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How DBS Bank is improving gender diversity in technology
Alibaba’s founder Jack Ma once said that women are his company’s "secret sauce," balancing both logic and instinct. In the digital era, providing a seamless client experience for all the products and services is a prerequisite and is paramount to our continued success. Ensuring a balanced involvement of gender in the process is key to achieving this goal. At DBS we believe that true innovation and great client experience happens when the diversity of the customers we serve is mirrored in our workforce. We need to ensure that women are adequately represented in all roles involved in the product management life cycle – whether it’s UX, UI, design, development, or testing. This is what helps us ensure our products and services are designed to best suit the people using them. Here’s a look into how we have done it, and how you can, too.A pivot on hiring at DBS In 2017, we launched the Hack2Hire program, which is a three-stage process culminating with a two-day hackathon. This was our way of sourcing modern tech talents for many of our engineering and architecture roles, as we pushed forward our ambitious digital agenda to transform to cloud native architecture with Agile way of working. During our second year of the program, we found that while we were very successful in attracting applicants from a diverse set of industries and countries, we noticed a significant gender gap in applicants. The number of women who attended the event was minuscule compared to men.At DBS we believe that true innovation and great client experience happens when the diversity of the customers we serve is mirrored in our workforce.In 2019, we decided to pivot; we rebranded the event and named it Hack2Hire-Her. We partnered with many advocates of women’s organizations to assist in the outreach for the event, and as a result, saw a six-fold increase in the number of female applicants as compared to previous years. After the event, we made offers to five times as many women compared to previous years. Recently, we ran another successful women-focused virtual hiring event called DBS Women in Tech. We have been very happy with the results of these outreach events, and it proves that when someone says, “We can’t get 600 great CVs of women in six weeks into all of these technical roles” – that’s just a myth. We’ve proven that we can.Mentorship and job-sharing initiativesMentorship and the availability of role models are another key enabler in moving the dial. Women, for example, can sometimes impose their own barriers. We may have higher standards and lower self-confidence. Women and girls everywhere need to be more fearless in all that we believe we are capable of. If we have self-confidence then others will have confidence in us and our abilities. For mentorship, we’ve partnered with a number of women’s-based organizations. The Financial Women’s Association, for example, supports a mentorship program for women in the financial industry in Singapore. We’ve also partnered with the Infocomm Media Development Authority – the statutory board of the Singapore government that develops and governs the technology and media sectors – in a cross-industry mentorship program, which opens doors for our promising female tech talent to be engaged with a diverse set of mentors from companies across different industries. With United Women Singapore, we’re working to support the engagement of the younger generation in STEM-based disciplines. Before Covid-19, for example, we hosted a coding day with a primary school as a way to interest girls in a STEM-based career.Another initiative we’ve put in place at DBS is job-sharing, which gives people who may not be able to work full-time – mothers, for example – the option to share a role with another person. One might work Monday through Wednesday, while the other works Thursday and Friday, for example. This is an attractive arrangement for people looking for an alternative to a full-time career.Embedding gender diversity and inclusion in our DNAFostering an environment that’s inclusive to women has been key to boosting our organization’s gender diversity. Two things have helped make this happen at DBS.Culture: In order to have maximum and long-lasting effectiveness, diversity and inclusion must be ingrained as part of the organization’s culture. It starts with creating pervasive self-awareness among every single individual in at DBS that we might all be unconsciously biased – that we hold stereotypes and beliefs that cloud our judgement and decisions without us knowing. To alleviate this issue, we invest in training everyone on unconscious bias. The purpose is to expose employees to implicit biases and provide practical tools they can use to adjust these unconscious patterns of thinking. This we hope will help eliminate unintended discriminatory behaviors. Fostering an environment that’s inclusive to women has been key to boosting our organization’s gender diversity.Managers and decision makers have an even greater responsibility to propagate diversity and inclusion. They need to lead by example. Managers should challenge norms and be very open to hiring and promoting people who are very different from them.In addition, another mindset that is critical to advancing the diversity and inclusion agenda is having the humility to acknowledge that one may not know-it-all regardless of how senior or successful one might have been in their career or life, and be open to learn-it-all. This mindset of continuous learning is something we strive to inculcate in every single individual within the bank. Sponsors and allies: Another key pillar of our effort is the mobilization of sponsors and allies to support the diversity and inclusion agenda. We want to enable everyone at all levels of the bank to play their part in small or big ways. This isn’t just about recruiting women who support women, it’s also about recruiting men to become active advocates for our gender diversity agenda. When they recruit other allies, it becomes very powerful. We launched Project EquAlly in 2020 as part of International Women’s Day, to enlist allies to help drive the gender diversity agenda in technology. We have since enlisted over 100 allies, and this is creating a chain reaction within the bank, even outside of the technology teams, in terms of participation in the gender diversity agenda. Finally, it’s my hope that the gender diversity momentum accelerates beyond the glacial pace in the last few decades. I’m hopeful momentum will especially increase in the technology domain given the prominence of digital and technology transformation across all industries. I sincerely hope that everyone involved in the technology field – man or woman – will start to recognize the value of inclusion and the benefits it contributes in business.
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DBS to hold inaugural virtual career fair for women
DBS voted the worlds best bank in 2020, announced it will be hosting its inaugural female-focused virtual career fair for technologists in October to fill over 50 technology jobs in Singapore.This comes as the bank redoubles its commitment to grow its pipeline of female talent, and encourage more women in Singapore to build a career in the fast-growing technology sector.Named ‘DBS Women in Technology,’ (DWIT) the event will offer job opportunities for successful applicants across 11 technology roles, including data engineers, scrum masters, full-stack developers, solution architects, and site reliability engineers.Soh Siew Choo, Managing Director and Head of Consumer Banking and Big Data Analytics Technology at DBS, noted that women continue to be underrepresented in the technology space globally, and DBS wanted to proactively address this by building a pipeline of women technologists in Singapore.Soh Siew Choo“As a purpose-driven technology company, we have an opportunity to lead by example and demonstrate what companies can do to nurture a more gender-balanced technology workforce. Having balanced gender representation is also pivotal to our ongoing digital transformation, as it allows us to tap on diverse ideas to develop differentiated and exceptional experiences for our customers.”Applicants will go through an 80-minute online assessment, to be submitted by 19 October, to gauge their technical and planning capabilities.Shortlisted candidates will then be invited to an online hiring day festival on 31st October 2020, where they will learn more about DBS’ and its approach to gender diversity and learn first hand from those who have done it, what its like to build a career as a female technologist in DBS.If your interested in applying and finding out more click here.
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Solving the diversity equation in the tech world
In 2014, Amazon developed a recruitment programme that helped the company review job applications based on artificial intelligence (AI) technology. However, there was a big problem — the recruiting engine developed a bias against women because the system was trained on resumes submitted to the company over a 10-year period, most of which came from men. Amazon later shut the project down but the incident reflects the inherent male dominance across the tech industry.Tech’s gender problem is nothing new and it is still very much a challenge today. For instance, only 22% of AI professionals globally are female. Concern that the digital future will be made-by-men-for-men is growing.In celebration of International Women’s Day, DBS Asia X explored the experiences of female technologists today, and what more can be done to support stronger gender inclusivity in the tech world. Here are the insights gleaned from the discussion with Poh Wan Ting, Managing Director (watch our interview with her here) of Girls in Tech Singapore; Christina Low, CEO and co-founder of HiDoc; and Anna Vanessa Haotanto, CEO and founder of The New Savvy.Unconscious bias is realTechnology does not see gender — people do. While many will agree that gender equality is important, the truth is unconscious bias is still prevalent today especially in the tech world.“I think it is very important for any industry, not just tech, to reboot their mindset and be more inclusive. Diversity is important, and we need to break away from stereotypes,” said Christina.From the assumption that employees are male to only a single-gendered washroom in a tech company’s office, these unintentional missteps create an unwelcoming environment for women. Anna shared a personal experience during an investor meeting where she was quizzed about what will happen to her career if she were to get married and have children. She admits that a male counterpart is unlikely to be asked a similar question.“Becoming more conscious of this bias, that’s how we encourage females to join tech,” added Wan Ting.Quotas or no quotas?Placing gender quotas on tech firms has been a long-debated suggestion to promote more women in technology. California, home of Silicon Valley, passed a bill to require female quotas on company boards, which has been met with both praise and controversy.Christina didn’t agree with quotas. She said, “I feel that when someone is hired, it has to be based on merit. If we put a quota to how many women should be present in a company, we are positively discriminating.” While this sentiment was shared amongst all panellists, Anna and Wan Ting suggested that a number could provide a target to encourage companies to hire capable female candidates.“In Singapore, the number of women in tech is 11%. The gender gap exists,” said Anna. “What we’re pushing for is a balance; a diversity in race and gender. It has been proven time and time again that diversity makes business sense.”“If we don’t have something like a benchmark, maybe we won’t go back and think why are attracting more men than women. It gives them a push to look deeper,” added Wan Ting. “While I don’t believe in hiring just for the sake of the number, I do believe in incentivising recruiters to look harder for female candidates who have great technical expertise but are not as good in showcasing their skillsets at interviews.”Tech is everywhere, and for everyoneMost people today are no stranger to technology. From socialising and working, to entertainment and shopping, technology is deeply entrenched in our daily lives. However, pursuing a career in technology may still be intimidating to many.A participant at the panel discussion expressed her reservations about making a mid-career switch into the tech space without prior technical training. To that, the panellists collectively agreed that the decision for a mid-career switch into tech should be determined by the expertise they can bring to the new role, rather than their technical ability.Christina shared her personal experience, describing herself as “not a data scientist but a doctor”. She shared that while she did not know how to code, her experience in the medical field still has direct relevance in the medtech world. Anna also noted that many women in tech were not developers but rather held important customer-facing roles within the industry. Many like herself then went on to gain technical skills along the way.As Wan Ting sums up, “Technology is just a tool. You need a specialty to guide people to a purpose.”The situation is getting better for women in tech, particularly in Singapore. The panellists shared that their personal experiences have largely been positive aside from small bumps along the road. But more can be done to improve inclusiveness — not just in the tech industry but across the other sectors. Wan Ting described it best when she said, “I look forward to the day when there is no Girls in Tech; there is just People in Tech, and all the voices are heard.”The panel discussion was organised as part of DAX Conversations, a series of in-depth discussions with leaders from various fields to generate new perspectives on the impact that innovation brings to their organisations. This is part of DBS Asia X’s community programmes that dives into topics from technology and data analytics, to photography and entrepreneurship.The original article was published here.
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Why DBS has embraced gender diversity
The women of DBS’ Group Management Committee, who make up more than 30% of its members. (L-R) Eng-Kwok Seat Moey, Head of DBS' Capital Markets Group; Pearlyn Phau, Deputy Group Head of DBS’ Consumer Banking & Wealth Management; Tan Su Shan, Designate Head of DBS’ Institutional Banking Group; Jeanette Wong, Group Executive, Head of DBS’ Institutional Banking Group; Chng Sok Hui, DBS’ Chief Financial Officer; Lee Yan Hong, Head of DBS’ Group Human Resources; Karen Ngui, Head of DBS’ Group Strategic Marketing and Communications.When Ms Jeanette Wong was still an undergrad, she saw a job ad posted on a notice board at the National University of Singapore. It read: “Only males need apply.”Undaunted, Ms Wong applied for the job anyway. At her interview, which was with an international financial institution, Ms Wong argued why a woman could fill the role. She got the job.That was in 1981. Nearly two decades later, Ms Wong joined DBS bank; and today she sits on DBS’ Group Executive Committee and heads the Institutional Banking Group.Today, the state of gender equality at the workplace has undoubtedly improved since the 1980s; but more can be done.According to a survey by global consultancy Grant Thornton, just one in four senior roles globally was held by a woman in 2017. In Singapore, we fared better than the global average, with women accounting for 30% of senior roles, up from 26% in 2016. However, at the board level, Singapore is second to last among major international centres when it comes to gender diversity.According to DBS chief executive officer Piyush Gupta, embracing gender equality at the workplace is important for Singapore because of three factors.“First, Asia is talent short, and so looking far and wide is crucial to finding the best. Embracing gender diversity allows us to tap into a wider talent pool where others may not be looking,” he told the Business Times.“Second, it helps ensure that as an organisation, we have a multiplicity of views and perspectives that is helpful in preventing groupthink.“Third, having women in leadership creates a virtuous circle. It is motivating to our younger female colleagues to know they can rise to senior positions on merit. Being seen as a progressive organisation also makes us an attractive employer to prospective talent.”In 2018, DBS was one of only two companies in Singapore which made it into the inaugural Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index (GEI), which recognised 104 firms worldwide for their gender equality efforts.In 2019, DBS was once again included in the Bloomberg GEI, alongside 229 other companies from 10 sectors headquartered across 36 countries and regions worldwide. The sector-neutral index, which is based on a self-disclosure survey on gender-equality performance, measures gender equality across internal company statistics, employee policies, external community engagement as well as gender-conscious products and services.Women currently make up 40% of DBS’ senior management, which includes senior vice presidents to managing directors. In Singapore, women form close to 60% of DBS’ overall workforce and more than one-third of the Group Management Committee, which sets the strategy and direction of the bank.Among the steps DBS has taken to creating a female-friendly corporate environment include establishing a board diversity policy and providing a range of working arrangements including flexible time arrangement, part-time arrangement, work-from-home arrangement and a sabbatical leave arrangement.CEO Piyush Gupta also championed having clear hiring and promotion practices with objective criteria and frequent salary reviews for parity between genders during his interview with the Business Times.“Women do face challenges juggling work and family commitments especially when their children are young. Sometimes, this may be held against them, consciously or unconsciously. Unless companies actively ensure that parity exists, there could be instances of gender pay gaps for similar roles, or gender bias in hiring and promotions,” he said.“We believe that when you achieve a critical mass of women across all levels, this will make a difference in an organisation’s ability to succeed.”At DBS, promoting gender equality however is not just confined to within the company. DBS played an active role in launching the Women’s Livelihood Bond — the world’s first social sustainability bond to be listed on a stock exchange. More importantly, the S$10.6 million bond has an impact on the livelihoods of over 385,000 women in South-east Asia through micro loans. In addition, DBS Foundation, the first foundation in Singapore dedicated to championing social entrepreneurship, supports and funds numerous social enterprises that empower disadvantaged women and girls.To Ms Jeanette Wong, the next step to promoting gender equality is for the current women leaders to empower the next generation.“As women, we should consciously include women in our talent pipeline and succession plans.”Ms Tan Su Shan, another of the seven women on DBS’ Group Management Committee and Designate Head of DBS’ Institutional Banking Group agreed.“DBS doesn’t discriminate on gender or race and actively helps us develop with coaching and mentorship programmes — even encouraging reverse mentors,” she said.All the women members of the Group Management Committee noted the different benefits to working in an organisation that was supportive of women.For Ms Chng Sok Hui, DBS’ Chief Financial Officer since 2008, it was DBS supporting her career even as she was raising four children. She said: “DBS took many chances on me in my 35-year career. I moved to new roles every few years, built functions from scratch, and joined the Management Committee at 41.”Ms Eng-Kwok Seat Moey, Head of DBS’ Capital Markets Group, who was instrumental in building and shaping Singapore’s REITs market, saw the benefits of having an open mindset, “Knowing that everyone is on a level playing field, that it’s an inclusive environment, helps us all to be open and generous in our views.”More importantly, the women on the Group Management Committee say that the lack of gender discrimination has allowed them to do well at their jobs — consequently leading to better results for the bank.Ms Karen Ngui, Head of DBS’ Group Strategic Marketing and Communications, who has led branding and communications across DBS since 2005, appreciated the freedom to simply focus on excelling in good company: “It’s enabled me to focus on doing my best and given me the privilege of working with like-minded individuals from varied backgrounds, who thrive on doing well and doing good.”Ms Lee Yan Hong, Head of DBS’ Group Human Resources, is a key advocate for many of DBS’ flexi-work and family-friendly policies. She’s proud to point out that a large part of DBS’ success resides in its openness to people of varied backgrounds : “We thrive because of the diversity of experiences and knowledge brought to the table by our colleagues, which helps to drive change and deliver impact.”Ms Pearlyn Phau, Deputy Group Head of DBS’ Consumer Banking & Wealth Management, has been with DBS some 15 years and agrees with this.“The fact that we all got here based on performance and meritocracy, without needing a quota, makes it clear that women can and will rise to the top when empowered,” she said.“I feel empowered knowing that there is no glass ceiling in DBS and that everyone is given equal opportunities to excel.”The original article was published here.