Gender diversity at Credera: Putting gender on the agenda

Increasing gender diversity in the tech industry is a theme that is and should remain on the agenda. This industry, amongst others, needs to face into an inherent gender diversity problem. A lack of gender diversity can impact not only on employee satisfaction and motivation, but also impacts the quality of what we produce and limits our ability to respond to changing customer needs.

At Credera, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is central to our business, and we have been focusing on underrepresented genders within the industry. It is the way in which we intend to grow, by working alongside people who have different experiences to us and challenging our views and expectations. The emphasis within our DEI group is to change the environment and to embrace the individual, removing the pressure on underrepresented genders to conform to the environment. Alongside objectives for the business, we have two action focused networks supporting gender diversity within Credera; one is our Gender Diversity group, and the other is our LGBT+ networks.

Read next: National Coming Out Day: Credera's Trans Support and Transition at Work policy

Gender Diversity Network

Our Gender Diversity network are passionate about improving our gender diversity and working towards gender parity. Success for us means having market-leading policies, practices, and representation on gender, so that ultimately we are no longer required.

We aim to make sure that our initiatives are inclusive and representative of feedback from colleagues within Credera, and our focus has been to continuously improve our policies and practices where gender plays a part. We are also looking to address areas that are not traditionally covered by policies and practices that are impacted by gender, such as fertility and menopause.

As a network, we have an ongoing calendar of events to talk about issues that relate to or celebrate gender diversity. Previous events have included guest speakers discussing the topic of unconscious bias and its connection to gender in the workplace, panel discussions on unconventional career paths for women, and book club sessions centred around gender as a theme.

In collaboration with both our LGBT+ network and our CredCOLOUR network, we are increasing transparency with the creation of our global Diversity and Inclusion report and a quarterly ‘Diversity Dashboard’ to measure our results.

LGBT+ Network

The Credera LGBT+ network holds regular events in the gender diversity space to increase awareness amongst our colleagues and throughout the wider industry. Previous events have included: sponsorship of Trans In The City and Mermaids Digifest events; inviting an external speaker to provide Transgender 101 sessions; hosting a series of external-facing webinars during Transgender Awareness Week 2020 around issues currently faced by transgender people in the UK; and running a film discussion group around the Disclosure documentary.

We have also been focusing on reviewing our internal company policies to ensure that Credera remains an inclusive and welcoming place for our transgender and non-binary colleagues. Working closely with the Gender Diversity network, we have removed unnecessarily gendered references from company policies to ensure that policies can be applied regardless of gender where relevant.

At present, we are working on a Transition at Work / Trans Support policy, to ensure that individuals who wish to come out or transition at work can easily find the resources that they need. This will also provide their managers and colleagues with additional information and resources to help them provide the necessary support.

Exercising a collaborative culture

Where there are clear overlaps in areas of interest, our internal networks collaborate to host joint events. For Non-Binary People’s Day on the 14th of July, the Gender Diversity and LGBT+ Networks joined together to raise awareness of the diversity of factors that can intersect with gender and that shape the experiences of non-binary individuals. We started with an internal announcement of the date to raise awareness and explain the history behind it.  At the same time, we internally shared the experience of a Crederian’s young family member, who had written about their experience and challenges of discovering and embracing their identity.

This was shortly followed by a book club session where we discussed two books: Non-Binary Lives: An Anthology of Intersecting Identities and Trans Britain: Our Journey from the Shadows. Both of these books contain a variety of voices with intersecting identities across the boundaries of race, class, age, sexuality, faith, and more, providing a great range of experiences for us all to learn from.

In a nutshell

We believe that increasing gender diversity and supporting our gender diverse colleagues within Credera and in the wider industry is morally, culturally, and financially the right thing to do.

As a firm, we recently launched our Global Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Wellbeing Report. The report gives further context behind our DE&I initiatives and commitments to increasing gender diversity within Credera and across the industry.