On 15 January ECSO had Gillian Arnold FBCS to discuss on “Gender balance as a business issue”. The online event took place in the context of the European Cyber Security Organisation’s (ECSO) European HR Community, an informal group of peers confronting on trending discourses in Human Resources. Amongst her key takeaways were that companies should act now by improving HR processes and promoting new role models, to ensure women a better access to the job market and higher positions in ICT.
On 15 January from 11:00 to 12:00 CET, ECSO was pleased to welcome Gillian Arnold FBCS, Founder and Managing Director of Tectre Ltd, to discuss “Gender balance as a business issue”. The online event took place in the context of ECSO’s European HR Community, an informal group of peers confronting on trending discourses in Human Resources. Gillian Arnold brought experience bringing diversity in tech teams at IBM and Tectre Ltd. Her intervention embraced many structural problems of today’s job market such as education dropout, lack of attractiveness in job openings, static career paths and risks of tokenism.
Some key messages worth mentioning are the following. The average presence of women in tech, in the European Union, is around 22%. It may seem an encouraging statistic, but it has been without progress for the last 25 years. To change this dynamic, Ms. Arnold’s advice to companies is to act now by playing the long game, addressing female dropout in tertiary education, and improving their HR processes, to make ICT positions appealing to diverse audiences. These actions should target both recruiting and hierarchical processes, onboarding different profiles and enabling them to reach higher seniority positions. Proposing new role models is convenient not only for corporate culture, but for productivity, unique selling proposition and profits too.
At ECSO, we aim to bridge existing gaps with our European HR Community. Companies with a diverse and gender-balanced workforce have a clear competitive advantage by attracting new talents, leveraging different skillsets, and increasing their brand reputation efforts.
About the European HR Community
The European HR Community is an ECSO initiative dedicated to its Members, an EU level informal group of peers confronting on HR matters. HR professionals of ECSO members will have a priority access to events with limited number of seats and to a dedicated job portal.
Join the European HR Community today to further explore these topics and help us make the business case for diversity! If you are interested, please send an e-mail to Arnaud de Vibraye, Junior Manager for Skills & Human Factors at ECSO, at arnaud.de.vibraye[at]ecs-org.eu.
