In today’s cultural climate, the agenda around workplace diversity has become a hot topic across the tech sector, prompting many tech companies to implement high-profile initiatives to diversify their teams and create a more inclusive environment for their employees.
Throughout the last decade, diversity and inclusion (D&I) strategies have become the norm in most leading tech organizations. Annual diversity reports are becoming more common, awareness campaigns such as the ‘WISE campaign,’ ‘Code 2040’, and ‘Out in Tech’ have become more prominent in the industry and diversification in management roles has greatly improved since the mid-noughties.
Going beyond the surface level to reach the core of the issue
Although we’ve achieved fantastic milestones as an industry, there remain on-going problems that occur in tech offices every day; issues such as unconscious bias hiring, fuelled imposter syndrome and unhealthy work environments.
When it comes to diversity and inclusion, many professionals’ understanding of the issues is very surface-level and often they’re not aware of the complex problems facing many of their colleagues in the tech workforce, especially if the issue doesn’t directly affect them. For example, in our most recent independent market report on the NetSuite industry, we discovered 37% of female respondents believed that men of comparable or equal skills are better rewarded, compared to only 4% of males who held the same belief.
While most participants had positive views towards diversity in the NetSuite industry, when we began to scratch the surface of the data, we found a range of underlying issues that are affecting the daily work-life of NetSuite professionals.
1. Equal rights from your employer
81% of male respondents believe that their employer is an equal rights employer compared to 68% of female respondents, with 12% of female respondents feeling that more could be done.
Our participants told us their employers could look to hire a more diverse workforce, to disclose salaries and provide clarity around the gender pay gap.
2. Lack of female representation in the NetSuite community
We also found a lack of female representation from the NetSuite community, with only 29% of this year’s respondents being women — representing a 6% drop from the female participants in previous year’s salary survey.
Despite continuing to be on the low side, these figures reflect favourably in comparison to industry wide data regarding women in tech; for example, in the US only 24% of tech jobs are held by women, 18% in France, 16% in the UK, and 25% in Canada.
Irrespective, it is still disappointing to see data that shows a drop in female representation within the NetSuite ecosystem — as a community, we need to acknowledge these statistics and together work hard to improve them in future.
3. Equal pay in the NetSuite industry
Only half of the respondents felt that their employer offered equal pay for equal work, regardless of gender, with a further 29% of participants not knowing whether their employer was fair in this regard. Of those who agreed, 57% were male respondents and only 30% were female.
4. Employees from various backgrounds
70% of respondents agreed that their work environment consisted of employees from a variety of cultural backgrounds, a slight increase from our 2018 marketing report.
However, only 32% of respondents believed their employer had plans in place to recruit and retain mature-aged staff and only a further 30% of survey participants agreed their company’s workforce was inclusive of those with a disability.
5. Policies in place to support employees
Diversity Statement
One alarming finding is the lack of clarity regarding respondents’ awareness of their employer’s diversity statement. Less than half the participants have a clear knowledge of the company’s diversity statement and a significant portion of respondents were unaware their company had one at all — a finding that is perhaps driven by diversity not being fully embedded into the organizations.
Mental health policy
We learned that only 43% of respondents could confirm that their employer has procedures in place to support their staff with mental health needs. A further 41% could not verify whether their employer had any mental health policies, both of which highlight a critical need to increase awareness of mental health support in workplaces across the NetSuite industry.
Expanding our awareness across the NetSuite industry.
If we’ve learned anything
from our 2019 market report, it is the importance of continuing to push for a
more diverse and inclusive NetSuite community.
We need to ensure that we’re providing a platform to openly and positively discuss topics such as gender equality, racial discrimination, and LGBT+ rights, as well as continuing to raise the awareness of issues such as maternity/paternity leave, mental health support, supporting people from different social backgrounds, and promoting neurodiversity in the workplace.
If you’ve been inspired to discuss the issues of diversity in the NetSuite community, we encourage you to take part in our 2019/2020 market survey.
Our survey is an excellent platform for professionals to share their thoughts on the global NetSuite community, and our 2019/2020 report will be no different. Taking part in the survey ensures the vibrant and dynamic NetSuite industry continues to become a more diverse and inclusive ecosystem.
Zoë Morris, President of Anderson Frank
