Social

Our Social Responsibility

Our 2030 social ambition is to enhance our inclusive and diverse culture and workforce. This ambition is based around further developing our focus on diversity, equity, inclusion & belonging (DEIB) by establishing an externally recognized global DEIB programme, while continuing to support locally-developed initiatives.

Diverse, Equal, Inclusive and belonging Strategy:
Attract & Retain

As a global company consisting of over 90 different nationalities and over 30 languages, DEIB is a key priority for SoftwareOne. Our DEIB strategy guides our efforts and measures our impacts with global KPIs. We provide our employees and stakeholders with a culture that welcomes everyone into a safe and inclusive environment that empowers more creativity and innovation that leads to the best possible customer focus and experience.

SoftwareOne Definitions of DEIB

• Diversity: embracing people with different backgrounds, identities, experiences, and talents that make up our workforce, while emphasizing intersectionality and historically marginalized communities.

• Equity: Providing equal access to opportunities and remuneration for all team members regardless of origin.

• Inclusion: Assuring that all employees feel safe and involved at work and that everyone is heard, supported, and appreciated for their unique perspectives.

• Belonging: All team members should have the experience of being seen, recognised, and valued by their leaders and peers and perform at their highest level.

Our DEIB strategy represents our commitment to accomplish our 2030 vision of recognizing SoftwareOne as a diverse employer. Our DEIB strategy is to attract new diverse talent and retain our existing talent. Our main focus areas for the next three years are Gender, LGBTQ+ and Ethnicity.

DEIB Survey

It has been challenging to estimate the diversity profiles at SoftwareOne based on the current limited data we have access to. The current data provides us with insight into the gender and age profiles of our workforce, but it lacks detail on other target areas. In 2023 we will undertake a cultural assessment and cultural audit to improve our database on DEIB topics and obtain a DEIB X-ray of SoftwareOne respectively. Not only will this allow us to collect demographic data but also understand the perception of organisational inclusion and the sense of belonging from our employees. This will serve as a baseline for our DEIB strategy for the coming years.

Attract

We want to attract new, diverse talent by recruiting new employees who reflect our commitment to diversity, as well as showcase SoftwareOne’s existing diverse talent pool. We have initiatives focused on making sure that our talent acquisition process is inclusive in its language and unbiased in its selection process.

Talent Acquisition Plan

Job Descriptions using inclusive language

To ensure we are doing everything to attract candidates for suitable positions, we use online bias checking tools to scan our job adverts’ language. These tools provide guidance on vocabulary to ensure all language is inclusive.

Hiring Selection Process

To ensure our hiring leaders make fair and unbiased hiring decisions at SoftwareOne, we employ three key tools:

• Inclusive Interview Panels: we ensure every job hiring process has an inclusive interview panel to ensure a balanced view and eliminate bias.

• Hiring Manager Interview Training: we have released a new Global Interview Training programme. This includes best practices for managers and specific guidance on how to learn and avoid unconscious bias in interviews. All leaders will be required to attend this training going forward and attain a ‘Licence to Interview’ accreditation.

• Assessment Tools: all our hiring processes involve market leading assessments such as pymetrics and HireSelect. Through a rigorous validation process, these tools ensure that their tests are non-discriminatory and that any subgroup differences are minimized, while maintaining the accuracy of the assessment. This is done by reviewing all test content for cultural sensitivity and differential item functioning to ensure that each test is free of content bias across cultural and gender groups.

Talent Acquisition Data

There is no denying that the software service sector is predominately male dominated, and finding and retaining female talent in this sector can be challenging. We receive three times more male applicants than female which highlights an area of improvement for us as a company; ensuring women see and feel that SoftwareOne is a great place to work.

By analysing the data from our recruitment platforms, we identify the stages in our process where we may see a higher dropout rate of certain groups. We found that, in some cases, the pass-through rate of female talent is slightly higher than for male talent. For example, female candidates who receive a first interview have a 48% likelihood of receiving an offer compared to 45% for males.

This tells us that our pass-through rate of both male and female candidates is a fair process. However, our attraction rate is 30% female versus 70% male, and although it is above the 25:75% industry standard, we have identified key focus areas for improvements at SoftwareOne, such as services (22:78%) and sales (15:85%).

System ID by funnel and Gender Placeholder Graphic - 7 Statistical summary of hiring process – male/female

SoftwareOne Academy: Strengthening our future talent pipeline

The Academy’s mission is to recruit, train, and support young and career-changing individuals from local communities worldwide, starting from grassroots level. It offers a career in technology to individuals from both traditional and non-traditional educational backgrounds. The learning provided is tailored to meet the specific needs of service lines, roles, functions, and geographic requirements. The curriculum covers technical, business, language, consulting and soft skills to enable associates to succeed in our global professional services organisation.

Now in its third year, the SoftwareOne Academy is in 17 countries delivering over 10 curricula across Sales, Services, Business IT (BIT) and Global Services Delivery (GSDC) Operations. 51 cohorts have run in 26 cities and over 400 associates have transitioned from the Academy to full-time employees at SoftwareOne, representing a 91% transition rate to business.

We have put in place business metrics which include reductions on cost of recruitment, time to competency, attrition rates, and time to billability. Some of the highlights of our outcomes is an increase in productivity with a 350% increase as compared to those hired with 1 year experience; and a reduction in attrition, from 38% in key regions to near zero (India, Brazil).

SoftwareOne Academy was a 2022 finalist at the prestigious Global Learning Awards for Global Learning Impact and our lead, Serena Gonsalves-Fersch was a finalist for the Learning Leader of the Year award. It continues to be recognised by the EU Pact for Skills and the EU’s European Alliance for Apprenticeships.

We have a new partnership with AWS Re:start in their ITSkills4U programme. Through this, the Academy offers learning and job opportunities to Ukrainian tech refugees who have fled their country due to the conflict. This year, associates from this programme transitioned into the DACH practice, and this is just the beginning.

In 2023, the Academy will continue to expand its reach to achieve 30% sourcing of recruitment in services. It continues to enhance its presence in all regions and functions across SoftwareOne, and acts as the bridge between education and employment, to reinforce our future talent pipeline.

Retain

When employees feel valued, respected, and included, they are more likely to stay with the organisation. To retain our talent, SoftwareOne is implementing a strategy focused on learning and development, and employee engagement. We are prioritizing education programmes on DEIB for both our leadership team and our employees. The company culture plays a crucial role in employee retention which is why SoftwareOne highlights the efforts of our NORAM and LATAM teams and focuses on developing new programmes to foster volunteering and local employee group initiatives.

Learning and Development

Learning and development play a vital role in the professional growth and success of our employees. Continuous learning fosters innovation, creativity, and adaptability by enabling employees to embrace change, tackle complex problems, and seize new opportunities.

At SoftwareOne, we are committed to our employees and their professional development, which is why we are evolving our Learning Portal for all employees worldwide. Not only will we host internally-developed learning content, but we will integrate world-class digital content libraries which will bring cutting edge learning resources to employees at all levels.

This new platform launches in 2023 and aims to help our employees grow their capabilities and enhance their career opportunities in the company. It will enable our Services and Marketplace functions to design and develop role-specific learning paths.

We want our employees to take full advantage of the learning opportunities we provide, and their understanding of the platform is key. We can see that employees tend to use more hours of training compared to managers, and usage between women and men is balanced.

Communities, Corporate Giving and Employee Engagement

Volunteer and Donations Platform

With the objective of enhancing our volunteer and donation efforts across regions, we are partnering with Benevity to provide an all-in-one platform. The platform, which will launch in 2023, will showcase over 2 million non-profit-organisations for which our employees can volunteer for existing events or even create their own. We also want to empower employees to give to the causes they care most about by matching their donations. Additionally, the platform will offer “missions”, which are small activities that encourage employees to take action on their well-being, the environment and society in general.

Employee Groups

Employee resource groups (ERGs) are an excellent way of engaging employees and helping them feel more included in the workplace. They also help increase the visibility of underrepresented groups within the organisation.

SoftwareOne is in the process of creating an ERG governance to serve as guidelines for the existing ERGs, but also to promote the creation of new groups. We will support our employees to create purposeful groups with a clear vision and action plan, and give them the funding and resources needed to reach their goals.

Currently, the Yammer communities form part of the ERG framework serve as a space where community members and allies can come together to support each other. Some of these communities include SoftwareOne Muslim & Allies Community, Veterans, Military Families & Allies NORAM, and NORAM LGBTQIA2S+ and Allies.

DEIB in the NORAM region

Mosaic

Mosaic is NORAM's volunteer diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) committee. Committee members contribute to NORAM's DEIB agenda by making recommendations to the Equity & Inclusion Programme Manager whilst DEIB regional ambassadors promote their initiatives within the organisation. As the committee consists of diverse employee groups throughout NORAM, they can quickly identify their own needs, recommend strategic actions, and lead implementation of DEIB initiatives. For 2023, Mosaic will focus their efforts on Black, Hispanic/Latine talent, and women and the LGBTQ+ communities.

Pride Month / 21-Day Challenge

During Pride Month 2022, Mosaic hosted a 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge within NORAM. The goal of the Challenge was to raise awareness, encourage compassion, and engaged people in the quest for equity. The challenge focused on the LGBTQ2IA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Two-Spirit, Intersex, Asexual and other identities) experience.

For each of the 21 days participants were emailed details of a short assignment with materials including articles, videos, podcasts, and more. The goal of the assignments was to expose participants to multiple perspectives on LGBTQ2IA+ history, identity, and culture.

Through communication in our dedicated Yammer Group², the 85 participants were able to bond and build special communities via this learning opportunity. The equity challenge ended with the capstone event, “Our LGBTQ2IA+ Community”, which was an hour-long discussion, led by queer trans and non-binary Latin DEI expert, Ash Ramirez.

^2. Yammer is an internal social networking service, which SoftwareOne uses for private internal communication.

DEIB in the LATAM region

Gender Equality

LATAM created the “Let's talk about...” series and hosted two events focused on women. The first event was a multi-generational panel discussion where four women spoke about their take on the perception of women and how this has changed over the course of generations. The second event was an informal conversation between a woman ambassador and a women government secretary about gender (in)equality and the changes that need to happen. 618 employees participated and there was overwhelming demand to make this an ongoing series in future and to include multigenerational and transgender participation.

LGBTQ+

Leading up to Pride month, the LATAM region designed an awareness campaign where every month they focused on a letter from the LGBTQ+ community, whereby events, information and stories were shared to generate awareness and educate. The purpose is to create an inclusive culture for every employee which builds a sense of belonging, where everyone is welcomed. LATAM is also preparing to offer a leadership training programme on the subject.

Supplier Diversity at SoftwareOne

SoftwareOne is engaged in several initiatives to enhance our supplier diversity. We are passionate about ensuring that our supply chain includes minority and underrepresented groups. Enabling this supports both our suppliers and our customers in their own efforts to increase supplier diversity.

Customer Software Portfolio Diversity

SoftwareOne is actively involved in a programme to assess and prioritise the impact of the software and services we manage on certified diverse suppliers. This impact is significant, estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually within the supply chain managed by SoftwareOne.

The IT, software products and services categories can be especially challenging from a supplier diversity perspective, and opportunities to directly attribute spend to diverse suppliers are inherently limited. Customer investment decisions in this category are primarily driven by technical and commercial priorities, making it more difficult to prioritize Supplier Diversity.Top of Form

However, we are actively engaged in establishing a pilot programme to help our customers better address the challenges of supplier diversity in the Software & Services space. We’ve worked with leading supplier diversity partner supplier.io to enhance reporting capabilities and support our clients’ disclosure obligations.

As part of our third-party due diligence programme over the coming years, we will improve our understanding of the diversity landscape of our suppliers at a global level.

Supporting Direct Positive Transformation of NPO’s and Local Communities

SoftwareOne Impact

SoftwareOne Impact works with non-profit organisations and non-profit technology providers around the world to have a positive impact on society and our planet. We believe that we all benefit when NPO’s, that are driving positive change, are successful. Technology is the key to helping them scale and do more. We empower NPO’s to achieve their goals through offering an extensive portfolio of services and solutions, leveraging key partnerships with organisations who have the resources to directly benefit the communities where we work and live. We work with NPO’s across many different issues including healthcare, education, family and youth services, humanitarian, arts and culture, environment and research.

SoftwareOne Impact runs programmes such as Digital Communities, where we recently helped 10-20 small NPO’s (under 25 staff) to implement Microsoft technology. These workshops were done at no cost to the organisations. Examples of some of our work with smaller non-profits include Hope for Ataxia in Canada and ACE Enterprise Park in Ireland. The SoftwareOne Impact team has also worked with The Academy and Microsoft Philanthropies to create the Capstone programme, whereby Academy students and experienced employees work together on not-for-profit projects, helping them enhance their technology.

Spotlight Stories

Eye-able and the German Red Cross

In our partnership with Eye-Able and Microsoft Azure, we have provided assistive technologies for the visually impaired to the German Red Cross (DRK). Eye-Able is a holistic service providing access to all viewers of website material. Eye-able uses assistive technologies such as screen readers, magnifiers, and text to speech software to improve digital accessibility.

Digital Inclusion and Accessibility are vital to the DRK. Eye-Able ensure that critical services such as disaster relief, healthcare and emergency services are accessible to all, regardless of capability or circumstance. Eye-Able offers a wide range of solutions for individuals with disabilities in the digital space and DRK's services are therefore accessible to many more people than before. Eye-able is making an amazing contribution to DRK’s impact on society.

International Orthodox Christian Charities – MD, USA

International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC) aims to enhance its operations and security through technology and innovation. Their three main objectives are improving cybersecurity, particularly in hostile environments; promoting shared learning and collaboration across the organisation; and enhancing impact through effective data collection.

IOCC, heavily embedded in the Microsoft ecosystem, sought assistance from Microsoft TSI (Tech for Social Impact) for digital transformation. Microsoft TSI recommended our SoftwareOne Impact team, known for its advanced specialisation in Microsoft Adoption and Change Management.

SoftwareOne conducted a comprehensive analysis of IOCC's needs and implemented Microsoft Digital Workplace tools, including Microsoft Office 365 and SharePoint. The SoftwareOne Impact team standardised communication and collaboration with Microsoft Teams, migrated and optimised SharePoint to meet IOCC's specific needs, and deployed Intune for improved security and administration of IOCC's devices and applications. The team also provided Adoption and Change Management services to ensure seamless technology updates.

As a result, amid the Ukraine conflict, IOCC's staff were able to collaborate and coordinate more efficiently across different countries and time zones and enhance device security against cyber threats. IOCC was able to effectively communicate the impact of their programmes, and work towards a $1M fundraising target to fund their ongoing activities.

PowertoFly

In 2019 SoftwareOne started its collaboration with PowertoFly, initially in the USA and now globally. PowertoFly is a diversity network and sourcing partner. Our collaboration has many benefits such as providing us with diversity sourcing, where PowertoFly sources candidates for any job requisition we provide. This has led to more variety of hires from different diversity groups and backgrounds and SoftwareOne is now recognised as an employer of choice, such as the recent inclusion of SoftwareOne in the America's Greatest Workplaces for Women 2023 (newsweek.com).