Innovation

Career ArchiTECH is a 6-month development program for women in technology, that involves a blended set of experiences and education to advance their careers. Career ArchiTECH is centered around the themes of “Thriving Self, Enabling Thriving Teams and Thriving in the industry”.

Some of the learning activities that will be run include virtual learning workshops, executive coaching, mentoring, small social learning pods, access to a dedicated digital Learning Hub, fire-side chats, and small action learning projects. Access to these activities empowers women to connect with like-minded women and grow their personal networks.

Additionally, Career ArchiTECH connects participants to girls in school and university to help support their learning of STEM subjects, technology skills and expand their career options.

Career ArchiTECH aims to positively impact Telstra through the retention of scarce female talent, provide advancement opportunities to women and continue to “build a pipeline of women and girls working in the tech field”.

Inspiration

Prior to Career ArchiTECH, Telstra’s efforts towards gender equality included ensuring that recruitment shortlists were at least 50% female or 25% for areas where there is a known gender imbalance (Telstra, n.d.) and creating education initiatives for girls in high school to learn digital skills and STEM subjects (Badenoch, 2018).

Furthermore, as Telstra also describe in their 2020 Corporate Governance Statement, they are striving to become a “great incubator of female technology talent” (Telstra, 2020) and their Vision and Values describe how they are committed to having an environment that is “inclusive and supportive; a place where everyone can truly be themselves and where they feel safe, valued and empowered to speak up” (Telstra, 2020).

Despite these corporate commitments and efforts, Telstra continued to notice that there was still a significant gender imbalance in technology roles, they were “losing women in key technology roles as they move to other organizations”, and that attrition was a “large problem”. In order to tackle these imbalances from a development perspective, the Organisational Development and Diversity and Inclusion teams at Telstra created Career ArchiTECH.

Overall impact

Career ArchiTECH is having a positive overall impact on both the lives of the women participating, the company’s culture, and business success. An immediate benefit of Career ArchiTECH is that it is currently positively impacting Telstra’s brand through positive social media coverage by participants who are “posting their stories on social networking sites like Yammer and LinkedIn”. Long term, Career ArchiTECH is expected to be able to “shift the balance” of women in technology roles.

Business benefit

Career ArchiTECH will have multiple positive benefits for Telstra. It has the opportunity to increase the retention of female technology talent and help Telstra “win the fight for scarce female tech talent”, which may give Telstra a competitive advantage. Furthermore, Career ArchiTECH will enable “greater internal mobility and progression” for the women participating. Telstra is anticipating that through the program, the female technologists will “feel more valued and engaged in their work”, which is likely to increase productivity, quality of work, retention, diversity of thought, and more senior female role models.

Career ArchiTECH will also positively impact Telstra’s brand image, through being seen as a diverse employer that is striving for gender equality. Increasing the positive reputation of Telstra could benefit the company in the future as more women and minority groups may be attracted to working at Telstra, increasing the talent pool.

Social and environmental benefit

There are many social benefits from Career ArchiTECH. Telstra has plans to run Career ArchiTECH biannually, meaning that around 100 women in technology a year will have access to Career ArchiTECH and be able to further their career development and leadership skills. Furthermore, a large part of the Career ArchiTECH innovation is having the participating women involved in supporting university and school initiatives to build STEM skills and pathways for female and indigenous students.

Socially, having more women in technology roles, and specifically more women in leadership technology roles, will benefit society as it gives younger women and girls more female role-models to look up to, challenge the male-dominated tech industry, break down stereotypes, and empower not only the women who undertake Career ArchiTECH but also those around them, to push past the glass ceiling. This helps to achieve SDG #5 Gender Equality, which aims for women to have equal opportunities in work and for leadership positions, and to be involved in “decision making in political, economic and public life” (United Nations General Assembly, 2015).

Furthermore, this innovation has the ability to replicated and reproduced not only in other companies but also in other industries where a gender imbalance exists, to further contribute to achieving gender equality.

References:

Badenoch, A. (2018). Achieving gender equality: our bias for action. Retrieved from https://exchange.telstra.com.au/achieving-gender-equality-our-bias-for-action/

Telstra. (2020, August 28). Governance at Telstra: 2020 corporate governance statement. Retrieved from https://www.telstra.com.au/content/dam/tcom/about-us/investors/pdf%20F/2020-Corporate-Governance-Statement.pdf

Telstra. (n.d). Our commitment to gender equality. Retrieved from https://careers.telstra.com/gender-equality

United Nations General Assembly. (2015, October 21). Transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. Retrieved from https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/21252030%20Agenda%20for%20Sustainable%20Development%20web.pdf

Interview

Fiona McSweeney, Chapter Lead, Learning Chapter