“Stop talking about gender:” Toward positive diversity and inclusion experience of female IT professionals in Poland

PurposeThe purpose of this research is to explore the experiences regarding diversity and inclusion in the professional context. The stories of female IT professionals included the discussion around enablers and blockers of career and development in IT and talking about worst and best daily experiences at the workplace.Design/methodology/approachThis is a qualitative study that presents the findings from four focus groups with 50 participants – selected female IT professionals working in Poland. The IT professionals were taking part in the Women in Tech Summit in Warsaw in 2019. LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® projective technique has been applied during the group interviews to help the participants express their experiences in a creative way.FindingsThe findings include conceptualization of the three main sources of inequalities: (1) Imbalance in rewards and recognition and performance visibility (2) Inability to build wider women-oriented strategic alliances and meaningful relationships around D&I and (3) Willingness but no practical mechanisms to contribute to the business value and being a part of meaningful activities and two concepts of how to improve employee experiences, namely: business strategizing based on daily meaningful experience and mentoring others and impacting business reality through creating professional alliances that matter and are recognized as business value generators as the key directions.Research limitations/implicationsThe research was conducted before the pandemic.Practical implicationsThe research creates a practical conversational framework for managers giving directions on how to talk about diversity and inclusion in the workplace using a perspective of “daily interactions” and “everyday employee experiences”.Social implicationsThe emerged concepts help to direct the corporate discussions around Social Development Goal No. 5 – Gender Equality in a practical business dimension.Originality/valueThe originality is brought by (1) LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® – the method of creative exploration used during the focused groups (2) social significance of gender equality in the technological roles and industries, especially in the context of reskilling approaches (3) Central and Eastern European perspective of the research.