At the recent Tech Leaders Forum for 2023, held in the Hunter Valley of NSW, we spoke with Anthony Woodward, the CEO for Logicalis Australia, about how Logicalis is working towards encouraging more women to work in the tech industry – as well as how we can address the tech skills shortage more broadly.
Anthony said Logicalis has had a program for the past two years where they engaged with the graduate community in relation to skills shortages. He added: “I’m happy to say that we’ve set up mentorship programs, and we’re now heavily engaged with an organisation called ‘Grad Girls’. We’re doing quite a lot of work with them, helping graduates engage with our organisation to see what a role in tech might look like for them.”
Globally, Logicalis holds a “value proposition” for its employees to ensure they feel good about working with the company. Anthony added: “At Logicalis Australia, we have launched a value proposition to the candidate market that talks about belonging, which is very much about diversity and inclusion and everybody being able to bring their whole selves to the workplace. This employee value proposition maps into gender diversity and unconscious bias as well. ”
“We make sure that people know they can progress their careers with us and we will support them in that learning journey. Letting them thrive is really about how they balance their work and their life. Women, for example, have got multiple lives to juggle and manage, and we do our best to try and build that flexibility into how they work every day so that they really enjoy that work-life balance,” added Anthony.
The unconscious bias within AI systems
Anthony also talked about the unconscious bias within AI systems: “Our view at Logicalis in terms of unconscious bias, more broadly, is to try and have our people who work with us every day, think about their own unconscious bias.”
“Our take is that a lot of systems have bias in them that’s built in as a result of people who put them together. And if you have an unconscious bias in the way that you work, then this could be reflected in the system that you build.” he added.
“So our approach to unconscious bias is to really make our organisation aware and to have a process of speaking out and speaking up, and helping people to see unconscious bias and how to overcome it in the workplace,” Anthony said.
He also mentioned cybersecurity, saying: “Interestingly, in relation to your point about cybersecurity, that’s been the one area that’s been pleasantly surprising to see a lot of graduates looking as the place to go, because we need it.”
For more information about Logicalis Australia, visit here.
For more from Women Love Tech on encouraging more women to work in tech, visit here.
