HOW THE DATA CENTRE INDUSTRY IS ADDRESSING ITS DE&I PROBLEM

Marientina Laina from NTT GDC and Sophia Flucker from MiCiM shed light on the work being carried out by data centre companies to address DE&I shortcomings

WRITTEN BY: TOM CHAPMAN

The topic of diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) is top of mind for pretty much all socially-aware companies at the moment, and those in the data centre industry are no different.

When it comes to the technology sector as a whole, the statistics paint a rather worrying picture. According to a recent report published by TechNation, just 26% of tech workers in the UK are women, compared to 50% of the overall labour market. Meanwhile, female minorities make up just 3-7% of IT employees.

While less research exists in relation to the data centre industry specifically, the workforce is widely accepted as being even more imbalanced. In 2021, more than threequarters of data centre operators surveyed by the Uptime Institute said under 10% of their staff members were women.

Improving DE&I from the inside

Marientina Laina was determined to take a leap of faith when she joined NTT Global Data Centers (GDC) to become Director of Sustainability, despite warnings from those around her. Part of her motivation was to do something about the lack of diversity from within.

“When I made the decision to join the tech sector, a lot of friends and colleagues asked ‘are you really sure? This is a really male-dominated industry’,” recalls Laina.

“At NTT GDC, increasing these kinds of figures [in favour of female representation] is a commitment and very meaningful priority for our DE&I programme. We are quite pleased that, since FY21, we have managed to increase female representation from 11% to 28% in executive leadership positions.