As we celebrate International Women’s Day we reflect on the last 12 months of change for our company, we have celebrated graduation from being a tech Startup to an established tech scale up the organisation, all while we maintain a laser focus on the importance of diversity in our workforce.

Last year Lean In published a report that the biggest barrier to women succeeding in executive positions is not so much diversity targets at the senior and board level, but the lack of female candidates for those roles. This begins in the ‘first leadership level’ in a person’s career. Women are more likely to self-select out of that first leadership development program because they fear they are not good enough or they are waiting to be asked, or they are prioritising family plans over progressing their career at that stage in their life.

How do we stack up against some of the biggest IT companies in the world?

16.6% Microsoft

17% at Google

31% at Enable Professional Services

(Which is 1% more than last year)

At Enable, we ran two Future Leaders Programs in 2019 across Australia, Singapore and India and part of our strategy to tackle this diversity opportunity was to proactively identify, invite and encourage potential future female leaders in our organisation to join this program who did not ‘put their hand up’ and may not have considered themselves as ‘leaders’, but we wanted to give them the opportunity to see a new potential in themselves.

We are proud to announce that at Enable we have 50% female representation in SLT in Australia

Ensuring we champion and encourage women towards early leadership programs like this early in their career will plant seeds of support to boost their chances of ending up in more senior positions in the future.

We are proud to have 50% female representation on our executive leadership team in Australia and will continue to look for ways to work toward gender equality throughout our leadership representation at all levels and as we develop and grow.

This takes considered and strategic effort while hiring, training and developing our staff. Something that is at the core of our values and behaviour and is another reason why we are truly a people first organisation.

Written by –
Rachel Sparkes
Head of People and Culture
Tribe – HR