The third day of the IoT Evolution Expo kicked off with a special panel discussion focusing on Women in IoT. The panel was moderated by Bobbie Carlton, the founder of Innovation Women, an online speaker's bureau for entrepreneurial and technical women. Innovation Women helps women get more visibility for themselves, their careers and companies and helps event managers gender-balance the speakers at their conferences, trade shows and other events. Panelists included Lynne Canavan of the OpenFog Consortium, Mary Beth Hall of Verizon Wireless, Heidi Wilson of Telus and Natasha Nader of Quectel.
The panel started by noting that 47% of employers say that a lack of IoT expertise is a limiting factor in finding the right hires and is slowing the growth of IoT. While this is not exclusively a women’s issue, it highlights the need to encourage and develop talent of all kinds in order to meet the growing need for IoT expertise. Also discussed were many of the factors that do impact women more than others. Women are more likely to have child or elder care responsibilities in the family which puts an additional strain on their time. Partly because of this, women are more likely than men to work part-time jobs. Women are also more likely to work at or own smaller companies, which can limit the opportunities for networking and advancement.
There were a number of areas the panelists agreed should be focused on to help attract and retain women talent and drive diversity. They all noted that these efforts are good business practice for all employees and will drive all kinds of diversity (race, gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, etc.).
Provide mentoring opportunities – linking talented hires to leaders who can provide mentoring guidance and help with skill building and networking throughout the organization. Mary Beth Hall shared that Verizon was good at attracting female talent but had difficulty with retention. They identified mentoring as a key way to help women entering the company find a solid footing and build their careers. Having visible female leaders will help to encourage other women in their careers but even male leaders can and should help mentor talent to improve retention and help build the next generation of leadership within the company.
Have a talent pipeline and don’t let it ‘leak’ – it’s incredibly important to build a talent pipeline to help attract new women to IoT opportunities. In 2013 the Obama administration started a program to improve women’s participation in STEM fields. At the time participation was 23%, five years later participation has slightly improved to 25%. Companies can also focus efforts on increasing awareness of and interest in STEM careers for women, and targeting youth programs, such as those for middle-school age children, can help. Additionally, providing support to women through generous maternity programs and a guarantee that they will not fall off their career track if they take maternity leave will help retain talent and avoid having women ‘leak’ out of the company as they try to balance family and career.
Provide flexible or permanent part-time work scheduling – knowing that women are more likely to manage child and elder care responsibilities it is important to provide flexible and part-time work arrangements so employees can remain in and feel secure in the workforce even if they can’t be in a full-time position or need the ability to work different hours due to family support responsibilities. Lynne Canavan shared a story about jumping at the chance to take a secure, part-time position at while at IBM that allowed her to work and have more time with her children. This is another way to help avoid your talent pipeline ‘leaking’ and provide employees with work-life balance.
Company size matters – the resources available to a larger company and their ability to provide more generous maternity benefits or flexible work options may not be available to small or start-up companies. Small companies can still take steps to attract, support and retain female talent though. Natasha Nader spoke of working at Pod Group, a small company with only 4 employees. They all read “Lean In” by Sheryl Sandberg to better understand how to create a welcoming environment. As the company grew and the gender balance began to change, they actively tracked this and looked at ways to make sure they were providing an environment that would attract women to work there.
Wrapping up the panel, the attendees were asked to summarize what they thought were the most important things a company could do to encourage women in IoT. Making diversity and inclusion a key part of 2018 goals, mentoring staff and making sure that, as an employee, you “go where you are celebrated” were all mentioned. Heidi Wilson’s final comment echoed one she made during the discussion; she hoped that this would be the last “Women in IoT” panel. Her belief is that everyone is attracted to competence. If you have the skills and experience for a job companies will be willing to pay for that. She doesn’t want to be defined or valued by her gender but by her skills and what they can bring to the industry. That sentiment may have been the most important takeaway of all.
Edited by
Mandi Nowitz
