At Avanade, we understand that by having a diverse and inclusive workforce in ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, physical abilities, geography, age, skills, backgrounds, experiences, beliefs, ideas and thought process, we are able to:
Connect insights, innovation and expertise to help our diverse customers realise results across their our entire business.
Drive innovation.
Improve organisational effectiveness through collaboration, cross-cultural competencies, communication, trust, and idea and information sharing.
Encourage respect, consistency and fairness, supporting Avanade’s Core Value, “Act with Dignity and Respect.”
Executive Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion at Avanade
“Avanade is a company where any individual can make a big difference. We firmly believe that we arrive at our best thinking and decisions when we tap the rich experience of our diverse workforce and consider multiple points of view. We celebrate our diversity and are firmly committed to promoting an open, inclusive and positive work environment that provides equal opportunities for all our employees to grow their careers and help shape the future of Avanade.”
- Joseph Mendel, Executive Vice President, Human Resources
“In Avanade UK we value the contribution that each individual brings to achieving our collective success. We do have a diverse workforce and I am determined that we continue to focus on maintaining this. Diversity ensures that we have wealth and depth of varied skills, experiences and opinions. This keeps us at the leading edge of both technology and innovation, which in turn means that our ability to support customers in realising their business goals is enhanced.”
- Pamela Maynard, GM of Avanade UK & Ireland
Women in IT
As a global organisation, Avanade is committed to recruiting, retaining, and promoting the best female staff available, to ensure women remain critical to our business success.
We have launched a European initiative to support women working in IT and encourage upcoming graduates to consider a career in the IT and consulting sectors.
To kick off the efforts, a career workshop aimed at female university students and an internal mentoring programme supporting female consultants were launched:
(1) Recruitment workshop
Avanade held the first European ‘Women in IT Careers’ workshop in Germany earlier this year. 27 female students from ten different countries attended the event and listened to female executives representing Avanade (including Pamela Maynard, general manager at Avanade UK and Anna Di Silverio, general manager at Avanade Italy) and its parent companies Accenture and Microsoft sharing insights about working successfully in IT.
At the workshop students learned about project management skills, how technology can empower individuals, businesses and economies, as well as, the challenges of working in IT and how to overcome these.
Sian Price, one of the participating students from the UK said: “Being a part of this Women in IT programme from Avanade has really helped give me some direction for my career path as I finish up my degree at Newport University. The career workshop was tremendously useful in giving me some top tips and also showed me how far I can go. The chance to approach Pamela as a mentor in follow-up and generate a new network with fellow participants that are all females in a similar position to me has been invaluable.”
Sian continued: “This kind of support is something my course and lecturers do not provide. So, not only do I now have a much more positive outlook about my progression into the world of IT as a female, but also feel I have a direction to channel my efforts as I enter the working world. It was also refreshing to see such a big corporate organisation take this issue seriously. It’s clear that my experiences at university whereby, in some cases, I have been a minority in computing as a female, is something that is reflected in the working world too. I hope more companies take a similar approach to Avanade and tackle this imbalance to entice more females into the field as capable IT workers, and senior ones at that!”
The first event was a successful pilot and we are currently looking into ways to turn this workshop into an annual event.
(2) Internal mentoring programme
At Avanade we understand the needs of female consultants and aim to provide an environment that makes it possible for them to be productive, both inside and outside the organisation.
The internal programme provides a framework for female employees to discuss work-related issues, including objectives and career development, internal processes and company culture. Avanade pairs junior employees with senior mentors, who can relate to their challenges and will be able to provide valuable insight and support.
“At Avanade, we believe there is a direct connection between a company’s diversity and its success – and this is also supported by a recent McKinsey survey, where 72 percent of respondents confirmed this thinking. Going forward, we want to ensure we continue to attract strong talent and also develop our existing talent further within the company, which is why we have launched a women in IT initiative. We hope to help attract, nurture and build female talent in our sector", said Kerstin Wittler, HR manager at Avanade. "The first event was a pilot, but it was very successful. We received very positive feedback from the students, as well as the mentors. We will look for ways to turn this workshop into an annual event, making it part of our ongoing initiative to support women looking for careers in IT and consulting. It is important to explain what women can expect when working in IT and it is also a great opportunity for us to meet with strong female candidates from different universities and learn about what they are looking for in their future employer", continues Kerstin.
“The IT and consulting industry has traditionally been dominated by men, at Avanade we feel we are in a unique position as a number of key roles in Europe are currently held by women. We have female general managers running our business very successfully in Italy, the Nordics and the UK, in addition to a number of senior leadership roles which are held by women as well,” said Pamela Maynard, general manager at Avanade UK.
Mentors receive training sessions and supporting documents to ensure they can guide mentees through the programme, and there are regular meetings to discuss progress of the programme.