IT Pro 20/20: Why tech can't close the diversity gap

Welcome to the tenth issue of IT Pro 20/20, our digital magazine that brings all of the previous month's most important tech issues into clear view.

Diversity has always been a challenge for the technology industry. It's one of those few industries that struggles to maintain a varied talent pool, with white males still taking the single biggest share of the employee demographic.

This is a problem we've known about for a long time, and even though the figures have improved very little in recent years, awareness has. Unfortunately, there's a very real danger that what work UK businesses have put in to make their workforce as diverse as possible could be entirely undone by the pandemic.

When faced with shrinking budgets, it's easy to imagine companies choosing to sideline or even close some of the newer, more costly, diversity initiatives. We also know from recent research in the US that women are more likely to be furloughed than their male colleagues as, by the nature of recent diversity efforts, women are more likely to be holding those very vulnerable entry-level positions.

In this month's issue, we aim to show why a struggling business should start thinking of diversity as less of a business luxury and more as a route to recovery and, ultimately, a competitive advantage in a fractured post-pandemic market.

We appreciate you taking the time to download IT Pro 20/20, and we hope you enjoy this month’s issue.

The next IT Pro 20/20 will be available on Friday 18 December – previous issues can be found here. If you would like to receive each issue in your inbox as they release, you can subscribe to our mailing list here.