How flexible and remote working are boosting tech careers for women

In 2022, the UK tech indus­try is still a far from diverse place, and tack­ling the tech gen­der gap is a com­plex issue. From encour­ag­ing girls in edu­ca­tion towards STEM sub­jects to kick­start their careers to pro­vid­ing sup­port for women jug­gling oth­er respon­si­bil­i­ties in their lives once they start look­ing for roles, soci­ety and the work­place have a lot of progress to make.

Just 19% of tech work­ers are women com­pared with 49% of the UK work­force over­all, and just 22% of tech direc­tors are women – the same it’s been since 2000, accord­ing to Tech Nation. 

But through increased organ­i­sa­tion­al efforts and the nor­mal­i­sa­tion of the work­ing prac­tices that can make tech careers more acces­si­ble, the tide is start­ing to turn. Fifty-six per cent of female tech and IT work­ers feel gen­der equal­i­ty has improved in their organ­i­sa­tion over the past two years. Forty-six per cent in the same sur­vey agree that remote work­ing is a big fac­tor con­tribut­ing to this, thanks in part to the high­er lev­el of auton­o­my that comes with it.

Focus­ing on a cul­ture of flex­i­bil­i­ty, and mak­ing flex­i­bil­i­ty and remote work­ing a draw­card in the recruit­ment process, are two of the most effec­tive diver­si­ty strate­gies not­ed by the 580 sig­na­to­ries of the UK Tech Tal­ent Char­ter, a col­lec­tive designed to share data, best prac­tice and progress on diver­si­ty in the indus­try.

One ini­tia­tive that is upskilling work­ing moth­ers for a range of remote and flex­i­ble Sales­force roles is Super­mums, launched in 2016 by Heather Black, who has a long track record as a con­sul­tant with­in Sales­force itself. Sales­force is one of the sig­na­to­ries of the UK Tech Tal­ent Char­ter.

Buoyed by how the flex­i­bil­i­ty Sales­force pro­vid­ed enabled Black to con­tin­ue her career while rais­ing two young daugh­ters, Super­mums has now upskilled over 500 trainees across nine coun­tries. 

Trainees are encour­aged to com­plete an admin course as a foun­da­tion, before spe­cial­is­ing in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent Sales­force rel­e­vant career paths, such as mar­ket­ing, con­sul­tan­cy, busi­ness analy­sis and coach­ing, while also receiv­ing men­tor­ing, con­fi­dence-build­ing sup­port, and CV and inter­view­ing advice. Sev­en­ty-five per cent of par­tic­i­pants in the Sales­force Super­mums pro­gramme have gone on to secure flex­i­ble roles with­in the busi­ness. 

The pro­gramme is not only con­tribut­ing towards Salesforce’s goal of equal­is­ing the num­ber of women in the organ­i­sa­tion glob­al­ly, up from the cur­rent fig­ure of 36%, but chang­ing the nar­ra­tive that the best hires need to be full-time and on-site only – a way of think­ing that has exclud­ed many women from reward­ing work that match­es their ambi­tions and poten­tial. 

“These jobs can be done remote­ly. There has to be a real­ly good case in point as to why some­body needs to be in the office to deliv­er a bet­ter out­come than they would at home,” states Black.

Some of the Super­mums grad­u­ates are back in work after career breaks of up to 12 years, now equipped with the most in-demand future of work ready skills, such as cloud com­put­ing, busi­ness and data analy­sis, and prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions of AI – and a com­pet­i­tive salary to boot.

“And that’s with­out any pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence in tech, so retrain­ing doesn’t mean you have to start at the bot­tom again in terms of salary. The abil­i­ty to keep learn­ing and evolv­ing across the Sales­force prod­uct roadmap means you also have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to increase your salary by £10k or more every one or two years,” Black explains.

The flip side of flex­i­ble roles is, of course, flex­i­ble train­ing, which could be one of the rea­sons that attract­ing diverse tal­ent in the first place is the biggest prob­lem UK Tech Tal­ent Char­ter sig­na­to­ries report. Black can relate to this, hav­ing been preg­nant with one child and tak­ing care of anoth­er while par­tic­i­pat­ing in train­ing pro­grammes in the past.

“It’s dif­fi­cult for work­ing par­ents to go away for train­ing for five days, so we designed our train­ing cours­es to be flex­i­ble and remote – that def­i­nite­ly is some­thing that needs to be addressed by com­pa­nies,” Black affirms. 

Employ­ers shouldn’t, how­ev­er, for­get the impor­tance of imple­ment­ing an over­all cul­ture shift to inte­grate prin­ci­ples to coun­ter­act any pos­si­ble issues with remote work­ing. This is cru­cial for avoid­ing prox­im­i­ty bias, where in-office work­ers are favoured for bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ties and pro­mo­tions. Prox­im­i­ty bias stands to dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affect the large num­bers of women who opt for remote work­ing – and undo the progress made towards equal gen­der rep­re­sen­ta­tion in busi­ness.

“There needs to be a care­ful thought process around how you make peo­ple feel includ­ed who are work­ing remote­ly, so you’re not dis­crim­i­nat­ing against them. Prox­im­i­ty bias is a big risk if there isn’t an inten­tion­al strat­e­gy around address­ing it,” Black warns.

“If you have a hybrid cul­ture, there has to be a lot of thought and con­sid­er­a­tion around how you make every­body feel includ­ed in team meet­ings, as part of a team envi­ron­ment and even how pro­mo­tions can be made inclu­sive­ly, because con­ver­sa­tions are hap­pen­ing in the office that remote employ­ees aren’t part of. There is a duty of care for com­pa­nies to think about flex­i­bil­i­ty in this way.”This will ulti­mate­ly have to form part of com­pa­ny cul­ture in this new work­ing world, Black sur­mis­es, as employ­ees – espe­cial­ly female tal­ent – feel more empow­ered than ever to choose a cor­po­rate envi­ron­ment that aligns with their own needs and val­ues.

To find out how Sales­force is pow­er­ing the work­force of tomor­row, vis­it trailhead.salesforce.com.