In-depth research and a surprising intervention designed to sustainably address the relatively high outflow of women from the tech sector.
Currently, only 16.6% of workers in the tech industry are women. And notably, many women with technical training leave the sector again relatively quickly — not because the work doesn't interest them, but because of the culture in the workplace. Expertise center VHTO is committed to getting more girls and women into tech and IT, and asked us to help think through this challenge: how do we ensure that women no longer have to leave the sector?
We spoke with women and men from the sector — team members and managers alike — as well as various experts, and analyzed behavioral science knowledge on this subject. What did we find? In many parts of the sector, there is a significant lack of social and psychological safety. This makes it nearly impossible to create an inclusive work environment for new team members who differ from the current norm. In addition, a lack of social safety leads to more burnout, absenteeism, and more errors and accidents. Our conclusion: the tech sector needs to become socially safer — for everyone! Only then can the talent of the future find a place, and that is urgently needed, as the tech sector is struggling with major staff shortages.
VHTO had the courage to shift the focus from retaining women to addressing the root cause: more social safety for the entire sector. We developed an intervention that enables teams to: - Understand what greater social safety brings them as a team and as individuals - Understand what social safety is - Recognize where opportunities lie to improve their safety as a team - Come up with concrete steps they can implement as a team starting tomorrow Additionally, we developed a series of practical guides for managers of tech teams, helping them create more social safety in simple steps — covering topics such as offering a confidential advisor, dealing with inappropriate jokes, a weekly kick-off for more social safety, how to welcome a female colleague, and much more.
For this intervention, we chose a common format in the tech sector: the digital toolbox. Many toolboxes exist (primarily around physical safety) and teams are used to working through and discussing them together. We studied this format carefully and considered how our intervention could align with it in terms of language and visual style. We also tested the workshop itself, the language used, and the exercises with a few pilot teams.
VHTO is currently working on a campaign around social safety in the tech sector to raise awareness and urgency around this topic. The campaign is intended to activate team leaders and managers in the tech industry to start using the toolbox.
We conducted an in-depth interview with our partners at VHTO, because this collaboration has been an inspiring one for us — read more here.
