The need for diversity within the tech sector has always been important. But it is perhaps more important than ever—given inexorable march of generative AI and the baffling decisions emanating from US board rooms and the White House.
However, while people understand the benefits of diversity, equity and inclusion in the abstract, there is a disconnect when it comes to implementing the ideas within organisations. And that disconnect pre-dates Trump’s second term.
That’s the view of Luli Adeyemo, CMO of TenderTrace and executive director of the TechDiversity Foundation and soon-to-be host of the upcoming Women Leading Tech Awards, presented by Atlassian. And it’s a view very hard to argue with.
Analogies & Antipathy
Adeyemo explained to B&T why diversity and inclusion within individual organisations benefits the entire sector with a simple sporting analogy.
Born in Nottingham in England, a city dependent on its textile trade during the industrial revolution before fading following the Second World War, Adeyemo explained that teams were then close to “working men’s club[s]” playing at the weekend.
However, when the English Premier League was formed in 1992, everything changed.
“They wanted to create the best football league in the world and recognised that to do that, they had to get the best players and the best coaches from around the world. But they also recognised that you can’t go to South America, pluck the next Ronaldo out, plant them in Nottingham and expect them to perform,” she said.
“You have to understand their cultures, religions, world beliefs, even their foods. They had a plan to achieve that and they have—it’s now a global business rather than an English league. That makes sense to be people. But it doesn’t translate into their own organisations.”
It’s an insight that runs contrary to many of the short-sighted and bad faith arguments that surround DE&I today. Rather than focusing on the benefits that hiring diverse teams can bring, these arguments suppose that average performance is being dragged down, rather than bolstered as talented staff feel comfortable and given a chance to shine.
Adeyemo said that she was “not surprised” that DEI efforts had been cancelled in the US.
“I’ve been saying this for a couple of years now. My concern is that people will get fatigued by it because a lot of the time it’s not been spoken about or actioned with the right purpose and meaning behind. That’s when it gets branded ‘woke,'” she said.
Meta recently canned its DEI policies. An internal memo from its VP of human resources Janelle Gale, reported by Axios, cited changing “legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States” and that its Diverse Slate Approach would be ending.
“We build the best teams with the most talented people,” Gale wrote.
“This means sourcing people from a range of candidate pools, but never making hiring decisions based on protected characteristics (eg race, gender etc.).
“Instead of equity and inclusion programs,” Gale added, Meta plans to build programs “that focus on how to apply fair and consistent practices that mitigate bias for all, no matter your background.”
Meta will also ended efforts to hire minority-owned vendors and suppliers. In Australia, that approach hasn’t been adopted here.
“This doesn’t change our approach to hiring diverse teams in our workforce, which include people from different races, sexuality, political views and so on because we believe diverse teams perform better,” a Meta spokesperson told B&T.
“We continue to believe in having a multi-talented workforce made up of cognitively diverse teams. We will always value teams with differences in knowledge, skills, political views, backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences. They are better at innovating, solving complex problems and identifying new opportunities, ultimately helping us deliver on our ambition to build products that serve everyone.
“We have never hired talent on the basis of race, sexuality and other identity characteristics, and this will continue.”
Meta will also continue training to reduce bias in the workplace and has support groups for women in tech, First Nations, LGBTQI+ and other communities within the business.
Unprecedented Challenges
While it has always been important to hire diversely, generative AI has made it imperative.
“Everybody knows about the potential threats and risks of AI. There’s been a lot of work done by CSIRO and the National AI Centre on the matter,” said Adeyemo.
“But there’s a step missing in the conversations that we’re having. What does a responsible team look team?” continued Adeyemo.
“There needs to be some sort of standard or framework that organisations can use when building a team. When you’re building a team, there are certain characteristics and traits which will have a higher impact on our bias outcome than others.
“We’re not just talking about gender. We’re talking about cognitive diversity, religions, disability all these different elements that have an impact on someone’s contribution to design.”
Instead, Adeyemo said that we need to create a workforce that is more representative of the society that it serves. Collectively, companies spend billions in an effort to understand everything about their customers, explained Adeyemo. However, the same effort is not taken when it comes to understanding their own workforce—and to the company’s detriment.
“There are 900,000 people in the tech workforce in Australia. We have a skills gap. We need 1.2 million people by 2030. We’re not going to close that gap unless we diversify our workforce. And we shouldn’t close it without diversifying our workforce. Otherwise the outcomes will not be right.”
It’s a call to arms that many in the industry would do well to heed.
