In recent years there has been a drive and focus amongst some of our large IT clients in Central Eastern Europe to increase the number of females in their organisations. They firmly believe that having a healthy gender balance is an asset to the workplace as it promotes a more positive and open culture.
 
Whilst Grafton ESP engage a range of strategies to attract females into IT roles the problem is more deeply ingrained and to truly tackle this more work needs to be undertaken with people of school age and those people returning to the work place.  Attitudes need to be changed and women need to be aware that not all IT roles involve sitting at a computer all day and running diagnostics.  To this end we have been proactive in promoting the career paths and range of roles available within IT.
 
We have also increased our use of social networking sites, to understand the issues faced by women and to engage with them for the benefit of our IT clients.  We believe with our experience across IT in CEE we have a unique insight that we can share with women on different forums and sites that may help motivate them to apply for client positions.