Awards submissions shine a light on the tech workplace

I’ve spent a lot of the last six weeks reading submissions for the Women in Tech Excellence Awards. Here are some of my thoughts on women in the tech workplace.

Throughout late summer and early Autumn, the Computing team is united in a single endeavour – judging the Computing Women in Tech Excellence Awards.

The Women in Tech Excellence Awards is one of the highlights of our awards calendar and my personal favourite. This years’ awards are on 27th November, but the night itself, glittering as it is, represents the final stage in a very long process. To help us judge the almost 2000 submissions we receive we have a highly valued team of judges, many of whom are previous winners.

If you applied for one of these coveted awards, please be assured that all submissions are considered in a multistage process that begins with shortlisting, second round judging and then a final, in person judging day where judges get together, compare feedback and make their final decisions.

I’ve spent a lot of the last six weeks reading your award submissions and some thoughts have crystallised.

Leadership Isn’t about titles

I saw very few submissions from CIOs or CTOs. Most are from project and programme managers, operation managers, developers and data managers. All these women are having outsized impacts without being in executive roles. They are delivering critical projects and solving serious problems, building inclusive teams and leading with quiet power.

Perhaps too quietly. I can’t help wondering why more of these women weren’t in more senior leadership roles.

Technical and interpersonal skills are only part of what’s needed to thrive in enterprise tech environments – adaptability and a degree of toughness is also necessary. So many submissions showed women overcoming barriers including personal and health related challenges, systemic bias and obstacles created by restructuring and budget cuts. Speaking of which..

Women get a disproportionate share of tanking projects

You would be amazed at how many submissions were based on women being ‘given’ high profile transformation projects which were failing. To misquote the late, great Mrs Merton:

“What was it about the over budget, overdue and understaffed project that made you want to assign it to a woman?”

Which brings me nicely to:

Women are picking up the pieces of tech budget cuts and restructuring

Many submissions drawn from multiple industries, centred on delivering digital change in the face of low morale caused by restructuring, staff and budget cuts. That women have exceeded whilst working within these constraints speaks volumes.

In many submissions, when women are given the chance to build their own teams, they prioritised diversity and inclusion. They often managed to build gender balanced teams and outcomes were improved. Submissions showed that the idea that diversity and inclusion creates weakness because people are hired for identity rather than talent is 100% false.

Women in tech give up huge amounts of their own time

Almost every submission I read told a story of a women not only smashing it in the day job, but also giving her time for mentoring junior colleagues, women and girls in their own communities, acting as STEM ambassadors or running awareness campaigns on important issues. The unpaid work of these women is, as it always has, filling an awful lot of gaps in corporate and public policy.

Tech needs humanity to succeed

Beyond data, code and AI tooling, pretty much all the stories I read focused on solving real-world problems. Many were about improving processes and finding smarter ways to do business, with some stunning metrics to back them up. Some were about improving health outcomes, finding new and innovative ways to educate and inspire or advancing sustainability. All had human beings at their heart along with ambition and purpose.

It has been my privilege to read these stories. If you entered the awards, I wish you all the very best.

The Women in Tech Excellence Awards will take place on 27th November in central London. Click here for further information, here for information about sponsorship and here for information on tickets and tables.