By Elizabeth Harrin (London)
“People would love to work in their pajamas, on their own schedule and get around the consistency of 9-5,” says James Sinclair, CEO of OnSite Consulting, a U.S. based consulting company that focuses on insolvency, distress, and concept repositioning, with a mission to help remote workers be more productive. “However, remote or flex working is wholly dependent on the employee and their ability to work in a quasi-autonomous environment and use it to their advantage. If it is about working just enough to get by then it won’t work.”
Sinclair’s assessment is common to many employers: flexible working including the option of working from home is a leap of faith. However, OnSite Consulting has made it work – and in fact, from the company’s inception, its founder decided against bricks-and-mortar and created a remote workforce instead. Sinclair is clear that a remote workforce can generate a return on investment. The remote workforce model saves his company $1million a year in overheads. “For me, only with the advent of group collaboration tools, cloud based document storage and VOIP can I actually ensure that my employees are completing their work and I am constantly managing my workforce,” he says.
Sinclair judges his teams on their results, not hours spent at their desks, and this is a major change in thinking for many organisations. “For some employees, they love this approach and can speak openly about when they are unavailable because their confidence in their position and their completion of assignments speaks for itself,” Sinclair explains. He adds that even if employees are tied to their desks there is the expectation that they will carry out some personal tasks like paying bills during work time – simply because they are at work during business hours. “Remote working has allowed open discussion regarding personal time and what is expected,” he says.
In Case You Missed It: Business News Round-Up
NewsBritish banks produced encouraging Q2 results, mainly due to a reduction in impairment charges and booming retail and commercial business. The Bank of England and the European Central Bank left benchmark interest rates unchanged. THe ECB president announced eurozone economic recovery “surpasses expectations”. In the US, non-farm payroll figures raise the prospect that the Fed will reinstate a quantitative easing programme to stimulate growth. And Chinese manufacturing output grew at a slower rate in Q2 and predictions for Q3 are for further slowing.
Economic Backdrop
Read more
Three Measures of Accountability Key to Sustainability Initiatives Moving Forward, Say CEOs
Corporate SustainabilityIn June, Accenture released “the largest CEO-based study on sustainability of its kind to date,” based on more than 100 in-depth interviews with world business leaders and an online survey of 766 UN Global Compact member CEOs.
The study, entitled “A New Era of Sustainability,” [PDF] reveals the attitudes toward sustainability held by top leadership in a variety of sectors, including “automotive, communications, consumer goods and services, energy, financial services, metals & mining and utilities.”
Said Peter Lacy, UNGC-Accenture CEO Study Project Lead 2010 and Managing Director, Accenture Sustainability Services, Europe, Africa, Middle East and Latin America:
Read more
35 under 35: Carol Paterson Smith, Head of Hedge Fund Clients at Rothschild Blackpoint
35 Under 35Carol Paterson Smith has one key piece of advice for women in business – and it’s a good one.
And, as a hugely successful and influential woman in the City of London, her words of wisdom carry some weight. Paterson Smith is head of hedge fund clients for Rothschild Blackpoint and, in her early 30s, is one of the City’s most connected and stylish players.
Early days
“When I graduated, I knew I wanted to do something intellectually stimulating and I also knew I wanted to move into sales. I’ve always been very commercially focused – I was an Avon lady in my mid teens. When I was 18 I managed a sales team in Edinburgh. My mum runs a business and is very successful; she’s a great role model who has always encouraged me.”
Read more
Five Innovative Ways to Improve Gender Diversity at Your Company
Industry Leaders, LeadershipWhat makes a firm’s gender diversity programming really work? According to Jacqueline Akerblom, National Managing Partner for Women’s Initiatives and Programs at Grant Thornton LLP, it comes down to culture change. For the Global 6 accounting firm’s workforce, she said, diversity initiatives are “fully ingrained into the culture of the firm.”
But it wasn’t always like that. Six or seven years ago, Akerblom said, the company noticed it was losing a lot of its female employees. Recognizing the value of its women, the firm set out to keep them. Since 2004, when its women’s initiative was launched, the number of the women partners at the firm has increased by 184 percent, growing from 31 to 88.
How did they do it? Innovation. Here are five ways the company has succeeded – and your company can too.
Read more
Hard Questions: Why won’t we work for women?
Featured, News, Office PoliticsYou don’t have to look too far into management research to uncover that all the statistics point to one thing: we prefer to work for men. When Ella Edmonson Bell asked her MBA students whether they would rather work for a woman or a man, most of them said they’d prefer a male boss. When ForbesWoman asked their Facebook community the same thing, the answers were the same. Admitting our preferences doesn’t seem to be a problem – we’re happy to confess that we want to work for men – but why do we feel like that in the first place? What’s so problematic about working for a woman?
“One way of explaining this phenomenon is gender schemas,” says Dr. Birute Regine, a developmental psychologist and author of Iron Butterflies: Women Transforming Themselves and the World. “A gender schema is an unconscious cultural assumption we hold about men and women. One schema is that women are first assumed incompetent and therefore not leaders, whereas for men it’s the opposite – that they are first assumed competent until proven otherwise.”
The problem with ideologies of this type is that we don’t necessarily know that we have them, and they tend to be pervasive. “Both women and men hold these assumptions,” adds Dr. Regine. “So perhaps women prefer male bosses because they assume they are more competent, and don’t give women the same benefit of the doubt or confidence going in. Women bosses may not be as supportive because, even though they know that they themselves are competent, these schema lead them to assume that other women are not.”
Read more
Shaking Up Bankers’ Bonuses: New Legislation in the EU and UK
News“Since banks have failed to reform we are now doing the job for them,” says Arlene McCarthy, the vice chair of the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (ECON) and the woman who has just spearheaded new rules on bankers’ bonuses. “We have a duty as legislators to respond to the public’s concerns by voting in favour of these tough reforms to end the obscene bonus culture. At a time when the government is making substantial cuts, scaling back public services and support to families and businesses, our constituents expect banks to prioritise stability and lending over their own pay and perks. The banks have had two years since the 2008 financial crisis to do this and have failed to act, so now we will do the job for them.”
Gone are the unlimited cash bonuses and exceptional pension payments; in come rules about capping bonuses to salary and distributing shares instead of cash. Bankers might not be happy, but taxpayers will appreciate the shift towards a culture of transparency and accountability that focuses on repaying public loans.
Read more
Voice of Experience: Rebecca Macieira-Kaufmann, President, Citibank California
Voices of Experience“Helping others be the best they can be is a big motivator for me,” said Rebecca Macieira-Kaufmann, President of Citibank California.
She focuses on providing the best experience for the customers of Citibank, as well as supporting her team to ensure they have everything they need to win. She said, “Helping customers be financially successful and seeing the team succeed is very motivating. Nothing can make me happier – it’s why I come to work in the morning.”
According to Macieira-Kaufmann, her career has been driven by two things – her love of business and her love of travel. Speaking three languages and having lived in several countries, she said, “I’ve always loved business. I started four different companies – before college.”
“To sum it up, I’m a fourth generation San Franciscan with a global background.”
Read more
In Case You Missed It: Business News Round-Up
NewsThe US has avoided a double dip recession, although the Fed reported that the recovery has slowed. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision softened some provisions in Basel III, watering down earlier definitions of capital and including a long phase-in period to comply with new requirements about leverage and liquidity ratios. BP announced that Robert Dudley will replace Tony Hayword as its CEO.
Economic Backdrop
Read more
Take More (Calculated) Risks: Five Ways to Build Your Risk Instinct and Get Ahead
Next LevelAt The Glass Hammer’s recent panel on women in IT, several of the women spoke on the importance of taking calculated risks in order to get to the next level career-wise. But many women have a problem “sticking their neck out” and taking that big assignment. Why? Is it related a physiological or body-chemistry factor? Or is it about cultural conditioning?
One one hand, a 2009 study revealed that women with more testosterone take more risks than women with less testosterone. Maybe that’s a sign that risk-taking is related to physiology – and Sheila Kolhatkar’s NY Magazine article “What if Women Ran Wall Street” references several studies in favor of a physiological basis for risk-taking behavior. On the other hand, as Kolhatkar writes:
“[no one] would argue that all men are aggressive, egotistical, and stubborn—or that all women are conservative, rational, and levelheaded. And being reductionist about hormones and gender is a sure way to misjudge a complicated individual.”
Acknowledging that there are other factors at play in risk taking skills (like cultural, workplace, or family influence) means we can seek out ways to become better risk takers – and reach new levels of success in our careers. Here are our top five ways to nurture your ability to take risks.
Read more
Not Just Pajama Parties: Making Remote Working Work
Office Politics“People would love to work in their pajamas, on their own schedule and get around the consistency of 9-5,” says James Sinclair, CEO of OnSite Consulting, a U.S. based consulting company that focuses on insolvency, distress, and concept repositioning, with a mission to help remote workers be more productive. “However, remote or flex working is wholly dependent on the employee and their ability to work in a quasi-autonomous environment and use it to their advantage. If it is about working just enough to get by then it won’t work.”
Sinclair’s assessment is common to many employers: flexible working including the option of working from home is a leap of faith. However, OnSite Consulting has made it work – and in fact, from the company’s inception, its founder decided against bricks-and-mortar and created a remote workforce instead. Sinclair is clear that a remote workforce can generate a return on investment. The remote workforce model saves his company $1million a year in overheads. “For me, only with the advent of group collaboration tools, cloud based document storage and VOIP can I actually ensure that my employees are completing their work and I am constantly managing my workforce,” he says.
Sinclair judges his teams on their results, not hours spent at their desks, and this is a major change in thinking for many organisations. “For some employees, they love this approach and can speak openly about when they are unavailable because their confidence in their position and their completion of assignments speaks for itself,” Sinclair explains. He adds that even if employees are tied to their desks there is the expectation that they will carry out some personal tasks like paying bills during work time – simply because they are at work during business hours. “Remote working has allowed open discussion regarding personal time and what is expected,” he says.
Read more