Ideas that Work: Getting the ‘Blokes’ on Board

Maureen Frank, Founder of Emberin

Contributed by Anita Beasley, Director of Development, Emberin, outlining Telstra‘s 2010 Catalyst Award winning Next Generation Gender Diversity Initiative.

Australian business is a unique case study for women. On a global stage, Australia often punches above its weight with regards to issues and achievements, but not in the area of women’s leadership. In this area, Australia has some of the worst statistics in the western world! The average gender pay gap is 17.5% and at executive level this worsens to 28.3%. Women currently make up 45.4% of the workforce. 2% of Chairs in the ASX200 (Australian Stock Exchange Top 200 companies) are women. 8.3% of Board Directors in ASX200 are women and 10.7% of Executive Managers in the ASX are women.

There are many reasons for this and one of the main ones is the severe male dominance in the workplace and the unique Australian male psyche that accompanies this. It reinforces stereotypes and unconscious bias. Most men in the workforce come from a good place, they just don’t realise that their habits and business style unfortunately disadvantages women.

Telstra Corporation is Australia’s only Catalyst member. Since 2007, the company has set aggressive strategies in the area of gender diversity, and in early 2008 it recognised that something had to change dramatically to really start to see some shift in their organisation. Like many Australian organisations, Telstra’s record wasn’t great. In fact, the “a-ha” moment was around men.

The company was doing good work in the women’s space both externally and internally, but it realised that it had to start changing the mindset of their male employees – to encourage them to understand the business case around women and what strategies needed to be adopted to start to see some change – for the better.

Changing the Game-Plan

Telstra unveiled an ambitious plan. It would develop and roll out a men’s gender leadership program to their top 300 male employees. This would be followed by further rollouts of the program to the next level down (and at last count 1000 male employees had undertaken the program). This strategy was coupled with a women’s mentoring and empowerment program, designed to help female employees step up in their careers and gain confidence and skill sets in areas that they stereotypically lacked. What this unique gender diversity strategy achieved was a top down, bottom up approach. But it went far deeper than that too.

Both programs were created by Australian gender diversity expert, Maureen Frank and her company Emberin. Frank, a former Telstra Business Woman of the Year (Australia’s leading business awards for women), knew first-hand the issues women faced in achieving leadership roles in big corporations. Frank had often been a lone woman at the top and is one of the few women who have jumped the divide to actually do something about the issue of advancing women in the workplace.

To help educate Telstra’s men on the issue of gender diversity and provide a business case for why they should start to break down barriers, Frank created a new men’s gender leadership program and, at the same time, used her own My Mentor program for women as the key women’s development program throughout Telstra. These two programs were implemented via an internal communications plan and were strongly managed by Telstra’s Diversity team. Endorsement and championship by Telstra’s Managing Director and senior leadership team were critical. This was coupled with many integrated strategies around internal diversity policies and practice, gender goals and performance KPIs in gender balance, employee brand initiatives and external marketing and communications supporting women’s initiatives.

The My Mentor gender leadership program and women’s development program are simple self guiding programs delivered in a unique way – by CD, DVD and workbook. It is deliberate that they are not done in a seminar or online environment, as it is intended to be flexible and undertaken at a time that suits the participant – whether while traveling or at home.

Recognizing and Maintaining Measurable Improvement

Telstra entered the 2010 Catalyst Awards in mid 2009. After a long submission and measurement process the company found out in late 2009 that it was one of the four finalists – a first for an Australian organisation. As is the case with the Catalyst Awards, the initiative not only had to deliver proven qualitative results but also quantitative improvements.

Overall there were solid increases in Telstra from a gender diversity perspective. For women in the leadership ‘pipeline’ (general managers, area managers and managers), total share of promotions grew steadily from 29% in 2006 to 41% in 2009. Representation of women on the CEO Leadership Team increased from 6% to 31% and the number of women corporate officers has grown from 3% to 35% during that same time period. Quite a remarkable achievement.

But the award is testament to a truly unique approach to the problem. It has demonstrated courage to tackle the men’s issue as well as courage to implement gender diversity goals and targets – a first for an Australian organisation to report on. It is interesting to see the debate in the Australian media on this issue. It appears they don’t even realise one of their own major organisations is leading the way!

The task now for Telstra is to continue to build upon the hard work and momentum their gender diversity strategies and initiatives have already achieved. The company is still at the beginning of the journey as the maintenance of awareness and development is a constant in business.