There is a strong culture in the tech industry for expecting people to learn as hobbyist or in their own time.
This disproportionately excludes women, who are still taking on the bulk of caregiving responsibilities. Nearly half of working-age women are providing an average of 45 hours of unpaid care every week, while 25% of men provide 17 hours, and UK women provide 23.2 billion hours of unpaid childcare, compared to 9.7 billion provided by men. Requiring (either explicitly or implicitly through workload) that learning take place outside of office hours limits their ability to progress and punishes them further as a result of ingrained sexist structures – expecting them to be ‘kinkeepers’, both at home and in the workplace.
To discuss this further, we’re joined by Hayley McCarthy, Co-Founder of Skiller Whale.
After graduating from Cambridge in 2007, Hayley set up and ran a professional coaching and assessment company for 7 years, strategically advising and providing training for organisations like HSBC, Microsoft and Shell.
She has been on the leadership team of two other international EdTech companies and is an author, published by Cambridge University Press. She is a co-founder of Skiller Whale.
SheCanCode is a collaborative community of women in tech working together to tackle the tech gender gap.
Join our community to find a supportive network, opportunities, guidance and jobs, so you can excel in your tech career.
hello everyone thank you for tuning in as always I am Kaylee batesman the content director at she can code and
today we’re discussing enabling women in Tech through workplace learning now there is a strong culture in the tech
industry for expecting people to learn as a hobbyist or in their own time
however this can exclude women who are still taking on the bulk of caregiving responsibilities so requiring that
learning take place outside of office hours limits their ability to progress now to discuss this further with me
today I’m joined by The Fabulous Haley McCarthy co-founder of Skiller wow welcome Haley hi there lovely to be here
and thank you so much for joining us and can we kick off today we have a lot to get through but can we kick off with a
little bit of a background about yourself please yeah sure um so I started my career in
professional learning I was running my own company um in looking at how people can skill
for the kind of changing and changing world of global work with the offshoring
and Outsourcing space so what kind of skills do people need how can they work with people from different cultures and
um how do companies properly assess and Coach those skills um and then I I pivoted into education
technology um which was obviously there’s some connection with education but technology
was a horny world for me um and I joined a startup that um sold
that ended up selling four years five years later as the first commercial person
um which was really fun really interesting growing that startup I then joined another um as the CMO
um during the education space but in social learning and so with all of that background I was very very interested in
learning and how learning could be applied to skill gaps um which is obviously very very much
emerging and and now even more urgent um in the Technologies base and I worked
with my now two co-founders um in one of those edtech startups and
we had been talking a lot about um what they needed and they’re both Technical and it felt like the the
problem kind of just emerged from the things we were all experiencing and and focusing on in our work so that’s yeah
that’s what got me to where I am today yeah I love the fact that you said you joined two startups
um and now are obviously growing um your current startup it’s we have a lot of ladies on here that um we’ve discussed
before about loving the environment of staff tops it’s kind of a Love or hate isn’t it you kind of can’t say yeah it
has all those really good things that you get to progress really fast and learn really fast but there is nowhere
to hide at a starter so and you also have to you have to operate in lots of
different roles I I think it it lends itself really well to multitasking people who love multitasking and like
spinning lots of plates um and I I think that’s uh if you’ve got that as a strength then you can really
thrive in the start of the environment yes definitely yes uh the way you just described that yes we we are still
consider ourselves a startup that she can code and you’re right it’s the spinning of lots of different plates which is super fun
yeah yeah very organized yeah
um now our discussion discussion today and we’re going to talk a little bit about workplace learning so um we’ve all heard the news uh the news
stories about the tech skills Gap could workplace learning help to tackle this do you think
I think yeah um I think it depends what we mean by that though because I think if we mean
kind of more the same I’d say no I think that’s important I actually say a bit of
the problem um I think there’s there was a really interesting report actually that Accenture
um uh released recently which is called um it’s learning just not because we know it um where they said and I this is a
direct quote because I can actually see my notes and see this direct quote um current education and corporate
learning systems are not equipped to address the coming revolutionary skills demand um and this this is not a cunning
Revolution anymore this is a revolution we are experiencing right now and I think there’s this is echoed by there’s
another report McKinsey I think in 2017 and talked about this skills Gap
demanding Innovation on the scale of the Marshall Plan which is like that that indicates huge amounts of
investment and and also just kind of stepping back and asking what does this
problem need and then thinking about the solution with a blank sheet of paper I
think there has been a kind of stop Gap papering over um oh let’s let’s give people a book
budget or let’s um let’s you know put more videos up online and and get them
to sort of figure themselves out and more of that I think is just it’s not
going to solve the problem yes of the way you said that just letting people figure it out for themselves which
doesn’t help anybody and I think that’s a few companies I’ve been through where you you think you know they say all
these things are available um but actually a lot of them are not worth it anyway and there’s a small
budget for something and you think oh I didn’t really take much from that and um thank you very much
and I think this is it’s kind of a wild thing about the technology industry in general like if you compare it to any
mature industry there is a structure for how you learn there are accreditations
and there is there is formalized ongoing learning like you talk to any doctor lawyer accountant there are
there’s there’s some stuff in place and and then the technology industry there just isn’t and there’s very much
an expectation that you figure out as you go along you learn by by like
Googling which is super inefficient and people can figure things out as they get along
but surely we don’t think that that’s the way to fix our skill Gap yes yes because you speak to so many ladies on
here that say you know what you need to be in the mindset of um constantly learning and you know this is the place
for you if you want to constantly you know learn and stay ahead of the curve but you’re right there is nothing in
place actually to to help you with that um unless you get in a company that that
helps you with that workplace learning but you’re absolutely right I hear it so often but unless you join a network or a
group or you know somewhere where you’re regularly meeting perhaps for hackathons or whatever it may be and then you know
how how do you keep moving and you’re still doing your day job and and you know after people at home for instance
or whatever it may be oh my gosh yeah absolutely and if you yeah if you compare it with anything else where
people are expected to perform like if you compared it with a sports team I hate using Sports analogies but if you
ever sports team if they were just playing the game with no coaching with
no feedback with no analysis of their form or anything like that and the expectation was well you’ll learn by
doing and you’ll learn by making mistakes and then you know eventually you’ll become good sure like no one would think that was a
that was a team win exactly I know you said you hate Sports
um analogies but absolutely perfect because you know they’re going to be um judged on as well the games that
they’re winning and how well they’re doing and and you think how can you not you know apply the same
um principles to to Tech um it just yeah it just seems insane do
you think this bullet will encourage um uh retention amongst employees
especially women really wouldn’t it as well to really help them think I’m gonna start this company I’m gonna remain
loyal to this company because they seem really invested in me that this is such
an interesting issue I think because it’s quite a known known thing that um
people often cheat or like in technology um if you look at the surveys on why
people choose jobs and time and time again learning opportunities comes out in one of the top few reasons to either
select a company um or what they’re looking for when they when they start looking around
um and Linkedin did a survey that’s in 94 of people who have left a job said that they were just staying long they
would have stayed longer um if the company had been investing in their learning so this is like this is
definitely a very you know easy button to push for companies yeah 94 gosh I
know it’s like yeah if you’re not doing it then you’re definitely missing a trick but um what I think is really
interesting about it is that it’s this huge Spectrum where um most companies that I’m I’m aware of
are just doing the bare minimum so they’re they’re saying okay um if I invest in learning that will improve
retention therefore here’s your budget for this is 500 pounds you can spend it on you know a day of a conference or
some online content or books or whatever I’m not gonna get involved you can just
do what you want this is your tick box version of that and the other end of the
section you have companies who invest in people’s learning to the extent that
those people feel themselves growing gaining Mastery accelerating in their
careers that that’s going to be the stickier version so I guess it’s definitely the
case that even if all you do is give people a budget even if they don’t use it they appreciate that it’s there and
it does it does help retention but just think how much more you could turn that dial
if you if you were really investing in learning that had an impact on a job and their ability to progress within the
company and so on yeah especially when companies they complain about a shortage of talent finding the right people with
the right skills you think you know you would work harder to retain the talent that you have and also to train them up
in areas that you know you either feel that they might be personally lacking in or just as a team or where the companies
progressing you know towards but yeah it just seems I I think I know things get
lost in the day job as well um but it seems like a no-brainer is 94 are saying they would have stayed with a
bit more training and as you said you know actually investing in some um training that really progresses your job
um yeah it just seems it seems like a no-brainer I’m on the topic of uh learning on the job do you think Tech
apprenticeships and internships are a good way to get more women into the industry
while we still have boys and I’m bringing girls three to one taking computer science at school
um we do need alternative Pathways uh into coding jobs um or into the tech industry in general
but I would say there is way too much emphasis on the entry point at the
moment and we need to be talking about progression as well because the only way
that girls are going to be saying that’s where I want to go is if they are seeing women that they want to emulate like if
they look at at the ctOS of the of the technology companies in the world and
it’s still 92 men we’re not going to be really changing this this problem at the
the kind of Grassroots level yeah um and and also I think looking at an industry
where you don’t see progression opportunities for yourself is that’s that’s another non-starter so we can’t
just be doing apprenticeships and internships it can’t be just entry level um where the Innovation happens I think
yes I had a lady on here recently actually who took an internship and she said actually the value that she found
in in her internship um wasn’t just getting into a great company but she felt like she had the
qualifications she needed from University I actually just bridged in the gap between University and work
where she said it’s such a it’s such a shock when you get into the workplace sometimes and she said that internship
really helped to just kind of you know learn what it what it’s like to be in work and the pace of being at certain
companies and how to keep up and how to work with the team and um you know she just said that it was so
she felt that that would have been encouraged more women to to come in and feel like you know it’s okay just to
kind of find my feet a little bit before I get into a full-time um role so there’s there’s definite
value in there and do you think companies how can companies support learning in the workplace especially
amongst women I mean you mentioned a little bit there but you know just being more mindful as well about what that
learning is and perhaps not just ticking the box and checking a budget at somebody or you know saying we’ve got an
app that you can log into and find something useful um I suppose there is a lot more that
companies can do isn’t there yeah I think I think there is I think I
mean my answer to this is probably a really hard thing which is that I think
a culture shift in an attitude shift is the most powerful thing that companies can do
um and we we sort of hinted at it at the beginning of this um when you when you talked about
hobbyists and about the kind of emphasis on on um
child care and and general General caregiving that women have it still
disproportionately Falls to women it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t fall to men um there are some men who take on a lot
of child care and who take another other in keeping responsibilities but
um we’re still looking at a disproportionate number of women who are unable to do anything outside of work
hours um so I I think there are kind of two shifts that need to happen one is
stop thinking about people learning the way you did I’m speaking right now to Tech leaders like
the majority of tech leaders will have will have come into the industry um at a time where
Tech learning would have been a hobby I can I think now it’s shifting quite a
lot but it did it was predominantly a kind of hobbyist space um for a long time and that’s been kind
of deified in in the media like you think about the kind of dorm room Drop
Out who who um ended up founding a hugely successful tech company and
it’s something that I think people look to as as the ideal path that attitude
has to change and it can’t and you can’t just say well I did it that way therefore because you come from a place
of privilege you come from a a situation where you had technology set up at home
like even that is not something available to everybody and you had the time and you had the support you have
the encouragement to code in your own time and so I think that’s one thing where
that shift has to happen away from hobbyists to its vacation it’s a it’s
it’s a it’s a career it’s something that people want to do well in their work hours and then after that you don’t have
any jurisdiction um or expectations and I think if we continue to progress the people who put
the time in outside of work we will continue to find that we have 92 percent of men as ctOS yes we won’t change that
pattern um the other is and you kind of hinted at this um earlier when you talked about
the internship I think which is that confidence um in in a society which is still very
much skewed towards giving men or and boys encouragement in into Tech and
telling girls that they’re not able to do it and that there’s not you know the best of it it’s not where they would Thrive
um thinking about the The Imposter syndrome that a lot of women come in with and addressing that by openly
failing as Leaders like I think this is such a powerful thing you can do as a technology leader is to say I’m learning
I’m I’m not always right I’m gonna I’m gonna make mistakes and here’s an example of a mistake I made last week
which I’ve been making for years and I’ve now just learned this new thing and I’m really excited to implement it
that kind of thing makes it safe for people to feel like they they have the opportunity to fail it makes it safe to
fail and it makes it much more likely that they’ll be open about where they need support yes I love that yes definitely being
open about failure and and and moving forward because um as as well I’m something we haven’t
touched upon yet but I mean we’ve been talking about early um careers you know coming in straight
from University but if you’re transitioning in your career later in life you know you have that issue with
confidence that you think well I’m quite new I’m not I’m Junior but I’m not quite Junior and because I really work for a
long time and as well what you were saying you know about um some people having the privilege of
having the time and the support at home well actually if you’re transitioning to a career later in life you might not
have that um or you might not have the finances available as well to take a 12-week boot
camp um and take that gambles to whether or not you’re going to have a good career
in Tech afterwards and so sometimes getting in a company uh that can help
you with that learning and to set aside time for that learning as well as not so something that’s talked about you know
what we’re trying to set aside a couple of hours on a Tuesday but it never actually happens because our day job has
to keep going and being you know very set in this is so important that we have
a day that’s set aside for learning um that isn’t outside of work hours can make such a difference for some people
yeah this has been really interesting so this is something that we we baked in as
part of our of our learning structure at Skiller whale and we didn’t think of that as being a particularly important
element we were like it needs to be an hour or an hour and a half during the
work week um every couple of weeks so that it could feel sustainable
um and it was never a question that it would be outside of working hours because it’s live
and it actually became one of the most important elements of what we were doing
and we found that um companies were coming back and thinking oh we’ve had
everybody attend and we can see everybody growing and we can pair that with these other things that we’ve done
where 10 of people have completed it or even less than that and it’s the kind of
thing where if something’s in your diary if it’s in your calendar it’s bitten out somebody’s waiting for you there’s a bit
of like human pressure to attend it’s quite different from someone saying I want you to spend this time please do
make sure that you earmark some time however I’m still going to put a huge amount of pressure on you to get all of
your work done into like during these ad hoc meetings and so on and so forth in
those cases learning always gets pushed it’s like next week tomorrow that’s it
yeah and your to-do list just keeps moving to the next day to the next day because I wanted to ask you about the
other ways that we can nurture the progression of women in the workplace but actually you said one there and
something that you’ve implemented it’s killer whale just making sure that you do set aside the time and it’s not just
you know putting pressure on somebody to do it um I suppose I’m seeing it I suppose it’s just reframing it and it has
something that is incredibly important because if that person progresses in their learning that can only help the
business and progress the business um so yeah I suppose it’s just reframing the whole yeah the whole reason why
you’re learning yeah I think that’s definitely true and I think there’s also a bit uh this this
I’ve heard anecdotally from a number of ctas that I’ve spoken to that they have
women on their technical teams that are that are providing something a little bit different from
um their sort of peer their peer men and um they’re seeing they see these skills
in men as well but it’s something that they’ve noticed as a pattern among the women which is that they are kind of the
glue of the team they’re making sure the information is Flowing really well and that there aren’t miscommunications
misunderstandings about what people are working on if they’re let’s say they’re all working on one project but they’re taking different parts
that that kind of resonates for me as a skill that I’ve also seen with women
that I’ve worked with more so than with men which may very well be socialized may very well not be a kind of innate
skill but um but we don’t really value those skills explicitly in Tech so if you look
at how technical teams are often measured which is not particularly
um uh formalized like a lot of teams don’t really have metrics but when they do
those metrics are very hard metrics they’re about you know the specific code
like how how quick you were able to to push some code not whether you added
value to the team being able to to ship the right code and so often I think that
that is known by Hands-On leaders but it’s it’s it’s it can be ignored or it
can be something that is appreciated without actually resulting in progression yeah all of the things that
you you see as progression in Tech um are so interesting because one you mentioned earlier about being open in
terms of failure I think that’s one as well you should be measured on not just failure but the way that you deal with
failure because as a team it’s very difficult to move forward if that team fails and absolutely collapses and
doesn’t rally together as a team to work together to move forward to progress and
I think that’s that’s one of those skills as well that’s always kind of pushed to the side you know it’s not a
technical skill it’s not important but actually the the way that a team folks with failure is so so important um to
how they’re going to go on to the next projects and the next project and you know making sure that they don’t throw
each other under the bus and he did that and she did that and actually you know let’s just get on with it and and move
forward yeah well there’s a really interesting issue with them a sort of
stead clear of using the terminology about hard skills and soft skills um I recently was organizing a talk for
one of my co-founders on on this topic and got a lot of feedback that technical
leaders won’t will think of hard skills as like the good skills and soft skills is the bad skills and I was like oh
really is that kind of thing um and my co-founder ended up rebranding
them power skills they hard skills Empower skills and I love that because I feel like there is so much power quite
often untapped potential in these kind of communication collaboration
connection ensuring sort of smoothness of working together human skills yeah which is most
of tech are people outside of tech don’t realize that always so they think you can take it’s going to be very siled
you’re only going to be coding and doing the hard skills and actually you said all of the communication skills and
everything else that you need they are imperative working in the tech industry
um so you know I don’t think you’re going to get in and not going to need those um because you’ll be using them every
day and a recent McKinsey report suggested that employees don’t want to go into the
office for work um if they can do the work from home and for employers to start refocusing
in-person work on activities such as Learning and Development training do you think this is something we’ll start to
see more of in the future world of work um I think this is a really interesting question I I definitely think in person
is going to stop being the default for most jobs certainly in the tech industry
certainly in technical teams in in other Industries um but I think it’s and I think the
outcome of that is that we end up being really intentional about our in-person time because it’s not the default so we
then say okay we’re meeting up what’s the purpose what are we hoping to get out of it
um then there’s a question of whether whether learning in person is better and
I think the jury’s really out on that I think learning live is better learning
right it is is more you can get you know faster time Horizons for impact and
because you’re able to set a more challenging topic discuss it and unstick
people rather than just um you know hoping that they stare at a screen long enough that they either give up or look
for the cheat code yeah I think I think that there is there is
there is a missed opportunity when we when we learn um in person which is that we only learn
with people in our vicinity or in the kind of reasonable travel radius and with global organizations and I I
see that of my own company which is we’re only 20 people but we’re spread all over the world
um there is something quite amazing about learning with people who who I
never would have learned with before because it just wouldn’t have been practical yeah we’re getting different perspectives one of the one of the
Silver Linings of the horrendous years you’ve had with the pandemic um has been that people who previously
wouldn’t have been able to join teams either due to physical disability neurodiversity or other limitations
perhaps that they have caregiving responsibilities are suddenly able to be
part of of teens that if they couldn’t have gone into the city but they can log on to a computer and you get to learn
from people with much more diverse backgrounds if you’re learning together live but not in person yes and I agree
when you say the jury’s out I agree I think it does need to be a mix and I
think as well it depends on the person how they take in learning some people like you say have really thrived from
the pandemic um others have found you know they didn’t like the isolation they didn’t
want to be working from home and it is yeah it’s definitely down to the person
I think as well in Tech if you have a lot of introverts they might not want to learn in person with lots of other
people they’d rather do it at home and but I suppose having the option is really the key isn’t it to be able to
learn in-person remote and or you know whatever it may be um I suppose as you say I agree on live
learning because at least it gets you there and you’re doing it again it’s not something that’s being put off or I
could watch that recording another time or you know yeah you have to be you know there on time and listening so yeah and
human humans are social creatures like let’s not let’s not pretend that we can all just sit in a silo and watch videos
and satisfied I mean possibly there are some people who who would be completely fulfilled by that but I think for the
most part we we create connection we want to to feel like we are um we’re learning together and that
we’re connected to our colleagues and I think and that is harder to do if it’s not
live but we do have more opportunities to not do it in person and I’m not
saying I’m not advocating for no more in person but but definitely hybrid and
opportunities that don’t don’t require you to be in person I think are important yes definitely and we touched
upon this a little bit earlier but um women often don’t have the time to undertake learning to code as a hobby
um so the thing based on that should we be focusing on tackling the bigger issue for equality at home rather than
encouraging learning in the workplace is it as big as that I I think we have
to tackle all of it but I don’t think it’s rather that I think it’s as well as well and and where where I think I have
the most um potential to impact is in the workplace um but definitely there’s like the total
social change that also needs to happen and and being able to I guess in in our
small ways influence that I think is is really important not to forget it definitely not to forget it and I think
in my small way is going to be with talking to my children about it um probably that’s the highest impact I
can have there but in the workplace I think I can have more influence so that’s sort of where I’ve place my focus yeah I think the pandemic
we touched upon it that really helped with that change and just um you know changing things at home for
people and the balance of um you know how um where it was looking after children
or elderly parents or um somebody that’s that’s not well and I think that balance shifted for for a lot
because of the pandemic um so you know as we said it’s it’s had um uh some some some good things and
some bad things obviously um came out and the recent budget as well that outline the introduction is 30
hours of free child care for children under five and how are policies like
this helping to support women’s equality in the workplace and is it enough
I I mean I would say it’s a start I think it is I mean
let’s take a huge caveat here which is that there there’s a lot of evidence
that it’s not actually enough to cover the costs and that a number of childcare
providers will get go under as a result if that happens then it’s it’s not a net
positive because then there won’t be Child Care provision even if people want to use it but let’s leave that aside now
and and assume that that doesn’t happen in that the child care provision Remains the Same then yes it makes it possible
for somebody on a median income to actually go back to work and not to be paying to go back to work and that’s a
really important step it’s still very minimal and we can definitely do better in a lot of Europe is doing better we
can we can look to them for inspiration um but I think enabling it financially
is huge if if you are constrained digitally by being able to provide for
your family or not and your choices are paying to be employed or or spend time
with your children that’s a horrible choice to give women who want to be able to progress in their careers and an
impossible one for many yes yeah I I completely agree I think um things are
shifting and but there are there is still a hell of a lot of work um that needs to be done and at least
things um as we said throughout this at least as having the option
um of things is is getting a little bit better for people um and and as we’ve mentioned uh right
back at the start of this as well companies that want to retain Talent are going to be doing as much as they can to
offer flexibility where they can for people for people that really need it um uh to try and you know keep hold of
that great talent um because people are far more picky about where they go nowadays which is so
interesting um of something that really changed uh during during covid and it’s not just
you know do I want to uh I need a job and I need to work at that company but do they offer me all the things that I
need um and obviously workplace learning into that but also flexibility
um and just being able to progress in your own career path as well you know even beyond that company and to the next
one I don’t know when we consider workplace learning what should it look like and
what allows for the best results to employees we’re still we’re talking a
little bit about in person um and hybrid what about things like the differences between training and
learning one is you know you think when people get in and they say you know to be
trained and continually trained in you know whatever the job is or the next job
um I suppose there’s a difference isn’t it between training and your own learning what can you expect yeah I
think training has it’s become a bit of a dirty word in a way yeah
people think of it as either like completely boring you know compliance
tick box exercise or they think of it as junior or
remedial like yes you don’t know this thing you have to know this thing um and I think yeah there’s a lot less
of a a negative halo around the word learning and which I think people think
of as encompassing and correctly think of as encompassing um what you would organically experience
as you try things and you fail and you succeed you hear from other people it’s it’s a
much it’s a much broader term that can incorporate mentorship coaching as well as formalized
learning of some kind which I think is often good training and as a company we
really um it’s Gill or L really uh struggled with this term actually because training
and learning are things that are very general use terms
and what people immediately think of when they think of any kind of formalized intervention for somebody’s
skills but training carries all of these horrible connotations nobody wants to
train certainly not if you’re already a senior in a company
um it’s almost like a it’s a hit to Your Ego someone asks you if you want to do some training
um and learning is seen now so much I think because of the amount of content available online it’s seen as a
self-serve experience yeah and so we were stuck we didn’t have a term for
what we were doing and we ended up landing on coaching because it felt like the only term that felt
still positive still something you can imagine you know
you’ve got somebody there it’s live that they’re going to help help you through something Hands-On and you’re going to
be able to ask questions and get feedback and so on but it doesn’t have all of the connotations of classrooms or
um I just think of the office episodes with the horrendous
um training uh training day I think it’s cool so yeah I I think there’s a great
analogy of seeing that appear in your calendar
yeah but I think there is another really interesting issue around
mentorship because I think that mentorship is it has a really important role to play particularly with women
progressing in in the workplace and in particularly in Tech because progression is something
that has been kind of um neglected a bit um but um Lara Hogan I think has
basically written about how women are over mentored and it’s still not having
an impact and we are still not seeing them in the boardrooms we’re still not seeing them as cgos or certainly not
enough um and there’s there’s some suggestion I’m now quoting Mary Williams
um who is an amazing CTO who I think has also been on this podcast already
um he said that of course of course that’s the case because they’re getting mentored by people who are giving them
advice that it’s not safe to take and so but they are um they’re telling them this is how to
solve the problem that you’re experiencing right now I have experienced this exact issue here’s how
to solve it giving them all of the tools to do so but that exact same behavior is received
differently from a woman than from a man and we see this even in in like studies that show
that if you just change the names of people in um like a scenario about
leadership the man is called a strong leader and the woman is called well you
know she gets job done but she’s a bit of a yeah it’s slightly over emotional she complained a lot yeah yeah
absolutely and so I think that there needs to be a lot more awareness that
yeah we’ve got to Mentor these women we don’t stop mentoring these women but we stop mentoring them by telling them what
to do and we start doing it by helping them find their car helping to support them to find the right solution for them
because it’s not necessarily going to be a what wet for me will work for you yes definitely I I I’m funny enough my next
question I wanted to ask you um come widely implemented workplace learning save us from a skills crisis
um or is it just one element of changes needed in the industry and actually what you just said there is perfect because
um you’re absolutely right mentorship is one of those um areas as well that
um still still needs a heck up a lot of a change um but do you think uh workplace learning can can save us from
skills crisis I think if there’s enough um of a shift yes yeah um and I think this sort of
goes back to what we were talking about earlier with um tech industry being quite different from basically any other
industry but if we look to healthcare for example there’s intensive
learning at the beginning and then there’s shadowing and learning um alongside mentors as well as
formalized learning and you’ll end up having a kind of hybrid situation where
you’re learning but through experience but but um safety net experience where
somebody’s there to talk you through it afterwards you’re learning by observation and you’re also learning in
a in a kind of more traditional classroom setting so I think you know if we look at that and we compare it to how
people live in Tech which is just like throw you in and let you but you’ve you
know figure it out go and stack Overflow copy and some code it’s um it it’s night
and day different and so I think we do have kind of structures in the world that we can look to and say you know
could we could we um really change how we think about learning in technology stop seeing it as a kind of cowboy place
where hobbyists can come in and yeah and become ninjas I mean can we just stop
with all of that terminology and put in place them some real structures where
people can Thrive um through the I mean we don’t need to reinvent the wheel there we’ve got some
great structures in in other industries that we can import and and then you know obviously make relevant to technology
then the other thing I think we need is um a revolution in education in informal
education in general this has not changed in over a century and it people
I think think of it as having changed with technology but if you actually look at what’s being
delivered in universities it is the same content the same experience that they were
delivering in person that has been put onto a video that is not an innovation
that is not using the power of technology for learning yeah that is just being like oh dear we have to get
technical Let’s uh let’s do the absolute minimum we can because it’s very uncomfortable
um so I think there needs to be a total shift in what what does formalized learning look like is it three years of
intensive learning in one subject does that make sense anymore
um what what are our Pathways after that how do we continuously learn when we’re
um when we’re employed and can we stop thinking of learning as as being
something that is for genius because I think there’s another thing of like if you are
if you are continuously in formal education I think
it is seen as a sign of oh you’re still you’re still at the beginning of your journey letting this end and especially
in technology especially in technology Because by the time you get to a you know you get 10 years into your career a
lot of the skills you learned at the beginning of it are redundant because the technology has shifted so you have
to be constantly staying up to speed let’s let’s stop making that a secret and make it something we celebrate and
we we lean into yes and uh yes I love that and that there are just recognizing
that there are so many different routes into work as well and that as you said you know there’s continuous learning
once you get in but also you know on on the way in and the way and the way that you do it I had a lady on here recently
who said to me I felt like I failed after University because I’d done everything that I needed but I didn’t
have a gradual opportunity to go to and she said whereas everybody else you know
that on something and she’s like that that one tiny thing made me feel like you know perhaps I’m failing in in this
area um and she was you know absolutely killing it in in artificial intelligence and data science but because she didn’t
get that great opportunity she felt you know perhaps I’m doing something wrong and so you’re right it’s that it’s just
understanding that there are different routes there are different ways of learning continuous learning
um and I suppose it’s been a bit more mindful that you know a assuming most employers are not looking for one you
know route that everybody has taken and they’re quite open to lots of different skills and experiences
um so yeah we just need to change that um that whole area of tech and the way
that people learn we are almost out of time I have one last question for you and if other
listeners would like to learn a new skill or enroll on a course how should they approach that with their boss
um I think this is a great question um when I talk to people who hold the
purse strings for things like this because because really what it’s going to come down to is can we invest in it
there are two pots of money one is the perk pot
and that’s not to be sniffed at that is usually already assigned and that is
going to be in order to keep you and in order to keep you motivated and keep you
happy so if it is usually below 500 pounds per person you can probably tap that perk
box and there will be very minimal um red tape to get through yeah if it’s
more than that there’s a different plot which is going to be your velocity and progression part
and it will really depend on your Tech leader as to whether that’s one that they’ve already defined and they’ve already thought about or one that you
need to get them to think about and if it’s if it’s the latter then I would recommend
um framing what you want to do in terms of the output that they’re going to see and that might be output in terms of
your your ability to contribute to the code and to the uh the goals of the
company the commercial goals of the company because the technology teams are driving
those goals like as much as you’re not you’re you wouldn’t identify as a member of the commercial team you are
absolutely making the company live live or die and so connecting it to that will make it much easier for your Tech leader
to make the case to a CFO um if it’s sort of financially connected
um and the other way is to talk about your progression so I want to take on more responsibility I want to be able to
lead this team in the future and I think that the Gap here is XYZ
um if I am able to feel that then I think I could start positioning myself to take XYZ thing off your plate Tech
leader and that’s another like that’s something that every manager I know would love to hear yes I’ve never heard
that before actually yes so telling your boss if you train me up I can take it off your plate is it okay to ask about
training in interviews do you think I mean and and to dig deep on what that is and you know like you said there there
are lots of different training and learning opportunities I suppose a lot of people in an interview would
come back and say oh yes you know we offer that as part of our company but is it okay to really dig into yeah what
what is it you know I really need to to know before I commit myself to your company
I think not just okay I think it should be the the default is that they’re able
to deeply talk about that um I have a friend who works in the US
and she said that her only the only question she always asks in an interview is what’s your approach to learning and
if they say oh we have a budget she’s like no no no red flag I want to know
that you’ve thought about this I want to know that you’ve really invested time it doesn’t have to be that you have the
answer if you say it really depends and we have you know these different programs that we’ve come up with
depending on the goals depending on the team that’s a much better answer for her than oh yeah we’ve already got a preset
budget for you don’t worry you’ve got a thousand pounds or whatever it might be a thousand dollars um that to her is has a red flag that
they don’t think about learning essential to their strategy yes yeah definitely I haven’t even thought of
that I think I think it’s something that people think about maybe when they get in the company and then realize actually
you know this wasn’t for me there are other options going forward yeah um Haley thank you so much we were already
out of time I’m afraid but thank you so much for coming in and chatting with us today it’s been an absolute pleasure chatting with you thanks too I really
really enjoyed it okay and everybody listening as always thank you for joining us and we hope to see you again
next time
