It’s well known that the technology industry is not the most diverse, but building a diverse and inclusive organisation is something we take seriously here at Infinity Works.

This blog post marks the beginning of our journey to make positive change to the diversity of the computing industry. We are setting out to build a more diverse workforce and an inclusive working environment for all at Infinity Works.

This means looking at all of our processes from recruitment, events and leadership to day-to-day working. It means ensuring we reduce unconscious bias, it means reaching out to under-represented groups and it means getting involved in the wider community. We want to listen and learn to ensure we include more diverse viewpoints and ways of thinking.

Our aims are to make sure that everyone has a chance to succeed at IW and to be happy in their workplace. We want to share our love of computing with the community around us and aim to devote more time to working with under-represented groups, encouraging them into a career in computing and technology.

Last year we formed our Diversity and Inclusion community, a team of people that meet monthly with the ideas and drive to achieve our vision. Here’s a short summary of what we’ve been up to…

Data is important

One of our shortfalls is our lack of data; as it stands we have no bench mark, no starting point to measure ourselves against.

We are working towards gathering meaningful statistics about the Infinity Works workforce. We want to build anonymised statistics on age, gender, gender at birth, sexual orientation, ethnicity, disability, physical health, mental health, religion or belief, neuro-diversity and caring responsibilities. With this information we have a benchmark and we can begin to set company wide goals and monitor our progress.

In the future we’re also looking into extending this survey to applicants so we can track if and where we are losing under-represented minorities in the recruitment process.

Code of conduct

One of the things that makes Infinity Works such a great place to work is its company culture, where people are respected and valued, feel safe in their workplace, and where a “no ego” attitude is key. The brand-new Infinity Works Code of Conduct lays out our standard of respectful behaviour, and is set out at events and included as a part of all new client engagements. Handy information on venue accessibility will also be included in event information.

Community presence

We want the local community to know that Infinity Works is a supportive, understanding and inclusive place to work. We have been building a list of community tech events to attend that support under-represented minorities including You Equal Tech North and Digital Her. A number of our engineers are mentors or coaches at local code meet-ups such us CodeUp, Code Your Future, Codebar and Digital Her. We are looking at how we can get more of our team involved in these events and support them as much as possible.

Onwards

These are our first steps towards building an organisation and wider tech community that is a welcoming place for all. We are committed to this journey and to exploring the different ways in which we as a company can continue to create a more diverse and inclusive team to benefit our employees, our clients and society.