O
n the eve of Director’s interview with Lady Nicola Mendelsohn, the Institute of Coding
published results from a survey seeking the views of 16- to 18-year-olds about the UK’s digital sector. Of the 1,000 respondents, 70 per cent believe the industry is run entirely by people of white British ethnicity; 56 per cent feel it needs to be more inclusive; 34 per cent think women don’t have equal opportunities in the sector; and 10 per cent are deterred from pursuing digital qualifications because of the field’s lack of inclusivity and diverse role models. Indeed, how many female, Bame,
LGBT+ or disabled directors serving on the boards of tech companies can you name? With 40 per cent of IoD members citing skills shortages as a top-three concern for their businesses, the finding that such a large proportion of the next generation of workers see this key sector as unwelcoming to them should be worrying indeed. “It’s super-depressing to hear those
stats, but it’s also not a surprise,” Mendelsohn says. As one of the tech sector’s few prominent female role models, the vice-president of Facebook in EMEA has used her position to become one of the UK’s most active figures in tackling the problem.
ON THE RIGHT LINES Making diversity a priority when she joined Facebook in 2013, Mendelsohn – who is also a non-exec at Diageo and a member of the government’s Industrial Strategy Council – now has figures to prove that the tech giant is more inclusive than today’s teenagers might imagine. The proportion of women in senior leadership roles increased from 23 per cent in 2014 to nearly 33 per cent in 2019, for instance. “Yes, we are making progress at
Facebook,” she says. “But there’s a lot more that we can still do.” Recently ranked the number-one
role model on the 100 Female Executives 2019 list compiled by HERoes and Yahoo Finance, thanks to her work to foster inclusivity in both Facebook and business more widely, Mendelsohn believes that any company can increase its diversity – and reap the well- documented financial benefits of doing so. Here she recommends 12 practical steps that leaders of all businesses, whatever their size or sector, can take to develop a more inclusive culture.
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