Fair Play: 5 Tips for Making Diversity Programs Stick

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Group of diverse business colleagues enjoying successBy Elizabeth Harrin (London)

We all know that diverse teams provide a operational advantage: different opinions lead to creative problem solving and a balanced, comprehensive view of work challenges. But how do you encourage diversity, and get managers involved in initiatives set in the boardroom – or indeed become involved yourself? The Glass Hammer asked five experts for their advice on how to make diversity programmes stick.

1. Don’t be scared of diversity!

“A key to treating employees fairly is to understand that diversity is something to be embraced and not something to shy away from, fear, or reject,” says Julia Mendez Fuentes, PHR, CELS, Director, Workforce Compliance and Diversity Solutions, for talent management company Peopleclick Authoria. She suggests that diversity training is one way to give middle managers the tools they need to ensure they treat their employees fairly, so if you are offered the chance to go on a course, take it. “Middle managers should definitely be trained regarding compliance issues such as accommodations for persons with disabilities and religious beliefs.”

However, don’t worry about having to single-handedly tackle problems that arise as a result of having a diverse workforce. “As far as handling complaints or issues involved with diversity, typically this is handled by someone within the Human Resources or Legal departments who is properly trained on how to keep track of the issues and is knowledgeable on ways that the issues can be resolved,” explains Fuentes.

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Women in Technology: Staying Technical and the Importance of Being an Expert

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Nicki HeadshotBy Nicki Gilmour, Founder and CEO of theglasshammer.com

This is the second article in this series, investigating why staying technical is important on the path to promotion – either as an executive or an eventual board member. Don’t forget to register for our upcoming panel discussion and networking event for women in technology on July 8th at 5.30pm.

According to the Anita Borg Institute report Senior Technical Women: A Profile of Success [PDF] by Dr. Caroline Simard, the numbers of senior women on the technical path vs. the management path don’t really correspond with the numbers of men in similar positions.

“We find that senior technical women are significantly more likely to be in a manager position (36.9%) than are men (19%); conversely, men at the high level are significantly more likely to be in an individual contributor position (IC) (80.6%) than are women (63.1%).”

What’s the reason for this disparity, and is it cause for alarm? At first glance, this data seems encouraging as women are making headway as managers in the technology space. Further investigation would reveal, however, that “management” means project management – not executive management. The Anita Borg Institute discovered that women are being led away from being technical innovators and instead are being heavily encouraged to manage people and processes instead of continuing to code and program – despite their degree training. The report explains:

“Interestingly, more women in the IC track (26.8%) reported having a non-STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) degree than women within the management track (12.5%) – which shows that women in the management track have a high level of technical expertise.”

This same report states “60.2% of senior men describe themselves as an ‘innovator,’ versus just 38.1 percent of senior women.” There was a perception by the respondents of innovation as a masculine quality. On the other hand, while the majority of senior women felt they were not innovators, more than half did see themselves as risk-takers – about the same amount as senior men.

I think that there are three clear factors why women drop off the technical path.

  • Cultural messaging of what is “means” to be a techie.
  • The perception of the isolation of coding as a full time job.
  • The lack of support from most companies to keep women technical.

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Funding: Why money is missing when it comes to creating and sustaining female leaders in high tech

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Nicki HeadshotBy Nicki Gilmour, CEO and Founder of theglasshammer.com (New York City)

Part 1 of a 2 part series on “Why women should stay technical,” an introduction to our upcoming event Women in IT: Staying Technical and Getting to the Top, held in conjunction with Goldman Sachs and Accenture.

Recently, the New York Times reported on the lack of access to funding for women playing in the start-up environment of Silicon Valley. The numbers reveal just how underrepresented both professional executive women and female entrepreneurs are, citing that women account for just 6% of CEOs of the 100 top tech companies. Women create only 8% of venture capital money to fund tech companies – despite women owned businesses providing 40% of the US’s company revenues. In fact, in 2009, Techcrunch’s The Funded list included only one woman.

Why are the numbers so low? Well, it seems to be a function of critical mass (or rather the lack of it). The same dynamics keeping women out of the boardroom explain why women are not as easily funded in their businesses.

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Full disclosure: UK Government steps in to get more women into the boardroom

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iStock_000006712763XSmallBy Elizabeth Harrin (London)

UK companies may be required to report on their efforts to get more women into the boardroom. The Government has asked the Financial Reporting Council, which is currently consulting on its UK Corporate Governance Code, to consider adding in a requirement to get companies to disclose what they are doing to increase the number of women in senior management roles. It’s not exactly clear what would then happen to the data disclosed, but it’s likely to be used to highlight firms that aren’t making enough of an effort.

“Britain needs more women in the boardroom,” says Harriet Harman, Minister for Women and Equalities. “Too many British boardrooms are still no-go areas for women. Women are important consumers and employees. We’ll never get a proper meritocracy or truly family-friendly workplaces from male dominated boards.”

Harman’s proposals have been backed by the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. “We all recognise the value of strong role models for women in all walks of life – and there are many in politics, the arts, public services, sport and the third sector,” he said. “But there are too few in Britain’s boardrooms. When more than half of graduates are women, it is completely unacceptable that some of our top 100 public companies have not a single woman on their boards – and that none at all have a majority of women on their boards. A new principle in the governance code on diversity would build on the provisions in the equality bill, which allow employers to take positive action when recruiting to balance their workforce.”

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Gender parity in the workplace: Is it only a matter of CEOs believing the business case for change?

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Nicki HeadshotBy Nicki Gilmour, CEO and Founder of theglasshammer.com (New York City)

Yes and no. Yes we need all CEO’s to understand the bottom line impact of this productivity issue on their businesses. However that is only part of the solution as strategic plans must be designed and implemented with some sort of a target attached and consequences if targets are continually missed- like any other business function.

The 2010 Catalyst awards dinner showcased their latest research Pipeline’s Broken Promise, which is an excellent piece of work. The new study highlights that men have higher starting salaries in their first post-MBA job than women even after taking into account number of years of prior experience, time since MBA, first post-MBA job level, global region, and industry. These salary differences are not due to different aspirations or parenthood.

Career profiles were examined from 9,927 alumni who graduated between 1996 and 2007 from MBA programs at 26 leading business schools in Asia, Canada, Europe, and the United States. As the Catalyst report points out, the premise of the promise of gender parity occurring sooner rather than later is that the pipeline for women into senior leadership is robust. After all, over the past 15 years, women have been graduating with advanced professional degrees in record numbers – often equal to or even surpassing the rates for men, swelling women’s representation in managerial ranks. Concurrently, companies implemented diversity and inclusion programs to eliminate structural biases and foster women’s full participation in leadership. However the percentage growth of women in senior leadership positions would suggest otherwise. Hence the promise is broken that there is a pipeline of women coming up through the ranks.

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Women at the Top of Tech: Two New Reports Released by the Anita Borg Institute

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anitaborgreportsBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Two new reports published yesterday detail the challenges faced by women at the top of the tech industry, as well as practical steps to keep them there. The Anita Borg Institute, a non-profit organization working within the technology industry and academia to make the tech field more welcoming to women, has released Senior Technical Women: A Profile of Success and the 2009 Technical Executive Forum report on the Recruitment, Retention, and Advancement of Technical Women: Barriers to Cultural Change in Corporations.

Senior Technical Women details the challenges faced by women who have climbed to the top of their companies – and discusses how they managed to succeed despite these challenges. According to the report, “women hold 24% of technology jobs, yet represent half the total workforce. This underrepresentation persists even though the demand for technical talent remains high…” The report, based on a 2008 “survey of 1,795 technical men and women at seven high-technology companies in Silicon Valley,” focuses on the responses given by senior technical women – 4% of the individuals who participated in the study.

“This report asks ‘what about the women who beat the odds and made it to the senior levels?’” explained Dr. Caroline Simard, Vice President of Research and Executive Programs. Dr. Simard went on to explain that the report should be useful to companies looking to retain senior technical women as well as for young and mid-career women looking for advice as they work to advance into leadership roles.

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Debating Transparency and Valuation – Theglasshammer.com’s Second Women on the Buy-Side Panel Discussion

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By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Yesterday, theglasshammer.com hosted its second Women on the Buy-Side networking breakfast and panel discussion. Nicki Gilmour, founder and CEO of theglasshammer.com, began the event by explaining that the purpose of the gathering was to draw together top women in the investment management industry to discuss the topic of risk and its implications on performance for 2010.

Gilmour later explained that by getting top women together, we can continue to create a critical mass of female leaders in the industry and “change the perception of what a leader looks like.” For the women themselves, this was an event where “they are not the only woman in the room.”

Holly H. Miller, founding partner of Stone House Consulting, LLC, moderated the panel on the “massively broad topic called transparency,” today’s new “buzz word.” Panelists included Michelle McCarthy, Chief Risk Officer at Russell Investments, Virginia Volpe, CFA, Director of Hedge Funds, Global Transaction Services at Citi, Diane Garnick, Investment Strategist at Invesco, and Mara Topping, Partner, Investment Funds Group, D.C. Office of White & Case.

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Who Is Holding the Purse-Strings at Foundations and Endowments?

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pursestringsBy Gigi DeVault (Munich)

Endowments and foundations need to do well in order to do good. The funds of endowments and foundations did very well—prior to 2009. Now, Chief Investment Officers of these institutional funds must forge strategies that can get the funds back on track and safeguard their missions.

Reihan Salan, who writes a weekly column for Forbes and is a fellow at the New American Foundation, believes that women will play a leading role in the restoration of a healthy financial realm. Salan believes the shift of power to women has taken a revolutionary tack “dramatically accelerated by the economic crisis.” As the woman who is managing the clean-up of the Countrywide Mortgage mess for Bank of America, Barbara Desoer may be closer to the thrust of that revolutionary tack than most. She believes that men in finance suffer from “the bravado effect”—the excessive risk-taking, independent mentality of a trader.

Here we have three parts to a new equation: More women are taking the lead in the investment world; leaders are needed who understand the power of collaboration, coordinated communication, and studied, ethical decision-making; and endowments and foundations are lining up for more moderate pathways to future earnings.

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Do Millennial Women Truly Have It All?

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genYoptimisticBy Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

It seems as if young working women not only feel as if they can have it all, but a shockingly high percentage reports that they do have it all. According to recent research by Accenture, young professional women ages 22-35 – otherwise known as “millennial women” – believe they will have rewarding careers in equal balance with fulfilling personal lives, despite a rough economy and corporate structures that are still lacking in their understanding of women’s dual obligations in the workplace and at home.

The Millennial Women Workplace Success Index marked the results of an online study taken by 1,000 millennial women currently employed full-time in the U.S. According to the index, 94 percent believe they will achieve a work/life balance and even more astonishing, almost half (46 percent) of the women surveyed believe their work life and personal life are in equal balance.

Accenture’s U.S. Human Capital and Diversity Managing Director Lamae Allen deJongh was extremely surprised by the index’s findings- as were many, but she does not believe that the statistics are the result of naiveté on behalf of young or inexperienced women. “I think the results speak to the high degree of confidence of millennial women,” deJongh said. “And because of their confidence, their work/life balance goals are realistic. Having a satisfying professional life and a gratifying personal life is important to them; it exemplifies the fact that they believe they can have it all.”

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What are You Worth? Root Causes of the Wage Gap

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wage gapBy Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

Novations, a highly regarded global talent development firm with over thirty years of research and development experience, recently conducted a research study that found – and there’s no surprise here – that women are still underrepresented in strategic and leadership roles. Even more disheartening, the firm’s findings also show that women self-rate their contribution lower than men.

The study and its findings were compiled into a white paper entitled Close the Gap: Overcoming Gender Differences in the Workplace and according to Novations, the firm set out not only to investigate these discrepancies, but also to explore the root causes in order to adequately provide women with the information they need to assist them in developing needed skills and overcoming perceived shortcomings. The data used in the study was culled from hundreds of companies who provided information regarding the development of over 2,000 managers and direct reports, though none of these companies wished to comment publicly on their participation in the study.

A Woman’s Worth: According to Women

Much of the findings in the study simply reiterate what too many women already know: even though women comprise over 55 percent of the labor force, attain 50 percent of the undergraduate business degrees obtained each year, and also hold more than half of all the managerial and professional positions in U.S. businesses, they account for just over 9 percent of top executives and just over 15 percent of corporate officers.

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