Inclusion in Digital Infrastructure: What’s the problem?

The second in a series of research led articles on equality, diversity and inclusion from Portman Partners

The ‘Outside the Echo Chamber’ series of events is conducted by Portman Partners and aims to generate and deliver robust, evidence-based insights regarding the nature of and barriers to equality, diversity and inclusion within the digital infrastructure (DI) sector. 

But before looking at the findings of a data gathering exercise conducted in November 2020, we need to look at the context.

It’s no secret the Digital Infrastructure has a problem with workforce diversity. 

While gender diversity is just one aspect of the issue, the lack of women, as a highly visible disparity in the sector, often masks the fact that inclusion of other groups from non-traditional employment pools is also low. Sadly, robust data on this for the DI sector is difficult to come by given the DI industry is often bundled up with other sectors such as IT and facilities management.

...there have been times when, as the speaker, I was the only woman in the room.

However, one only needs to look at the lack of women in the audience at events and on panels to find it’s a pretty damning picture (see this recently advertised event where at the time of writing 3 of the 43 advertised speakers are women).  The lack of gender diversity is so stark that in some cases it’s difficult to find a woman represented at all and indeed, there have been times when, as the speaker, I was the only woman in the room. Many panels and presentation streams are bereft of women and people from other diverse groups. And while this is the publicly visible side of the problem, the fundamental issue resides inside organisations as a general lack of diversity which leads to an almost monocultural workforce. 

The DI sector diversity statistics are of concern.  The Uptime Institute’s Annual Data Centre Survey 2019 provides a snapshot of the sector as one that struggles to meet even the most stark benchmarks of other STEM sectors (and they’re not good either!). Data indicates that only 5 per cent of respondent organisations had a workforce proportion of 50 per cent or more women (it is unclear whether these women are in technical or business support roles). However, when we look to the technical roles, Uptime reports one in five organisations had no women at all in their design, build or operations workforce.

"...it’s “easy for women to pursue a data centre career in their organisation”. (erm...what?!)

Despite these data illustrating a dire picture in the sector, Uptime also reports that 85 per cent of respondents believe that it’s it’s “easy for women to pursue a data centre career in their organisation”. One must ask, if this is the case, why are there so few women in the DI sector, particularly in technical roles and/or senior roles?

Having a lack of diversity is one thing, not seeing it as a problem is even more worrying. Uptime indicate that while 45 per cent of respondents to their survey suggested that a lack of women was a growing threat to the industry only 29 per cent indicated that their organisation had a plan to improve diversity.

The case for a diverse workforce has been comprehensively made over the past decade[1], and one would argue, given the current focus on the sector as the ‘glue’ that’s holding our economies together in the pandemic, the DI sector has been painfully slow to act. While there are some notable exceptions, a lack of a consolidated equality, diversity and inclusion agenda magnifies second order issues such as widening gender pay gaps, diminishing innovation premiums, talent shortages and workforce attrition.

All these issues add to a suite of wicked problems associated with diminished talent pipelines, opaque career paths, invisible employer brand and escalating headhunting within the sector.

The ‘Balance in the Boardroom’ event looked at three elements –

• Setting the vision – what the DI sector should look like in terms of equality, diversity and inclusion
•  Defining the Barriers – what’s getting in the way of achieving the vision, and
• What are the enablers? – What’s going to make a difference?

A room full of passionate, capable and astute women gave of their time and their stories illustrated a collective of lived experiences. Their insights highlighted that across structure and process, organisational behaviours and workplace culture the current DI workforce profile is unsustainable. Profoundly, one of the most obstinate barriers to a shift in the status quo is not a labour supply issue (‘too bad so sad, I couldn’t find a woman for the job’ - a prevailing go-to ‘non-excuse’ for a lack of gender diversity) but lack of will.

Work published by Deloitte[2] suggests that there are six personas of strategic change as applied to diversity and inclusion. Working from ‘Opposed’ to ‘Committed’ the data collected from the research event suggests clearly that the DI sector, in general, is largely ‘Unaware’ or ‘Undecided: Anxious’. In the main, respondents indicated that DI organisations are concerned about how diversity and inclusion will adversely impact on individuals or they are in the dark about the issue and largely detached from the issue.

The next post will examine some of the specific findings and will explore how respondents see the ‘ideal’ of equality, diversity and inclusion in the DI sector.

CALL TO ACTION - While the invitation-only follow up event to the first Outside the Echo Chamber report was postponed by the COVID-19 lockdown, we aim to deliver this in the near future as an online event. We’ll be announcing that soon. If you’d like an invitation, please contact Peter Hannaford and details will be forwarded in due course. We look forward to seeing you soon. 

Dr Theresa Simpkin

Portman Partners Associate

Associate Professor, Head of MBA Programmes (International), Director of EMBA and Senior Leader Degree Apprenticeship

[1]https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/04/business-case-for-diversity-in-the-workplace/ Accessed 16th February 2020

[2]  https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/deloitte-review/issue-22/diversity-and-inclusion-at-work-eight-powerful-truths.html