Gender diversity within the technology industry is a hot button topic, which has come to the forefront of the sector as the UK faces a critical digital skills shortage.

The lack of women working in tech and the low numbers of girls in the STEM talent pipeline has shown the pressing need to attract and retain more women in the tech industry.

According to WISE research, women make up 23% of STEM occupations across the UK, but only 15% of management roles in science, engineering and technology. In addition, figures from WISE show that today just 18% of ICT professionals and 8% of engineering professionals are women.

Graeme Smith, the Managing Director of Amazon Development Centre Scotland (ADCS), Amazon’s first R&D facility outside of the US, explains how and why the Edinburgh facility is taking a proactive approach to improving the status-quo.

Interventions Need to Happen Earlier to Support Women Getting into Tech

Smith believes that early interventions will be integral to overcoming the barriers young women face when taking STEM subjects or trying to embark on a tech career. He says that initiatives such as the Amazon Women in Innovation Bursary with The University of Edinburgh are key tools that will help provide the support needed.

“The bursary supports a UK female student commencing an undergraduate Informatics degree,” he explains. “As well as helping finance costs, Amazon provides mentoring and the opportunity for an internship at ADCS. We expanded the Bursary in 2017 to fund two students per year in Edinburgh and to universities in London and Cambridge with up to 24 students a year benefiting.”

Amazon Development Centre Scotland Leading by Example

Smith, who is a strong advocate for change, is taking the lead on this and pushing diversity initiatives at ADCS. Some of these initiatives include supporting the Women in Engineering employee affinity group (run by female Amazon employees to provide mentoring and networking opportunities for female engineers) and the community outreach programme, Amazon Early Insights, which offers female students a range of workshops, talks and social events to encourage a career in the field of technology.

ADCS also hosts workshops to encourage women onto tech career paths and supports female tech support networks such as Girl Geek Scotland and Women Who Code. This year it is the key sponsor for the Scotland Women in Technology Awards, which helps to shine a spotlight on the best of female tech talent from across the country.

To further support gender diversity, Amazon is working with WISE (the campaign for gender balance in science, technology and engineering) to produce a new Women in Innovation report, with the goal of creating a roadmap for increasing the number of women working in the innovation economy.

Smith says: “We launched a consultation this summer and, so far, have received more than 1,000 responses from women across the UK. In addition, senior female employees at Amazon have also contributed to the report.

“In our view, there have been a number of initiatives in the public, private and third sector focused on getting more women specifically into tech roles. However, there has been little focus specifically on innovation and how to provide a roadmap for boosting the number of women in the innovation economy.”

Diversity Key to Innovation

According to Smith, championing diversity and gender equality at ADCS is key to achieving the company’s goal of becoming the most “customer-obsessed company”, as attracting and retaining diverse talent fosters better innovation.

“We employ a team of scientists, engineers and designers here at ADCS in Edinburgh who create inventions that help hundreds of millions of our customers all over the world,” he says. “The team drives the innovation that supports major parts of our business, technology and operations, from interactive UI design to large-scale distribution systems and machine learning.

“Given the importance of these roles to driving our business forward, it’s absolutely critical that we are hiring and developing the very best talent, which means hiring from as diverse a talent pool as possible.

“We work hard to strengthen our gender balance across the business. Recognising the opportunity recruitment has to substantially impact diversity in the workplace, we created and implemented a new candidate attraction recruitment project for Amazon Development Centre Scotland. This doubled the number of female engineers employed at the centre and the project has been rolled out at other development sites in the UK.”

Improving Gender Diversity is an Ongoing Journey

While ADCS has put in motion several promising initiatives, which are already seeing a good return, Smith acknowledges there is still a long way to go.

“We are mindful that there is more to do,” he notes. “On recruitment, this is a major focus. We have programmes that seek to ensure we secure higher volumes of female candidates applying and being shortlisted for interview and having greater diversity on our interview panels. We have made progress in continuing to hire more women for senior roles and we now have three women VPs in Europe.”

But Smith warns that “businesses can’t assume they won’t be able to make a difference. It’s important not to fall into this trap. Gender inequality will continue if men do not realise that inequality in the workplace is a problem that holds us all back. It isn’t fair to ask women to do all of the work to drive gender equality, men must contribute more.”