). Establish and enforce minimum salaries for each role.
鈥淥ur objective is to make this easy for people by giving concrete, actionable suggestions,鈥� Tipping said.
鈥淲e鈥檙e not trying to be one size fits all. We鈥檙e trying to give you a menu of options and challenge you to find at least one that would work for your business.鈥�
B.C. Tech is also taking steps to improve representation on its own board of directors, which is presently composed of two women and 10 men.
鈥淲e鈥檙e 17 per cent women today and it鈥檚 unacceptable,鈥� Tipping said.
With the release of the 15 recommendations, the industry association has now pledged to double the number of women on its board within a year.
Some tech companies in 麻豆传媒映画have been making progress.
Unbounce Marketing Solutions Inc., known for developing platforms that allow marketers to create landing pages without investing in their own web developers, pledged in 2016 to reach gender parity within its workforce.
The company revealed in November that it had reached that goal, part of the Minerva B.C. Pledge, within three years.
Meanwhile, Tipping said she believes the significant gap in gender representation is persistent in B.C. not due to lack of motivation but because of available information and supply of talent.
鈥淲e, as an industry, have a big job to do to be much more transparent and clear and open and tell people what careers in our industry actually are. Both the wide range of skills 鈥� not everyone鈥檚 a coder 鈥� and also what the environment is actually like,鈥� she said.
鈥淵ou鈥檙e solving really interesting, complex problems that matter to people and you鈥檙e doing it in a collaborative, creative team.鈥�
听
Read the original article .
