Time for a...

With an industry that’s booming and no shortage of start-ups and employment applications - a lot of companies may wonder “what are the benefits of utilising contract resources?” When it’s time to grow your company and hire staff, you’ll find that your entrant-level technology roles have hundreds of applications flying in. Great! But there’s a downside: full-time staff come with full-time responsibility.

Contracting can be extremely rewarding, from the potential higher earnings and the flexibility and freedom as to how and when you work, to the variety of organisations you get to work with. It isn’t for everyone of course, but for those who have taken the leap and moved away from the permanent work, the majority haven’t looked back.

For women in the tech industry, lower pay per hour and reduced starting salary rates compared to their male counterparts are a sad reality. Whether this is due to the “motherhood penalty” or an unconscious bias, employers need to transform how they act in order to reduce the disparity as well as stay ethical. Since 2017, the tech industry has been required to publish public annual reports regarding pay gaps in their workplace and this has only highlighted a previously buried problem that doesn’t seem to be changing.

For women in the tech industry, this is a real-world, real-life problem - with current gender wage gaps sitting heavy at 4%. Whilst this is almost half the UK national average of 7.4%, for women who hold the same qualifications and training as their counterparts… this is still too much. According to a Hired survey, that’s not all. There are additional negatives for women in the workplace including being “expected to do menial and secretarial tasks not associated with my role”. Unconscious (and perhaps even active) bias means that 50% of women abandon their technology careers by the age of 35.

In our previous post we talked about the ‘Digital skills shortage disaster’ which is hot on everybody's lips at the moment. Next up, let’s look at the challenges this presents for hiring managers, and the steps businesses can take to ensure they stay ahead of the curve.

The impact of Covid-19 has led to a greater demand for digital skills as businesses of all sizes, across all sectors, adapt their digital output. Even before the pandemic hit, the prevalence of digital tools and changing consumer behaviours rapidly accelerated the need for specialist skills, particularly in AI, cloud and robotics, as companies entered the race to provide the best experiences for their customers. In fact, the need for digital skills is increasing at such a rate that the UK is facing a shortage which has been referred to as “catastrophic” and a “disaster”. Accurate or OTT? Let’s take a closer look...