Out-Law News 2 min. read

Technology companies encouraged to sign UK 'Tech Talent Charter'


Major technology companies have been encouraged to sign up to the UK's 'Tech Talent Charter'.

According to The Daily Telegraph UK digital minister Margot James has written to "major tech firms" to ask them to sign up to the Charter.

To sign up, businesses must commit to a series of pledges which together are aimed to improving the diversity of people who typically perform technology-related jobs. For example, currently, just 17% of people in technology jobs in the UK are female.

Signatories to the Charter must commit to, among other things, having an internal plan in place to improve diversity and inclusion, be willing to share anonymised data on diversity in their own workforce for benchmarking purposes, and to, wherever possible, include at least one woman on the shortlist for interviews for technology jobs within their organisation.

A number of major organisations are already signatories of the Tech Talent Charter, including the BBC, Fujitsu, BT, Sky and Nationwide Building Society.

"The Tech Talent Charter is designed to encourage tech companies to tackle the issue of gender diversity in the tech sector, which is a key issue given the general consensus that there is a looming digital skills gap," said Amy Hextell, a specialist in employment law at Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com. " Signing up to the Charter demonstrates a commitment by tech companies to addressing this challenge, as they undertake to support inclusive recruitment and retention practices, implement a strategy and measure and share their UK diversity profile."

"In this way, it is similar to the Women in Finance Charter, which was introduced by the Treasury in March 2016 and which has been hailed a big success already, with over half of the firms signed up the Charter having taken specific action to support female career progression. The firms signed up to the Women in Finance Charter cover more than 500,000 people in the UK and it would be great to see tech firms following in the footsteps of firms in the financial and insurance sectors," she said.

Hextell said that committing to the UK's Tech Talent Charter can also help businesses to perform well in respect of their gender pay gap (GPG) reporting duties.

All private and voluntary sector employers with more than 250 staff must publish their GPG position as at 5 April 2017 by 4 April 2018.

The gender pay gap reporting regulations require employers to publish their overall mean and median pay gaps based on gross hourly pay for men and women, expressed as a percentage; as well as their mean and median gender bonus gaps, and further detail the proportion of male and female employees within each quartile of their pay distribution, ordered from lowest to highest pay, as well as the proportion of both men and women that have been paid a bonus in the preceding 12 month period. Similar requirements came into force for public sector employers on 31 March 2017.

Hextell recently advised businesses subject to the GPG reporting requirements to develop an accompanying narrative to the raw statistics so as to put the data into context and to "detail the positive initiatives being undertaken to address any pay differentials, and further 'sell' the organisation as an attractive and rewarding place to work for people of all genders and backgrounds".

She said businesses that commit to the Tech Talent Charter should highlight this as part of their GPG reports.

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