Accenture pushes for more women in technology, diversity in workplace
Accenture, a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations, have stressed on the need for women in Nigeria to be actively involved in the technology sector.
This is because technology has continued to dominate every aspect of human lives but unfortunately women are yet to tap from the potentials this sector offers.
Speaking during the Accenture International Women’s Day Conference in Lagos, Juliet Ehimuan-Chiazo, a Nigerian technology expert and entrepreneur who currently serves as Google’s Country Manager in Nigeria said 70percent of Google’s Leadership team in Nigeria are women.
This Ehimuan-Chiazo said was possible because Google consciously made an effort to ensure women play active role in the company.
“Women hold about 27percent of Science and Technology jobs. Research has shown that if women are given the right support and equal opportunities, they can do just as well as the men.
“The reasons why women are few in the technology sector is because they lack the encouragement, there is shortage of role models and discouragement to study technology related courses,” she explained
She stressed that women need more positive reinforcement as they tend to underestimate their abilities and more girls should be educated in order to change the narrative.
“Role modelling is also very important. We need to have more women leading at the top. If we have more women in technology, it will inspire more women to join,” she added.
Niyi Yusuf, country managing director, Accenture said one of the core values of the organisation is around stewardship which is making the place better than they met it.
“We realize that diversity in the workplace is a business issue, diversity will be in term of gender, and it can be in terms of religion, it can be in terms of sexual orientation, politics and so on.
“So the goals that Accenture has set is that by 2030 we want to have 50-50 balanced workforce where we will have same number of males and same number of females in the workforce knowing that female intelligence adds value in the work force and their absence reduces productivity for a business in terms of creating the right work environment that will allow every person to be the best that he or she can be,” Yusuf added.
On how women can play effective role in the ICT space, he said women need to move from just being a salary staff to women owning businesses. “If you look at SMEs, women do well owning SMEs and small businesses but now, let’s see if women can step up to becoming owners of technology businesses.
“In customer experience, women are found to have a better affinity to showing empathy with customers and so women have a good role to play in terms of how to make sure that our technology system is such that the customers will have a very incredible user experience,” he explained. Yusuf said Accenture has created equal opportunity in the work place.
“First in terms of how we recruit, we recruit based on competence not gender and we also promote based on excellence, merit not gender. We have policies that support women in the work place; as simple as maternity policies for four months, women are also allowed to drive and park where even the partners park so that they can easily walk from their car to the office.
“We also have programmes that support paternity leave so that men can also take time off to be with the family, our training programmes opens to all, both men and women based on what they can do, and also the way we promote equal opportunity for everyone,” he disclosed.
Lanatu Joy Shelton