The importance of role modelling

Katherine Ainley joined Ericsson as UK and Ireland CEO in 2019 and despite not coming from a tech background she’s made short work of her journey to the top. She started her career in consulting and concentrated on business change with a customer focus. She joined h Lloyds Bank before moving to BT during an era that many of the telcos were looking for talent outside the industry to change the customer experience. Ainley spent 13 ‘very enjoyable’ years at BT which she credits with giving her the ‘telco bug’.

 

 Ainley commented “I came in on a bit of a wave when lots of people were coming in from outside of the telco industry, so I probably had it relatively easy. That said, being from a non-technology background it was a bit of a steep learning curve.

 

“One of the changes I've seen over the years is that the customer experience piece has become more and more important. It’s no longer a conversation about technology and you're selling PSTN where a customer buys one, two or three lines. The conversation now is about what's the solution? How do you use it and what's the experience that you're going to get from that - how will it transform the business?

That's what gets me super excited about the work that we do at Ericsson because it's properly changing people's lives.”

 

Whilst Katherine credits the industry with being extremely welcoming and didn’t encounter any negativity towards her non-tech background, she concedes it is very much a male dominated one and there hasn’t been a great deal of change in terms of diversity.

 

“The industry really embraces and recognises the need for talent from different backgrounds and I believe there are more female faces. But I do feel that is at an entry level. I'd probably say there's been remarkably little change on that kind of level of diversity at a mid to senior level.”

 

“Many of the more highly skilled jobs are recruited from an engineering or software degrees and we're still seeing only 18-20% of female entrants so until you get that a little bit more balanced, you are already fishing from a small pool.”

 

Ainley believes that harnessing the power of tech is key to improving diversity. Field roles have changed dramatically over the last 20 years with drones being used to carry out field work and by reducing the physical impact on the candidate it may in turn open it up to a wider audience.

Ericsson is also currently utilising AI in the recruitment process to drive greater diversity in candidates by matching possible hires to roles as well as suggesting progression opportunities. She believes that one of the issues the industry faces is competing with other ‘sexier’ options and it might be time to refresh the terminology to appeal to a wider range of people.

 

“I have said previously should we even call it telecoms? Or should we call it technology? Because the word telecoms can put lots of people off. Particularly when you look forward over the next 10 or 20 years which is going to be more technology led now there’s lots of edge compute. AI will be driving it more and more. The automation that comes with it will change the nature of the jobs and will certainly require a changing skill set.”

 

Ainley acknowledges that the mission critical nature of the telecoms industry means companies are less able to offer flexibility which could be another barrier to potential talent.

“Connectivity is something you take for granted. Particularly with mobile, it's like ‘I expect my mobile to work at high speed, wherever I am’. And I what does that mean for people who work in the industry? It means they've got an ‘always on’ job. A lot of the jobs are very important and therefore it's quite hard to work part time, for example. We've got to structure those roles in a different way to make them work for people who perhaps can't be always ‘on’. And that flexibility is important to not just women – it’s important to men too.

 

Over the last few years, we have seen some key appointments of women within senior roles. Orange Group appointed Christel Heydemann as first female CEO in 2022, whilst BT Group appointed Allison Kirkby to replace Philip Jansen as CEO. Ainley believes that role modelling is crucial to encouraging more women into the industry. And that extends to men in senior leadership roles too.

 

“It’s super exciting to have a brilliant set of role models, certainly in the in the mobile side. I think they are trying to pull through more school leavers into STEM subjects. And that’s a much broader issue and it's also a massive kind of a massive challenge to fix. It's not something that any single company can do. Then I think it's how do we think differently as well about the roles that we're recruiting for?

 

“We're doing several initiatives around how we scope out our roles. We've got a programme this year for school leavers where the diversity is much is basically 50/50. So that's good.

 

“And then I think you've got to look at how do you retain and promote women? As I said at the beginning, I haven't experienced overt sexism but that’s not to say it doesn't exist. As someone said to me the other day, ‘That's easy to say when you're the boss’.

 

“Inclusivity and diversity are high on our agenda we've got that from the top all the way down. It’s important that people feel welcome, and they can speak up if they're worried about something, but I think you've got to keep working on that and reinforcing it. Because it's easy to get complacent.

 

“There are practical aspects - making sure you've got good maternity leave, flexible working and so on. So that when people are going through those crunch points, they can get through it. I think paternity leave and the male side of is also important. At Ericsson we have a bit of the Scandinavian culture, where men pitch into the childcare and that’s the biggest thing that people can make a difference to not only help wives, but then being a role model at work and it's not a woman's problem. Because otherwise you're saying you're still saying how do we help women manage through it rather than how do we help everybody managed to parenthood?

 

Role modelling is incredibly important when it comes to men in leadership roles. If a male senior leader is seen to take the morning off to go to sports day or pick kids up from school, then that's a good visible sign to both men and women throughout the organisation.”