Concrete measures to integrate more women in Tech at Societe Generale

Mutual mentoring, fair process, sponsors and expanded recruitment: Societe Generale has implemented concrete measures to promote gender diversity in its IT departments. Report.

“Do you think that women can be as good as men in digital-related jobs?” If the answer seems like a natural “Yes” to you, only 59% of French people have shared this reflex, revealed a survey conducted in 2022 by the training organisation IronHack. This lack of awareness is partly due to the lack of representation of women in digital professions: according to the same study, only 17% of tech workers are women.

Things are changing. Within companies, this disparity is being taken very seriously. Societe Generale has established gender and diversity sponsors to address these issues and implement concrete solutions.

To discuss them, we went to meet Alain Voiment, CIO of the Group’s management departments and digital foundations, Isabelle Debeaupuis, Director of the Group’s enterprise architecture, and Laurence Voinier, Director of the data, risks and network finance department in France. All three are responsible for promoting gender diversity within the company. The first is a sponsor of diversity in the digital transformation and resources department, while the following two are co-sponsors of gender diversity in the IT department. They are tasked with promoting and encouraging activities, supporting HR and sharing solutions that work well to extend them to other entities, describe the two women before clarifying, “it’s a role that still under construction”.

Going the “extra mile” in the search for candidates

One of the mechanisms in place is the fair processs, a collegial decision-making process for filling important positions, in which managers must ensure that diverse range of candidates is considered.

“The first challenge above all is not to force a selection but to make sure that you have thought of everyone when considering key positions,” says Isabelle Debeaupuis. “We go the “extra mile” when searching for candidates by ensuring that women are included in the recruitment process,” says Alain Voiment, “in both the application and the assessment process”. “It works well and this type of approach has helped us increase the rate of women in management positions,” believes the CIO.

In the same way, when using the fair processs we think of the people who are absent so we can include them in the process. ?

Increasing your visibility to inspire

For change to be profound, it is necessary to act at the source. Isabelle and Laurence are both ambassadors of promoting tech careers to young girls in schools, universities and via associations. The Societe Generale Foundation supports – through financial and skills sponsorship – associations promoting women in technology.

For example, Laurence Voinier has been involved in associations that aim to encourage girls in secondary school to enrol in computer studies, such as Girls Can Code and Prologin. “It’s particularly moving to see, recalls the Director of the data, risk and finance department. It’s usually held on weekends, with about 30 young girls coming to learn how to code a little game. They are courageous, willing and very proud at the end of these two days of coding.”

Isabelle Debeaupuis is an ambassador for the engineering school she attended, EFREI. “I’ve known about this problem of gender diversity for many years as my class had less than 10% female graduates,” she says. As part of this mission to increase representation, she strives to “inspire and present the field of possibilities to these young women who are preparing to start their careers.” ?

A performance objective

For Societe Generale, it is about creating an environment in which the diversity of employees can flourish.

“What we’re looking for in the broadest sense is really to look at all types of diversity,” says Alain Voiment. One way to do this is to tap into a wider range of schools, including universities, to recruit different profiles.

Evaluation grids within the company have also been adapted. “We educate our teams on the need to accept these diversities, explains Isabelle Debeaupuis. We do this by providing training and support to managers to help make them aware of cognitive biases, for example. The aim is to break out of this reading grid to encourage collaboration. Also, the goal is not to ask women to do the same thing as men – a trend that was being pushed on us even 10 years ago. Our responsibilities are certainly the same but our ways of doing things and of communicating may be different.”

To improve team communication and the sharing of experiences, one of the CIOs has just set up a mutual mentoring system between the male members of the management committee and young female junior talents. “We are also going to implement two-way communication between the women on the board of directors and the male talents,” explains Laurence Voinier. “This will help combat bias but also increase awareness of the specific difficulties of young women in an IT team."

“Were not looking for inclusion and diversity just to tick boxes, says the Department Director. This is because, collectively, it makes us more successful.” This gender diversity has three challenges, she summarises:

- “one challenge is around performance with regard to our customers: we want to develop products that reflect society and therefore diversity;

- another challenge is for the teams so that people, whoever they may be, experience their diversity positively – which leads to a performance challenge.

- the final challenge is to be attractive to students so that they know they will be joining varied and diverse teams.”?