Women in Focus - Shaking up gender balance in Group IT

In our new “Women in Focus” series we’re sharing stories from across the Transport cluster featuring women who are making a difference.

We caught up with some of the leaders in Group IT who are working together to improve the gender balance in what has been a traditionally male dominated field. When Business Manager, Lisa Doherty looked around the table she was the only woman on the Group IT senior leadership team.

“The Group IT Senior Leadership Team wanted to start to drive change, so we made a conscious decision to increase diversity and look to have more women in senior roles,” Lisa said.

From there, a group of passionate female leaders have been working together on a range of strategies to identify and develop female talent in the IT function, and support them through mentoring, training and secondment opportunities. A focus on recruitment practices has also seen Group IT increase the percentage of women in senior service roles from 19% to 26% in the past 12 months.

One of the key learnings has been the importance of working together with other female and male leaders to address issues. Annette Matthews, Director Business Solution Architecture, explains, “We can all do individual things in our teams that can be impactful, but the true value gets unlocked when the whole group is working together to solve this problem.”

Watch the video to hear their story.