Slowly but surely the benefits of diversity in a team are becoming accepted rather than challenged. When I talk to software teams, there is a growing understanding that if you have a homogenous group of people building applications, they probably won’t be designed to the needs of the population at large.
This wasn’t a problem in the early days of software engineering, when techies were writing tools for techies, but nowadays everyone uses software. There is an appreciation that a team that has diversity in areas such as gender, background and age will instinctively produce software that is acceptable to a wider audience. This is not just a coding issue. Where IT teams are providing systems and services to an organisation, they also have the real danger of building processes that match their own expectations and working patterns.
While the benefits of diversity are landing in many teams, there is often a mismatch in the perception of success of making it happen. Recent IDC research showed that where women rated the gender diversity in their organisation at 28% acceptable, men rated it at 45% acceptable. When people were asked to agree with the statement “Women are underrepresented in STEM fields at my organisation”, 56% of women agreed. Only 26% of men had the same experience. So, it seems that it’s one thing to agree that diversity is required, but quite another to be alive to the reality of the situation in your own team.
To truly tackle this in organisations, transparency is a key tool. Once you’ve decided that diversity is important to you, why not publish your diversity data internally on a regular basis? Show people in your teams that you understand where you are and that you’re not blind to this issue. Sometimes we have to become uncomfortable before we move.