Measure of Success – Global Gender Equality Initiative to be Launched at Davos

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Beautiful business woman with colleagues in line at the backBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“Gender equality needs to be a strategic priority for organizations. It demands all of the rigor companies usually display when pursuing business-critical objectives and the full commitment of top leadership,” said Aniela Unguresan, co-founder (along with Nicole Schwab) of The Gender Equality Project, a new benchmarking and certification initiative backed by the World Economic Forum and several multinational corporations.

According to Unguresan, the goal of The Gender Equality Project is to enable the world’s largest firms to, both quantitatively and qualitatively, measure progress toward gender equality. What makes The Gender Equality Project stand out, she explained, is that it enables participating firms not only to measure their own progress, but also to accelerate the pace of change by implementing a standardized assessment methodology that can be applied across different industries and regions. This assessment methodology will serve as a basis for the first global certification system in gender equality.

“It’s our experience within the corporate environment that what gets measured gets done,” she explained. By measuring and comparing their progress toward defined goals, just like any other strategic initiative, companies can begin to make headway in the global problem of gender inequality in the workplace. After the launch of its assessment methodology, The Gender Equality project will make available a self-assessment tool and will put in place a global certification system– a veritable stamp of approval for gender equality.

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Key Issues and Developments for Women Managers in Asia

Modern Asian BusinesswomanContributed by Professor Chris Rowley, Director, Centre for Research on Asian Management, City University, UK and Director of Research and Publications, HEAD Foundation, Singapore

As we sit amongst the wreckage of the post-2008 ‘credit crunch’ and global financial crisis and consequent economic mess, several other business and management shibboleths have also seemingly come crashing down. These include those such as ‘the war for talent’, ‘work-life balance’, ‘managing diversity’ and so on. Some commentators may now argue these are less important. However, our all too common ethnocentricity may blind us to a clearer view of the situation. I will use the case of women managers in Asia to illustrate this. After all, we can learn more about our own systems and practices by looking at those of others.

Asia’s rapid economic growth led to a significant increase in demand for managers and professionals. Indeed, in parts of Asia women’s labour force participation rates ranked highly, aided by better educational participation levels and falling fertility rates requiring the best use of all talent. It seemed that as women became more educated and qualified for managerial positions, their numbers would rise. However, this is not an unalloyed picture of progress.

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Diversity 2.0 Means Fixing the Systems, Not the Women

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Nicki GilmourBy Nicki Gilmour, Founder and CEO of The Glass Hammer

Where does the fine line lie between lip service and action when it comes to gender and other diversity initiatives? Can institutionalized behaviors be changed? Is there hope that women can reach critical mass in leadership positions in the middle, upper, and most senior echelons of business?

Well, research conducted in 2010 shows that we are still not hitting the 30% mark needed to make a difference. Many firms have stated diversity and gender parity as a goal (let’s call that diversity 1.0) but have not understood what it takes to manage the whole notion of assimilation throughout the processes of the organization. Then they wonder why the needle isn’t moving.

It is my observation that many companies are still trying to fix the women and don’t understand that team dynamics at play may undermine their good intentions when good processes are actually needed to realize the successful integration of talented people irrespective of gender, ethnicity, etc. Programs that take a critical mass approach to gender inclusion will be more successful.

For example, Renée Haugerud, founder and chief investment officer of the $1.1bn hedge fund Galtere, recently talked to the Financial Times about founding, along with along with Lauren Templeton, Lauren Templeton Capital Management, a multi-disciplinary trading program at the University of Tennessee, designed to represent a female perspective. Haugerud expressed the need to understand brain chemistry differences in trading and is adamant that critical mass is needed to keep women trading. As the FT quotes:

“One or two women on a desk of 20 men is not enough, because they will just learn to blend in.” That is in the unlikely event they manage to stay on the team: “Women in hedge funds are steered into research and sales – you have to fight to stay in the trading arena.”

An Issue that Crosses Industries

We discovered a similar issue with women in technology who are encouraged to stop programming and move into project management. The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology and The National Center for Women & Information Technology did some research around this (and, in fact, we held an event for 200 technical women to inspire them to stay tech-focused). As with trading it seems, there is definitely a broken pipeline issue, as women entering the industry doesn’t seem to guarantee they will stay there.

Putting women on the replacement slate as candidates is also a work in progress and snapshots of figures of women in leadership vary year on year. It’s affecting women in the university system as well. Dr. Lucie Lapovsky, Board Member of The White House Project, and Co-Editor of TWHP’s recent Benchmarking Women’s Leadership report, says:

“The White House Project’s comprehensive Benchmarking Women’s Leadership research released in 2009 shows that there has been no change in the numbers of women college presidents in the last 10 years. Because women now head up some of the most prestigious of these, it’s a surprising figure. But currently over half of all college Presidents and Chancellors are over 61 and will be retiring. After a presentation on the Benchmarks report, those attending a specially convened American Council on Education meeting to explore the leadership issue, the group reaffirmed its commitment for ACE to continue its work to get more.”

The Connection Between Leadership and Resources

Leadership plays a big role as resources are needed to move the needle.

Call it being gender bilingual or having Gender IQ, but the fact remains some people still don’t understand that its not about convincing senior executive management and others that forcing women to act more like men in the organization will bring the best results for the business.

Each firm has its own DNA of course, and a deep understanding of what the strategic and business outcomes should look like around gender parity is the first step. Operational commitment and metrics to plot progress is necessary – with managers leading from the front, incentivized to do so and supported by HR, not the other way around.

Laura Liswood, author of The Loudest Duck and Goldman Sachs senior advisor, draws parallels to market failure and lack of gender equity in her recent Huffington Post article. She writes, “Leaders make things change, either for the better or worse by their action or inaction. Gender equity does not happen because it is wished to be so. Leaders must make it so.” She continues:

“Gender inequity is also about efficiency. Often managers are not rewarded for the ability to recruit, retain, and promote their diverse talent. Short-term awards of compensation are often focused on profits without the calculus of costs of retention, loss of female talent, and dissatisfied women who ‘off ramp’ from one employer and “on ramp” to another with more opportunities.”

I recently saw Laura speak at the Goldman Sachs Brokering Change: A Wall Street Multicultural Women’s Exchange Conference. Leadership support is evident in Goldman Sachs, creating empowering dialogues for the women themselves and implementing processes that level the playing field, reduce bias and create a system that is meritocratic in its principles. Are these systems fool proof? Of course not – there are many human factors such as the deep unconscious biases that are very hard to remove entirely. Reduce yes, eliminate probably not (until Apple invents an app for that, perhaps). The point is, this is diversity 2.0 in action. Advanced support around fixing the systems not the women is what all firms should be thinking about in 2011.

Support to Grow and Thrive

Talent management means not only attracting and hiring the best individuals, but creating an environment where that talent can grow and thrive. But what you want and what your company has planned for you may be two different futures, according to the Harvard Business Review article on “How to Keep Your Top Talent.” According to the report, 1 in 5 people think their aspirations are not in line with their company’s plan for them. And, the article states, by the end of 2009, 21% of employees could be described as highly disengaged – “those most critical of their coworkers, admittedly reducing their effort, and looking for new employment opportunities.” According to the HBR, only 8% of employees were highly disengaged in the first half of 2007. Numerous recent reports show that employee engagement is not improving. One reason for this is that today’s high performers want more from their employer – they want to work for a company that stands for the same values they do.

Our new site, www.evolvedemployer.com allows you to learn more about a company’s value set and culture before you join – including its efforts toward diversity and inclusion, sustainability, work/life issues, etc – which is good for you and for the company. For example, the companies that do not openly provide and encourage flexwork policies may risk losing high performers, as flex work is evolving from an almost exclusively female perk designed around childcare needs to a work-force-wide expected feature – which bodes well for its ultimate acceptance at any workplace.

Underscoring the importance of progressive workforce benefits, this year in the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For survey, there is a “perkfinder” function which allows you to identify programs and policies around flex-work, same sex benefits, compressed work weeks, job sharing, and even gym membership.

Companies Need to Measure Their Progress

My advice to firms that are trying to get results but feel it is not happening as quickly as they would like is to examine your culture formally with an audit. Find out what your employees really think about their roles and the compensation, review, and promotion system attached to them.

Jane Weiss, co-founder of Women’s Roadmap explains, “Culture audits provide an organization with valuable information about what policies and practices exist in key areas that support an organization’s performance and how effective those initiatives and programs are aligned – or not – with the real day-to-day experiences of employees.”

Here are a two issues to consider:

  • How does management communicate?
    In a recent FT article, Lucy Kellaway compares Statestreet’s hyperbole in its layoff holiday message with Gawker’s honest staff communication around management changes. Everything starts with communication – what is the messaging to the women in the firm?
  • How useful are the networks, affinity groups, and mentoring programs?
    And if there isn’t a grassroots effort, is it because the people in the firm are scared to stick their necks out? Proclaimed meritocracies are sometimes institutionalized Darwinesque cultures that are far from level playing fields. 2011 will see many discussions around the improvement of sponsorship and mentor arrangements for women. For example, as Catalyst and HBR have recently shown us, the benefits of mentoring have been significantly fewer for women than for men.

Culture Means Unwritten Rules

Culture is a tricky one. It’s sometimes invisible to the naked eye. Ann Daly, one of our contributing experts, encourages women to know their workplace culture, so as to play within the boundaries and win. In a recent blog post, she explains:

“Culture is the web of signs and symbols that enmeshes us so completely that we imagine it is inevitable, or “natural.” Everything from language to images and institutions to rituals are part of this deep structure for our everyday lives. That’s why patriarchy is so hard to pin down, let alone change.”

Firms need to understand the strategic value of a totally inclusive culture and the commitment to see it through just as if were any other business objective.

For deep change to happen, objectives must be set, measured, and made public. For example, when Working Mother Media formulates its best companies list, it asks companies the following questions:

  • How many women corporate executive hires year on year
  • How many women are participating in management or leadership training
  • What % of women are participating in formalized executive succession planning as a % of women and as a % of total staff
  • How many women were promoted last year who utilized a formal flexible work arrangement (if you have a flex-work scheme)
  • Are there formal compensation policies reward managers who help women advance?

Women should be able to ask these questions of their own companies.

There are the unwritten rules that, for better or worse, are ingrained into business culture historically. Make sure everyone knows how to play the game, or risk watching celebrated hires leave in significant numbers, putting us back to square one – and no one likes to have the same boring conversation over and over again. Remember, as Albert Einstein once said, the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Have a great festive season and here is to Diversity 2.0 in 2011.

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Leadership Gender Quotas – The Research Perspective

boardroom womanBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Has the time come for bolder policies for diversity at the top of corporations?

That’s what was discussed last Friday at a conference hosted by the Athena Center for Leadership Studies at Barnard College and the Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Center for Leadership and Ethics at Columbia Business School.

The first half of the conference focused on academic research on the subject, performed by social scientists and researchers from top business schools. The second half focused on the practitioner perspective (check back next week for another article discussing the practical reality of corporate gender targets).

By and large, the researchers agreed that a more targeted approach to gender balance in corporate leadership would be beneficial. Kathryn Kolbert, Director of the Athena Center for Leadership Studies and Professor of Leadership Studies at Barnard, said, “When you change the people at the table, you change the conversation.”

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How Do Team Sports Help Develop Girls into Future Leaders?

iStock_000007924915XSmallBy Stephanie Wilcox (Middlefield, CT)

Making it to the top in sports takes a lot of blood, sweat and tears. Making it to the top in business often takes the same three components. In fact, many of today’s female executives say playing sports taught them about competition and teamwork, which translates to their career. Is this merely an anecdote, or do sports really help make girls into future business leaders? One former executive gives a resounding “Yes!”

“I believe my basketball experience can be directly linked to my business experience and success,” said Mary Claire Bonner, who retired last March from Aetna. Before retiring, the New York resident was Senior Vice President of local and regional business (LRB) for Aetna, working directly for the company’s president and “running a large business that concentrated on small and mid-size employer health benefit needs in more than 30 states.” Reflecting on the position, Bonner discovered that her favorite part about leading others was creating a strong team. The skills to be good at this, Bonner noted, started in fifth grade when she joined the basketball team.

“Playing basketball changed me as a person,” said Bonner, who played from grade school through her junior year at one of Penn State’s Commonwealth campuses. “Because I was a point guard, I had to lead in setting up plays. We learned that it’s hard to lose, but losing makes you work harder. You have to be smarter; have a better strategy.”

Bonner points out that developing a strategy on a sports team is like the business concept of developing a strategy, being smart and working hard to win. Others have recognized the same parallel of sports and high achievers and are finding ways to encourage sports involvement. According to the Hall Of Fame Network magazine, the Women’s Sports Foundation, started by female tennis champion Billie Jean King, became established because, “Sport is where our children learn about teamwork, goal setting and the pursuit of excellence. In an economic environment where the quality of our life is dependent on two-income families, our daughters cannot be less prepared for the highly competitive workplace than our sons.”

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Getting Results – Performance vs. Putting in the Hours

iStock_000008472982XSmallBy Elizabeth Harrin (London)

“In my 20 years of experience both as a practitioner as a VP of Operations & Supply Chain and as a Business Consultant and entrepreneur across multiple industries and globally, I’ve found that those work environments focused on results over presence are at least 80% more likely to achieve bottom line results,” says Lisa Anderson, President of LMA Consulting Group, Inc. “It is amazing how much effort and hours seem to be valued in the traditional business environment yet they have no correlation to business results.”

Results are what keep businesses in business, so it’s strange to think that the Results-Only Work Environment, or ROWE, movement is a relatively new thing. Developed by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, ROWE is different to flexible working policies: it says that you do what you need to do in order to achieve the specified results.

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5 Ways You Can Be a Better Manager – It’s All About Personality

iStock_000003583699XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Recent studies show that employee engagement is way down, and that many employees are looking for new opportunities – or they intend to, as soon as the economy picks up steam. But don’t worry! A number of studies have also revealed what these employees are looking for, and what can motivate them to stick around – good management. This means a manager with high EQ, who understands personal motivations, and who is looking out for their employees best interests and development.

Working now to improve your relationships with your employees, as well as providing tailored learning and development opportunities for them, can help stem future job losses – as well as build a more productive and motivated team today.

According to Bob Kreisberg, Founder, President, and CEO of OPUS Productivity, the best way to strengthen workplace relationships is to delve into your employees’ personality profile. According to Kreisberg, “If you understand the strengths of that person, you will understand what motivates them.” Here’s how.

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Boomerang Pipeline Program Pays for Itself

By Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

Just three hours after opening registration for the 2010 Accounting MOVE Project, which measures and supports the advancement of women at public accounting firms, a firm by the name of Rothstein Kass registered to participate and initially, this is what grabbed Joanne Cleaver’s attention. Cleaver is the president and founder of the research firm Wilson-Taylor Associates, and in partnership with the American Society of Women Accountants (ASWA) and the American Woman’s Society of Certified Public Accountants (AWSCPA), she has put out the yearly Accounting MOVE report. The annual report highlights the best and the brightest in the accounting profession, while also shedding light on the challenges women in the industry face and the challenges firms face when trying to engage, retain, and advance these women.

During the interview process with members of Rothstein Kass, Cleaver quickly realized that the firm had something special. “As we got to know them and understand their culture, we realized that they were very purposeful and strategic in how they chose to advance their programs,” Cleaver said. “Admittedly their programs are still in the process of rippling through to the top levels. Less than 10 percent of principles at the firm are women – that’s below the norm, but their pipeline is filled with more talented, qualified women than other firms and the number of female principles is set to change in the very near future.”

The reason for this is what Cleaver likes to refer to not as the silver bullet, but as the “silver cannonball.” Three of the biggest challenges accounting firms face are increasing revenue, increasing the number of clients, and retaining women in the pipeline. In the accounting industry women are leaving in droves at the cusp of becoming partner and Rothstein Kass’ Rainmakers Roundtable not only addresses all three of these problems, but it’s a women’s pipeline development program that pays for itself.

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Brokering Change: Goldman Sachs’ Interbank Conference for Multicultural Women

Business meeting.By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

On Friday, Goldman Sachs hosted its third annual interbank conference for multicultural women in the financial services, Brokering Change. The event, which featured distinguished speakers on the subject of diversity and inclusion, was opened by Edith Cooper, Goldman Sachs’ Managing Director and Global Head of Human Capital Management.

Cooper said, “To be the best we have to have diversity – it’s a business imperative.” She continued, “And financial services in the US will not be the best unless we embrace differences.”

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What Does the Shift in Gender Roles Mean for Women in the Workforce?

Family at homeBy Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

In 2009 the Families and Work Institute quietly released a study entitled Times are Changing: Gender and Generation at Work and Home [PDF] that dropped quite a few unexpected bombshells. The study’s findings came as a result of the Institute’s 2008 National Study of the Changing Workforce, which found that millennial women are seeking out jobs with more responsibility; many are earning more than their spouses; and traditional gender roles are changing, among other surprising facts.

Since 1997, the desire to move to jobs with more responsibility among young workers has increased, with this increase being greater for young women—from 54 to 66 percent in 2008. Essentially there is no longer any difference between young women and men in wanting jobs with greater responsibility. The study also found that there is no difference between young women with and without children in their desire to move to jobs with more responsibility. Whereas 60 percent of women under 29 with children and 78 percent of women without children wanted jobs with more responsibility in 1992, today the percentages are 69 percent with children and 66 percent without. This is most likely because millennial women (those under 29, according to the study) are now able to take on more demanding jobs thanks to a slowly evolving shift in how traditional gender roles are perceived and an increase in the amount of time their spouses are spending with their children.

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