Eliga Services recaps the past year, highlighting our people and operations strategy. We’re pleased to announce our collaboration with the recruitment messaging tool, cord.
Our headcount is growing
Over the past 12 months, Eliga Services more than doubled its headcount from 16 to 34. Without a doubt, the happiness of our team remains our top priority. There is a real understanding from our management team that not only do we need to look after our people but also the environment, taking climate action individually and as an organisation. In November, we announced our partnership with ClimatePartner on LinkedIn. Whilst there’s still much work to do, we’re confident that we’re on the right track. We’re taking the necessary steps to achieve our goal of building a truly inclusive and inspiring place to work.
Eliga Services’ Head of Operations, David Cowland stated, ‘It is both an exciting and challenging time for us as we look forward to our continued growth but need to watch out for various headwinds that are global in their nature.’
Diversity & inclusion
As a digital transformation consultancy, we are keenly aware that a more diverse team means better solutions for our clients. Consequently, we have 6+ nationalities and growing. As of January 2022, just under 30% of our team will be made up of women, having increased from 25% in Q2 2021. This is higher than the national average. Technation reported 19% of ‘tech workers’ in the UK are women.
However, Findexable’s FinTech Diversity Radar 2021 report revealed women are still severely underrepresented in tech, citing that ‘only 1.5% of fintech companies are solely founded by women.’ We must invest in more programmes that encourage women to code, like SheCodes. We’d love to hear from any female developers who would like to have a chat.
Around 25% of our people are from black, Asian, mixed, and other ethnic backgrounds, a number we’re committed to improving. This is significantly higher than the national average. The Chartered Institute for IT found 18% of all IT specialists in the UK come from black, Asian, mixed, and other ethnic backgrounds, adding that this representation is higher than for BAME workers in the workforce as a whole which is 12%.
Understanding the metrics
Having said this, it’s important to drill down the metrics, scrutinising them with different lenses to understand representation. According to the Evening Standard, only 3% of the technology industry’s employees in London are black.
Our recruitment messaging tool, cord reports that 59.8% of its signups are black, Asian, mixed, and other ethnic backgrounds. From this percentage, 11.5% of its signups are black. By using cord, we hope we can continue to attract more diverse talent to increase representation across different ethnicities, promoting data transparency internally and externally.
How recruitment is changing with cord?
Whilst we continue to improve our internal and external processes, we recognised the best way to scale up and attract a more diverse talent pool would be to collaborate with a truly inclusive company, like cord, that’s committed to changing the way companies search for talent. The tool’s special search filters help address industry and societal biases. As a result, this allows Eliga to maximise its recruitment resources, affecting real change.
How does cord help companies?
Its filters use ‘API software powered by Namsor to make predictions of ethnicity and gender based on name and location.’ It uses the same API as enterprise companies like The Emirates, The City of Boston, and US Aid. The predictions are based on millions of data points globally. By using these filters, companies will contribute to more diverse, technical teams from sourcing to hiring. It’s important to note that these filters are correct in about 90%-95% of cases. Companies can use them as intelligent predictors or a guide to improving hiring.
Another great feature is the tool’s ‘Underrepresented Groups’, which helps companies improve their D&I hiring by using filters to source ‘Females’ and ‘People from minority backgrounds.’
What happened in 2021?
Our main goal for the last 4 months has been to set up our cord account, leveraging its research, metrics, and tools to power our search. The tool allows companies to source candidates without bias, by masking candidate names and pictures to remove unconscious biases. Recruiters can activate to make searches more unbiased.
Eliga Services’ Internal Resourcing Manager, Sarah Kydd commented, ‘I started using a new recruiter tool, cord at the end of October. So far, it has been amazing. You can search for people in lots of different ways. It removes names to stop unconscious bias. I thought that was interesting and wanted to share the benefits of this messaging tool with our network, outlining what we’re doing as a company in 2021 to improve our people strategy.’
Career development
Besides collaborating with cord, we’ve also successfully initiated our yearly objectives, encouraging regular career development check-ins across teams. This ensures we’re considering our individual team members’ values and supporting them in their career development goals in the coming weeks and months.
Charity
We regularly donate to charities like Kids Cancer Charity and The Air Ambulance Service to give back to the community. As a digital transformation agency, we have also offered free consultancy to charities as an alternative to cash donations.
Climate change
We’re working with a leading ESG partner for climate action to reduce our year-on-year carbon footprint. Additionally, we took action to offset the carbon emission of our website by planting trees.
Training
Finally, we use Udemy to ensure everyone in our organisation has completed mandatory training to navigate diversity as individuals and a company. We review and renew these courses annually.
What’s next for Eliga Services?
In the year ahead, we will update our staff handbook with various policies and our mandatory training rollout for all team members. We will also work with ClimatePartner in carbon offsetting projects and initiatives, starting our ongoing monitoring in early Spring 2022.
Follow Eliga on LinkedIn to see our latest roles and company news.