Examination of Witnesses (Questions 107-119)
E -SKILLS
UK AND FINANCIAL
SERVICES SKILLS
COUNCIL
2 MARCH 2005
Q107 Chairman: We would like to start
this morning with the question of skills shortages. We keep hearing
that the 80s and the 90s were two almost lost decades as far as
industrial training is concerned. The skills shortages are quite
clearly apparent. To what extent are employers trying to fill
the skills gap with female labour as distinct from male?
Ms Cantelo: I know in the IT industry
they are particularly concerned about this. They have two drivers
behind it. One is obviously that although they are not in as bad
a situation as they were, they still do have shortages that need
filling and that is having some real impacts on business. The
second is that the IT industry, as we all know, is affecting everything
we do and the way we do it. Men and women interact with technology
very differently. I am not saying one is superior or inferior
but there is a big difference in the way men and women interact
with technology. That means that if you only have one gender going
into it, then it is very difficult for the industry to be competitive
and to recognise the way women interact with technology. Yes,
they are very concerned. They have been the drivers for a lot
of the work we have done on trying to address the issue.
Q108 Chairman: Does that mean that men
are deemed to be more technology sympathetic?
Ms Cantelo: No. The position is
that if I gave you a Palm Pilot and one of the women on the panel
a Palm Pilot, the woman would probably very quickly work out exactly
what the Palm Pilot could do for her and work out where it was
useful, whereas the man would be much happier just fiddling around
for hours. That has all sorts of connotations. The man's attitude
gets us to the moon, if we did go to the moon, but why did we
go there? The man's attitude also means that we have 20 programmes
on a washing machine. Why do we need 20 programmes on a washing
machine when we only ever use three? There is a huge difference
between the way men and women react with technology and what they
want from technology. As I said, that is affecting everything
we do at the moment. If you just have men in technology, then
men will be designing for men. There is that imperative but also
the skills shortage. We had a survey that came out at the beginning
of this year of 3,000 employers and, of those that had skills
shortages, 76% were saying that it meant they could not develop
products and services and they had to delay that. Around 42% said
that it affected their operating costs; it was pushing up their
operating costs. Around 39% were saying that it was causing no
end of problems; they could not actually even address customer
needs because of it. It is a huge issue in the industry. Women
are seen as the way of addressing the issue.
Q109 Chairman: The root of the problem
is that there are not enough girls and too many boys?
Ms Cantelo: Women just are not
applying. In fact, the number of women is dropping. What is peculiar
in the IT industry is that the first ever programmers were actually
women but somehow it has become now a male profession. We think
there is a whole load of things behind that but the main one is
image, that women tend to see it as for very geeky boys. I was
part of a survey at the beginning of 2001 where we went round
with MORI and talked to a lot of girls and boys in focus groups.
Not a single girl found IT interesting, not a single one. They
all said it was for geeky boys only. It was quite frightening
that some of them said, "We were interested in IT but then
we thought the boys would think we were a bit geeky, so we stopped
being interested in IT". They do not connect all the really
exciting stuff they do, like the mobile phone technology and internet
technology, with the IT industry and IT professional jobs out
there. People tend to think of IT jobs as sitting there programming
without anyone around you. In fact, what IT needs is people who
understand the way people want to live and work and we need more
project managers. A lot of those skills, to generalise, are often
found with women. The main problem seems to be image and that
has certainly been borne out.
Q110 Linda Perham: Do you find it difficult
to recruit women into training for the sectors you represent?
Ms Cantelo: Yes. What seems to
make a huge difference is that if you call the course something
with "business" in the title, as opposed to just "IT",
then far more women will apply but generally, no. The percentage
of women in the IT industry is just over 20%, and it is the same
with the training, the women just do not go into it at all.
Mr Caple: In finance we have a
slightly different issue. There is no difficulty in recruiting
men or women into training programmes. I think the challenge is
that much of the investment in training is spent on meeting the
regulator's requirements, which are for threshold competence.
That is important, but there needs to be more investment in two
other areas, particularly in terms of attracting and retaining
women. One is in pre-employment training, in helping people get
ready for the sorts of demands that jobs in our industry make;
the other is in terms of continuing development, advancing their
skills. This is becoming more and more important in terms of the
development of women because the proportion of women is growing
in the industry to almost 50%. By the end of the decade, it will
be well over 50% altogether. The proportion of part-time jobs
held by women is also growing, especially in banking. Across the
industry as a whole, technology is driving a lot of change. You
have just heard one very good reason why the finance industry
should be looking for more and more women perhaps. As the industry
itself changes, the level of skills required goes up. Therefore,
when we want to attract people of any sort, and particularly to
promote women from basic jobs into higher level jobs, there is
a need for a massive added investment in training and retraining
in order to help people progress. I think a related issue that
ties in with this one of technology skills is one of encouraging
more women to return to the industry. That is a significant difficulty
for many businesses that want to do it but do not seem as yet
to find successful ways of doing it. There are some good examples
of firms that achieve successful return rates, largely because
they provide adequate training. They also provide other facilities
that make it easier for women to return to work, particularly
those who have responsibilities for children, and the provision
of facilities that help women make that adjustment seems to be
one of the critical factors in the success in helping women to
return. We find that as women enter or return to the industry
that help in development tends to happen more quickly than for
men. We do not know why that is. I will not dare to speculate,
but it just seems to be a fact. It is an interesting fact, given
that the whole of the workforce will have to speed up the acceleration
of its skills and skills level over the next five to 10 years.
Q111 Judy Mallaber: In the last evidence
we had there was a comment about the high level of secrecy within
the finance sector, which therefore always seemed to create barriers
in terms of knowing how or whether women could advance. Do you
see that as a difficult factor and does it indicate a lack of
interest in the sector in opening up new processes in a way that
might break down some of those barriers?
Mr Caple: I do not think it is
a lack of interest. Confidentiality goes with the territory. That
is because of the nature of the business. That is a preconditioning
factor in the culture of any financial institution; you just do
not go round talking about who has got how much in what account,
or how much we are making out of a particular investment. That
tends to influence the overall culture of any firm, I think. That
is one factor. We are certainly a long way away from the age of
standardised pay rates. The previous evidence you heard I think
said quite a bit about the individuality of pay. Whether particular
firms insist on individuals keeping their remuneration secret
or not varies quite a lot although, again because we are a relatively
new skills council, we have not dug into this from a research
point of view yet; we will do so this year. I would say, anecdotally,
that I do not find secrecy about pay to be either widespread or
a matter of concern. That may be because of the narrowness of
my experience. I do not pretend to know the whole of the industry.
It is an issue, though, because it does create the conditions
for exploitation and for unfair discrimination. In the context
of our task, which is to improve productivity—and motivation
is one influence on productivity—that is a situation that
we, as a skills council, would be far from happy with. Secrecy
creates division and creates a situation where people can be exploited.
You do not get good performance out of people in those conditions.
Ms Cantelo: This is not really
something we have addressed in e-skills. Yes, there will be some
secrecy but we have not looked at this in any depth.
Q112 Linda Perham: We have heard evidence
that some employers are quite happy with skills shortages because
it means there is plenty of work for them and they do not want
to train people who might then set up as competitors. I wonder
if you think that attitude is widespread and, if so, whether left
to themselves employers will ever take serious measures to address
skills shortages?
Ms Cantelo: I do not agree with
that at all because of what I said at the beginning. There are
two drivers. I can give you solid evidence. I have quoted the
percentages of companies that are having problems because of skills
shortages. Companies do not benefit from it at all; they are really
losing money because of it and it makes them less competitive
with overseas companies. You may get one-on-one consultants, and
if you are a single one-man band consultant or one-woman band
consultant, then obviously, if there are skills shortages, you
are more in demand and you can put up your pay rates. That would
not apply in companies. Companies are saying they cannot even
produce the products they need to produce and they cannot give
customers what they need. If they cannot do that, customers will
go elsewhere.
Mr Caple: I would agree with that
generally. Again, in our industry, if it is a factor at all, it
would be with micro-businesses where two or three or people may
be working in a particular market, a niche market in financial
advice for example. By and large, if you do not have the people,
you limit the amount of business you can do. Ours is a knowledge
business. It is very much a people business, although it relies
heavily on technology. It is all about people, at the end of the
day. If you do not have the numbers, you do not do the volume.
If you do not do the volume, you do not generate the margins,
et cetera. It is certainly not in the interests of our businesses
to think like that.
Q113 Linda Perham: How do we tackle skills
shortages then? Are employers not doing enough or should the Government
do more?
Ms Cantelo: I think it is a joint
thing. As far as e-skills is concerned, in the IT industry there
are two problems with women going in and which we see as one of
the routes to solving skills shortages. At the far end, there
is an issue about retention which the IT trade association Intellect
is looking at. Employers have got together. There is a board of
very senior employers looking at that problem. The other thing,
as I said, is image, it is actually getting women into the pipeline
of wanting to go into IT jobs. We have two programmes—one
has been fantastically successful and very heavily supported by
employers—for getting women to change their minds. One of
the programmes is called Computers Clubs for Girls. After
the MORI research, we found that girls found IT so boring that
we actually spoke to them and asked what would make them want
to do it. If you want to learn Adobe Photoshop, how do we make
you learn it? We have done a combination of things like mail art
and gone through all the interests the girls have between the
ages of 10 and 14. We have had pop stars, Simon Webbe from Blue
come into the office, the whole thing. We had a big pop concert
with all sorts of people, anything to incentivise the girls, using
the things the girls already know and absolutely love to learn
IT professional skills, and in doing so completely changed their
attitude about what IT professionals actually do. We piloted that
in the south-east with SEEDA funding. It is now going national
through Department for Education funding. The pilot so far shows
that 65% of the girls who have taken part say they are much more
likely to enter the IT industry now. If that really goes on, and
we follow them through, then actually we would have too many girls
in the industry rather than too few. The other thing about it
is that girls love it to the extent that only two weeks ago I
had a letter from a girl saying, "You have changed my life.
I absolutely love this. It is the best thing that has ever happened
to me". That is how exciting they are finding it. It has
already won awards. It is teaching them proper professional skills
tied into the national curriculum, but it is getting them before
they become bigoted against the industry. Between 10 and 14, it
is changing their attitudes. Teachers are also saying this is
just fantastic. We have head teachers who are absolutely raving
about it. They have found it re-motivates girls who are demotivated
in other areas. It also stretches the able girls. That has been
fantastically successful. We are getting IT companies to donate
software to the schools, so that the schools do not have to buy
the software. We are getting employers to go into the schools
to help facilitate and offer prizes, et cetera. This is being
supported by the industry and by Government. It has been fantastically
successful, it really has.
Q114 Sir Robert Smith: In your stereotyping
of the male and female approach to IT you used washing machines,
but, as a man who uses one programme on "easycare 40",
I just wondered about that generalisation. Are you saying on average
a man or woman would have that approach?
Ms Cantelo: Yes. Obviously, some
people have the other approach as well. Of course that is a generalisation.
With the girls and the way we are approaching CC4G, yes, it is
a generalisation that they like pink, et cetera, but we are hitting
them where we know they are motivated, and we have been successful.
Q115 Sir Robert Smith: One of the things
we have had in evidence already is that retaining women or men
in non-traditional sectors for them is a challenge. Is retention
part of the remit of girls?
Ms Cantelo: We have pretty much
left it to Intellect. We set up the Women in IT Forum, which was
a group of employers looking at this issue. We have seen that
there is a big problem between the ages of 40 and 50 when women
leave. Quite often it seems to be that they leave to set up their
own companies. That is a huge problem in IT. It may well be, as
we said earlier, it is about women coming back after having children,
et cetera. My personal viewpoint is that if we stop thinking of
childcare in terms of being the woman's role but the parent's
role and it is just as likely a man would go off as a woman, then
the problem would probably end.
Mr Caple: We estimate that 15%
of older managers in the industry in small businesses are women,
which is higher than the UK average. Again, that is something
we need to look at this year to see what the trend is. It appears
to be growing. These are people who have spent a career in the
industry and in their mid-forties, sometimes at a slightly earlier
age than perhaps in IT, they are opting to run their own business,
and being very successful at it. That is an issue in terms of
motivating people, particularly young women, to join the industry.
We have problems as well which span from "it looks very boring"
to "they are a bunch of crooks". The media, particularly
Hollywood, does not help because when you look at the portrayal
of financial wizards in Hollywood films, who are they? They are
all 37-something men and sharp. If there is a portrayal of a woman,
it is the wicked witch of the west. These are the images that
we have to work hard as a skills council to change. On the retention
issue, yes, we do have a major retention problem, particularly
in call centres where turnover can be very high.
Q116 Sir Robert Smith: To clarify that,
in call centres there would be quite a lot of women working there?
Mr Caple: Yes.
Q117 Sir Robert Smith: Obviously retention
is a general problem, but we are trying to hone in to women who
have chosen to go into an area that is traditionally male, or
less so perhaps in your sectors where a man is doing a job that
was traditionally a woman's job. We certainly heard earlier about
people finding it difficult to stay on if they are not happy.
Ms Cantelo: I think they just
have an attitude that they are fed up with it. They are fed up
with the long hours' culture. I can talk about that a bit more
later. They are fed up with it and they get to the point where
they think: I do not need to do this any more. They are a bit
more comfortable in their lives and they think: I am not going
to do this any more; I will go off and do something by myself.
I think it is that. They just stop wanting to play the game. That
seems to be the anecdotal evidence that has come through so far.
It was very interesting that on the Women in IT Forum—and
this is a group of very senior employers—we had a number
of women and almost all the women left during the time on the
forum for exactly those reasons themselves, having come to the
conclusion that this was what was happening. That actually played
out on the forum itself, which was very interesting.
Q118 Mr Evans: You have been hugely clever
in answering both my questions before I have asked them. On this
Palm Pilot point, do women read the instruction manuals?
Ms Cantelo: Of course, always!
Q119 Mr Evans: That is my problem. Both
of us only use one programme on the washing machine! Tom Caple,
may I turn to you and ask this? We have heard what Anne Cantelo
said about what is being done to get women into the IT industry.
What about the City? Are there any specific programmes that you
think are working?
Mr Caple: Yes, there are two major
initiatives. A lot of work is being done with young people, particularly
young girls from the age of 12 onwards, just to bring them in
to the City to see what it looks like, to introduce them to people
who will start as a role model and, if the individual young person
retains an interest over time, can then become a mentor. These
people are successful women in the industry. It may start with
just a chat and looking at or even perhaps a quick drive in that
particular vice-president's Maserati. This is quite deliberate
because the industry is about material success. Let us make no
mistake about that. It is to help young people at that early age
begin to see, get excited, become interested and meet people and
then, if their interest is retained, over time, repeat those visits.
The visits change until gradually, at 16 to 19, they get opportunities
of work experience. The better programmes, the more successful
ones, are work experience, not simply in watching people but actually
helping those people become their mentors. That is working extremely
well. The other major thing in the city that is needed is for
the city to look beyond its traditional labour markets which all
tend to be outside Inner London. In all the city fringe boroughs
there is now a wealth of talent of young people, boys and girls,
men and women, who would be extremely valuable within the industry,
and we are working with the Corporation of London at the moment
to begin a programme that will encourage the firms to look more
at its doorstep when it wants to recruit people. When you look
at the profile of educational attainment in fringe boroughs, it
is quite noticeable that the higher achievers are young women,
so, immediately, if you want to sell the idea to a city institution
and to convince them they have got talent, it means you start
looking at attracting these young women in. The other thing is
that working with the Learning and Skills Councils, particularly
in London Central and London East where we have very good partnerships,
will be very important over the next two years, in launching programmes
that attract the interests of these young people, brokering them
into working relationships with city institutions, giving both
sides opportunities to see what the career opportunity is but
also what the talent is. We ran one pilot programme last year
which exceeded all its targets that we set for it, so we have
high hopes of that working.
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