Why aren’t we using technology to drive diversity?

As a CTO, it’s my job to make sure tech is an integral part of our company’s success. This can come down to the tools we use and the products we build. But while there’s a lot of talk about the ability of tech to save time or cancel out inefficiencies, what about its ability to drive diversity?

In recent years, diversity has been the subject of budget cuts, slipping down the priority list of leaders. After all, what’s in it for them? Aside from a more fair, diverse and creative workplace that thrives off self-esteem, empowerment and innovation, that is.

Well, if that wasn’t enough, the new dawn of ESG reporting will mean that companies will finally be held accountable for their diversity targets. Plus in tech we need to recognize that we are designing products and services for an increasingly diverse consumer base. What will drive this point home even more is the EU Accessibility Act which will aim to make everyday products accessible for people with disabilities.

Consumers are no longer homogenous; they are brilliantly diverse and different. So how come we can’t say the same for the teams building the products and services for them?

The scale of the challenge

The most rewarding part of my job is harnessing the brilliance of a bunch of engineers and making it translate into something for the business. To do this, I don’t prescribe what an engineer should look like. Speaking for myself, I’m non-binary, neurodiverse and disabled, looking far different from what people stereotypically imagine a technical leader looks like.

Too often, employees, especially leadership, are expected to adhere to a cookie cutter definition of an infallible superhuman. But there’s nothing wrong with being human. Whether you have an exciting perspective from a different culture, a fluctuating gender identity, get sick like the rest of us or exist on the spectrum. You are human and should be celebrated for being such.

But most European businesses are still struggling to build diverse workplaces. According to a DEI Index compiled by EY, the average score for European companies is just 5.69 out of 10. With only Swiss companies achieving an average score of 6.0. While only 34% of managers surveyed belong to underrepresented groups, with trans representation in the tech sector only 0.17% – down on the national sector average of 0.5%.

This is not a numbers game though. Research shows that diversity – whether neurodiversity, gender diversity, ethnocultural diversity or otherwise – is one of the most important drivers of innovation, performance and employee engagement. And high engagement drives high performance. McKinsey estimates that hiring ethnocultural minority employees (EMEs) could contribute an additional €120 billion to EU-27 GDP a year. Similarly, neurodiverse teams are 30% more productive than others, while those organizations that respect pronoun use are seeing greater levels of validation, while avoiding psychological distress, depression, low self-esteem and even suicidal ideation.

Businesses are well and truly out of arguments for failing when it comes to diversity. So how can they begin to make progress? And should technology play a central role?

Can tech really improve diversity?

Using technology to help improve DE&I might not be the leap we think it is. In the same way we use work management tools or GenAI, technology can act as a sparring partner and help compensate for our own DE&I knowledge gaps.

For instance, when it comes to hiring, there are good gender decoders that can remove the gender bias from job ads that we might not even be aware was there to begin with. This can help address the difference in gender response to job applications and level the playing field for applicants.

Similarly, we’re also starting to see AI sifting CVs. However, we must be cautious around how much responsibility we are giving to AI. It is traditionally trained on what “success” looks like, and there’s a risk that AI can reinforce human biases. For instance, there have been examples of AI approval systems refusing loans for marginalized communities.

It is important to remember that while technology can bring advantages to improving diversity, it is not about to replace humans. For example, it should not be determining who we hire off the back of an info dump from CVs. Plus anyone reviewing a CV still needs to understand that by default they are biased and that they need to fight against this through unconscious bias training and active resistance.

There is a trend right now to dive headfirst into implementing time-saving technologies. But we should start small. Instead of using technology to write policies or manage affinity groups, we should use it to empower our teams to respect pronouns or access resources to improve their understanding. As much as 55% of people are worried about saying the wrong thing when it comes to workplace diversity, so let’s use technology to help them ask questions and empower curiosity.

This approach meets a critical prerequisite for diversity: it removes barriers, fear and judgement, and normalizes something normal.

The human role remains

It’s exciting to think about the role technology can play in driving diversity. But we can’t neglect the continued need for a human in the loop.

Businesses keen to improve the diversity of their teams should use technology to assist them, not take shortcuts. And this is true of commitment too. Because even with the most powerful AI in the world, without leadership buy-in and an active determination to not just hire, but maintain a diverse workplace, we’ll fall short.

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