Tag Archive for: Aoife Flood

Women at Work: The Importance of Strategic Support

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Aoife FloodContributed by Aoife Flood. Based in Dublin, Ireland, Aoife is Senior Manager of the Global Diversity and Inclusion Programme Office at PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited.

International Women’s Day is the perfect time to celebrate the many achievements of women, and think about what more can be done to help them achieve their career goals.

The good news: women are more confident and ambitious then ever. This is one of the findings of a new PwC report – Time to talk: what needs to change for women at work – which looks at the views of over 3,600 women around the world from employers representing 27 different industry sectors. We focused on women in the pipeline, aged 28-40, because it’s at this stage that we start to see female representation gaps widen and the challenges of combining personal and career priorities increase.

Leadership aspirations on the rise

Women are more career confident and ambitious than ever; 82% are confident in their ability to fulfil their career aspirations, 77% in their ability to lead, and 73% are actively seeking career advancement opportunities. Furthermore, they have strong leadership aspirations, with 75% of women saying it was important to them they reach the top of their chosen career, namely obtain a leadership position. Women are confident, ambitious and ready to progress.

But the survey also highlights we still have a long way to go and identifies three strategies which are essential to creating a more inclusive working environment. One of these strategies centers on the importance of strategic support, ultimately highlighting that support networks and advocacy go a long way. In a nutshell women need strategic support.

Women need strategic support to succeed

Think of this strategic support structure as a series of circles. In the middle is the individual woman: an ambitious skilled professional who needs the confidence to put herself forward to achieve her career and personal aspirations. Fundamental to this is the support she gets from the circles around her: her workplace and personal support networks.

Time to talk

In the workplace, she not only needs a manager who will help develop her talent and advocate on her behalf, but a series of informal and formal support people and programmes. She needs role models of both genders to look up to and learn from, mentors who help her navigate the path to success and sponsors who can push her to the next level. Personal experience has taught me just how critical sponsorship and advocacy is. The two biggest career milestones of my career, which involved me moving into new areas of the Human Capital spectrum in which I’d no previous experience, would simply not have happened without male sponsors who on each individual occasion were advocating that I was worth taking a chance on when I wasn’t in the room.

In the world outside of work, the third circle, she needs a supportive network, from parents to partner, and friends to peers, that reinforce her career ambitions and work life decisions. For example, women might need to enlist family members and other people to take on more home life or caregiving responsibilities in order to allow her to be successful at work. Interestingly, 84% of the women in our survey in a relationship identified as being part of a dual-career couple and 80% of the women in the survey said they have support from their family and/or partner in their career ambitions.

Self-advocacy pays off

Traditionally, women have been uncomfortable with self-promotion. Our research shows that when presented with a promotion opportunity, women are much more likely to expect to get a tap on the shoulder from their employer; expecting their hard work to be recognised as a symbol of their ambition to progress. They are also hesitant to put themselves forward where they feel they don’t meet all the job criteria for the role.

On the other-side of the spectrum, however, the good news is that women are definitely being more proactive in pursuing their career goals. They are more actively negotiating for and seeking out the experiences seen as critical to advancing their career such as high-visibility projects and stretch-assignments. And our survey showed it is working – there is a strong positive correlation that the women who negotiate are getting what they ask for.

Women won’t succeed without formal and informal support networks. In the workplace, the critical issue is finding the right mix of push and pull to help women simultaneously realise their personal and professional ambitions. And in their personal life, women need to discuss balancing their career and personal ambitious and asking for the help and support they need to achieve these.

Women are more confident and ambitious than ever before, but they need to be able to self-advocate and vocalise where they want to go. This blend of workplace and personal relationships and support is critical to supporting and reinforcing a woman’s self-belief and catalysing their self-advocacy.

My advice to women this International Women’s Day is:

1. Think about what you can do to solicit greater levels of strategic support.
2. Reframe the action of ‘self-promotion’, which has negative connotations for many women, as self-advocacy.
3. This month, put your hand up for a stretch assignment you may be hesitant about, say yes to something you are not sure you are ready for, or schedule time with your boss to make your career aspirations known. Realise the power of self-advocacy and relish the results.

I know it certainly has worked for me. I wouldn’t have been involved in leading this research publication if I didn’t put my hand up four years ago to lead PwC’s first global diversity thought leadership project, something I had never done before. That decision four years ago has led to me being involved in some of my most enjoyable and career developing work, in addition to raising my profile both within and beyond PwC.

Find out more about the importance of strategic support in PwC’s Time to talk: What has to change for women at work publication: www.pwc.com/timetotalk

Follow Aoife Flood at @aoiferflood.

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OP-ED: Employers must meet unprecedented female demand for international mobility – or face losing the war for talent

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Aoife FloodContributed by Aoife Flood. Based in Dublin, Ireland, Aoife is Senior Manager of the Global Diversity and Inclusion Programme Office at PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited.

Did you know that we are experiencing a time of unprecedented – and as yet unmet –demand from female employees for international mobility?

Across the world, forward-thinking organisations are using international mobility experiences to develop future leaders and advance the careers of key talent. Yet despite unprecedented female demand for these assignments, women currently only account for 20% of international assignees.To boost awareness of this shortfall, celebrate the international career aspirations of women and shine a light on what organisations can do to help make these aspirations a reality, PwC is marking this year’s International Women’s Day by launching a new research-based report called Moving women with purpose.

The report highlights a number of other critical diversity disconnects beyond the wide gap mentioned above between female demand for mobility and the reality in the workplace. For example, the overwhelming majority of multinationals in our study told us that global acumen skills were a critical requirement for advancement into leadership positions at their organisations (77%) – and 67% of large multinationals said they use global mobility to develop their succession pipeline of future leaders. Yet only 16% confirmed that the number of female international assignees in their organisation was proportionate to their overall percentage of female employees.

Furthermore, only 22% of global mobility executives stated that their organisations’ diversity and mobility strategies were aligned. Even more worryingly, the same small proportion – 22% – said they were actively trying to increase their levels of internationally mobile women.

So it’s clear that organisations are using international exposure and experiences to develop and advance their key talent. But it’s equally clear that more action is urgently needed to close a significant mobility gender gap. To do this, CEOs must drive an agenda where women are both aware of – and also actively provided with – the critical experiences they need to progress their careers, including international assignment opportunities. Also, to respond to and capitalise on the demographics of the modern workforce mobility, mobility programmes can simply not be operated in a silo. Global mobility, diversity and talent management strategies need to be connected and coordinated to support companies’ successful realisation of their international business and people strategies.

Another disconnect that PwC’s research report highlights is a glaring lack of role models for female mobility. Less than half of the women we interviewed agreed that their organisation has enough female role models with successful international assignment experiences. And this shortcoming is negatively impacting companies’ wider female talent and global mobility programmes. In fact, both women and global mobility executives identified it as the second highest barrier inhibiting more women from undertaking international assignments.

To close this role model gap, international employers need to use the mantra ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’ as a catalyst to drive more gender-inclusive mobility. The 71% of female millennials who actively desire international mobility want to be able to look up and around them to see women who have already had such experiences at their organisation, and who have seen their careers benefit as result. If women can’t see such role models, then organisations will struggle to attract or retain female talent, who will look to other employers to provide them with the international opportunities they crave.

Speaking personally, I was very lucky to undertake a mobility experience at the age of 25 to PwC’s Boston office – and for the near-decade since then I’ve worked with an international mandate. So I know just how life-changing a mobility experience can be. I can’t imagine any other way that I could have benefited from such rapid and profound personal and profession development in a relatively short space of time. This is one of the reasons why our report includes profiles of several female role models from PwC and other international businesses.

We’d also like to share with you our Moving women with purpose role model video, which showcases a diverse range of PwC women talking about their international mobility experiences. If you are a woman considering undertaking an international experience, or perhaps hesitating about taking the plunge, it’s definitely worth a watch.

In identifying and publicising female role models, it’s important that organisations ensure they don’t all look the same. This means asking yourself whether your role models will resonate with all your female talent – or just a select few. And to ensure the widest possible relevance, it’s vital to profile a diverse range of female role models. Examples may include women who have had international experience early in their careers, and those who have benefited from them when their careers are more established; women who have been deployed to geographically diverse markets, both developed and emerging; women who have been deployed on their own, with their partners and with their families; and women who have undertaken widely differing types of assignment – whether business- or developmental-focused, and whether long- or short-term.In the face of today’s fast-changing workforce demographics, global mobility strategies that do not fully include women will simply not deliver to their full potential. Organisations must take heed – and act in response.
We invite you to find out more by visiting www.pwc.com/movingwomenwithpurpose
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Mover & Shaker: Aoife Flood, Senior Manager, Global Diversity and Inclusion Program, PwC

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Aoife Flood“You don’t have to be 100 percent qualified in every aspect of a job to know you can do it well,” says Aoife Flood, senior manager for PwC’s global diversity and inclusion program. “You want to grow and be challenged, so don’t be afraid to put your hand up even if you don’t feel you tick every box.”

That philosophy has shaped Flood’s career at PwC. Unsure what she wanted to do, Flood began her career, as she puts it, “at the very bottom of the chain.” But for her, it became a powerful awakening. “I had struggled with my confidence, and at first I was intimidated by how highly educated all my colleagues were. But, I embarked on part-time studies and started to raise my hand to see if I could help design or deliver a program, and that’s when my trajectory started to shift.”

After five years with PwC Ireland, she saw an opening for a global opportunity but the position was more senior than hers. However, something about the job posting made her think the role was for her. She spoke to her director about why she thought she thought it would be a good fit. Though the director managed her expectations, she encouraged her to take a chance. Flood applied, creating an entire appendix that included a portfolio of all the work she’d done, and was offered what was described to her as a “courtesy interview,” given the effort she’d put in since she was the least-qualified candidate.

During the interview, Flood says she felt surprisingly calm, and they ended up talking for two hours. Three more interviews followed and she secured the position, which started with a six-month international assignment in Boston. “It was the first time I took a really brave step, and I still sometimes wonder who that person was,” she says.

Only 25 at the time, she had never lived outside her family home much less lived abroad. Once she arrived, it proved tougher than she had imagined as it was a new role that didn’t have a large team, so at times Flood felt very isolated.

“Through that experience I realized how it feels to be brave, which has made me less career risk averse. In fact, now I grow bored when I’m inside my comfort zone. I found out that variety is the spice of life in my career.”

She subsequently moved into her next global role, her first management position and then moved into global diversity. With every role at PwC, Flood feels she has had the opportunity to facilitate positive cultural change which is very important to her.

Growing Through New Assignments

Not only did that first global experience earn her a coveted position, it earned Flood her first sponsor as well. The initial interviewer, Coeni Van Beek, became the global ethics and business conduct leader at PwC and continued to monitor her progress. After three weeks of being in Boston, he told her that she was already outperforming what he had expected.

“I will make sure you’re a manager by the time you finish this tour of duty,” he said, and followed through on the promise by advocating for Flood when she was interviewing for her next position. “The team had concerns since I didn’t have any technical expertise, but he told them that they needed to take a chance on me and would not regret it.”

Right now, Flood is excited about a recent thought leadership research project she delivered focused on the female millennial, having led the project from initial concept through execution. “As a millennial woman it’s fascinating to take something from my own experience and help shape the end deliverable.”

In her current role, she also co-authors PwC’s Gender Agenda blog. Flood identifies that being positioned as a global expert with a strong external profile has also had a catapulting effect on her internal profile. While she had a very strong internal global network at PwC based on those she had worked with during her career, this external profile has really strengthened her profile with those she had not been exposed to through the course of her career. “It’s been really powerful for me to change their mindset of me in my starting position to a global diversity expert.”

Ultimately, she believes that success lies in being willing to take on stretch assignments, being passionate about what you do and willing to deliver more than is expected.

Role Models Shape Her Professional Success

Her first role model is her mother, who works but doesn’t have a “career,” per se. Flood says her mom grew up in an economic climate in Ireland where she did not have very many opportunities, but she always advocated for her four children to have opportunities she didn’t have. Specifically, she encouraged Flood to enroll in speech and drama classes as a child, which although she didn’t like them at the time, increased her comfort level with speaking. “My mom is a very powerful role model of resilience in the face of adversity.”

At work, Flood cites her current bossAgnès Hussherr, whom she says is the perfect role model of someone who can have it all: a leader, who is quintessentially female but strong and successful, has a family and even managed to become a pilot in her spare time.

Reading and Writing Are Passions Outside of Work

Flood has always enjoyed reading and loves to go on holiday with her Kindle loaded with books. But over the past few years she’s been surprised to find how much she enjoys writing. Over the course of writing many papers and a 30,000-word dissertation during an executive master’s program she completed three years ago, she discovered she had a flair for it so she appreciates that her current role provides her the opportunity to write. “I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up but now I do – a writer. And if I won the lotto tomorrow, I’d quit and write for fun!”

By Cathie Ericson

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Op-Ed: The female millennial: A new era of talent

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Op-Ed-The-female-MillennialSunday 8 March 2015 marks this year’s International Women’s Day. As we celebrate the achievements of women in the workforce and beyond, my advice for leaders of both sexes is to think broader than the top – you have a new era of female talent on your hands.

We believe that CEOs must be committed to driving parallel efforts that tackle enhanced leadership diversity in conjunction with systemic change efforts, targeting their workforce from day one here at PWC with the sponsorship of our Global Chairman, Dennis Nally, we are working hard to get this right.

We are focusing on developing talented junior women now, for future leadership roles, because when talent rises to the top, everyone wins

We are very passionate about this and so to mark International Women’s Day this year we are excited to launch our The female millennial: A new era of talent publication. This is a research-based report that shares the insights and desires of more than 10,000 millennials from 75 countries.

A new era of female talent

Our research tells us that when it comes to the female millennial (women born 1980–1995) we really are talking about a new era of female talent. Female millennials matter because they are more highly educated and are entering the workforce in larger numbers than any of their previous generations. They also enter the workforce with a different career mindset, they are more career-confident and ambitious than their previous generations.

Almost half of women kick-starting their careers feel they can rise to the very top levels with their current employer.

Forty-nine percent of female millennial career starters (0–3 years’ work experience) feel they can rise to the very top levels with their current employers, making them more career-confident than the generations that have gone before them. Despite this, there is still a confidence gap; 71% of their male peers feel the same way. This gap is something that must be recognised, but it is important we also look beyond just the gap.

Almost half of women kick-starting their careers feel they can rise to the very top levels with their current employer. Given only 4.8% of current Fortune 500 CEOs are female – an underwhelming historic high by the way – we must acknowledge and celebrate that the needle is moving when it comes to the career-confidence of female millennials.

Our research also tells us the female millennial ranks opportunities for career progression as the most attractive employer trait. It is also the most highly ranked reason female millennials have left a former employer.

But the millennial woman is not only more career-confident and ambitious than her previous generations. She is also more financially empowered. When it comes to earning power and patterns, millennial women are trailblazers. Our research tells us 86% of female millennials in a relationship are part of a dual-career couple. Furthermore, 42% earn equal salaries to their partner/spouse and 24% are the primary earner. This means 66% of female millennials earn equal to, or more than, their spouse. The more experienced the female millennial, the higher the likelihood she will be the primary earner. Our study tells us that 31% of female millennials with nine or more years’ experience are the primary earner in their relationship, compared to 18% of millennial career starters and 24% of career developers.

The female millennial sounds pretty amazing – right? But how can organisations capitalise on these stellar traits? To achieve a sustainable talent pipeline, employers can get things right by committing to inclusive cultures and talent strategies that lean into the confidence and ambition of the female millennial.

Themes that matter

The female millennial: A new era of talent report shares five key themes that matter to the female millennial and positions the difficult questions that employers need to be cognisant of when it comes to this growing and significant portion of the global talent pool. Diversity is front of mind for the female millennial. An employer’s reputation matters, global careers are high on the agenda and the female millennial desires work–life balance and flexibility combined with a strong feedback culture.

The female millennial career stage differential

Particularly interesting in this report is that we don’t just take a holistic view of the female millennial. I was very excited as a millennial woman to lead this project, but also recognised being a 34-year-old millennial woman with 14 years’ work experience that my experience will be very different from the experience of a 22-year-old millennial woman just starting out on her career. So we have created a female millennial career stage differential to help employers learn more about the female millennial.

a new era of female talent

As millennial women progress through this career stage differential, they are more likely to be in senior positions, more likely to have completed an international assignment, more likely to be the primary earner if part of a dual-career couple and more likely to value critical feedback discussions taking place face to face. On the flip side, they are also more likely to believe employers are too male-biased in terms of attraction, promotion, development and retention, and believe that taking advantage of work–life balance and flexibility programmes has negative career consequences at their workplace. They are also less likely to believe they can reach the very top levels with their current employer.

Female millennial role models in the plenty

While our research tells us that one-quarter of female millennials said they do not feel there are senior female role models that resonate with them at their current employer, one thing is clear – there are plenty of female millennial role models out there. From Australia to Brazil, Ghana to France, Ireland to Nigeria, Malaysia to Singapore, Spain to the UK and of course the US, you’ll find fantastic voice of the female millennial profiles to motivate and inspire you in our report.

Visit www.pwc.com/femalemillennial to download the report and access further resources for, or about, the female millennial.

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OP-ED: Next Generation Diversity: Developing Tomorrow’s Female Leaders

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diverse women in the boardroomContributed by Aoife Flood, based in Dublin, Ireland, Aoife is Senior Manager of the Global Diversity and Inclusion Programme Office at PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited.

Saturday, 8 March, marks International Women’s Day. As we celebrate the achievements of women in the workforce and beyond, my advice for leaders is don’t limit your focus to the gender leadership gap.

We know that organisations the world over are currently challenged with a lack of women in leadership positions, and concerned with the competitive and financial toll this could mean for their organisation. However, to achieve sustainable change CEOs must be committed to driving parallel efforts which tackle enhanced leadership diversity in conjunction with systemic change efforts targeting their workforce from day one. Organisations need to be focused on developing talented junior women now for future leadership roles – because when talent rises to the top, everyone wins.

At PwC Diversity and Inclusion is a strategic priority. We recognise that diversity is fundamental to the success of our business strategy and with the sponsorship of our Global Chairman, Dennis Nally, we are working hard to get this right. But we also recognise that to do this PwC, like other organisations, must first understand how to attract, develop and retain female millennial talent.

We are passionate about this, so to mark International Women’s Day this year we are launching the research based report Next Generation Diversity: Developing tomorrow’s female leaders which focuses on the attraction, development and retention of the female millennial.

A New Era of Female Talent

Born between 1980 and 1995, female millennials make up a significant proportion of the current and future talent pool. Female millennials matter because they are more highly educated and are entering the workforce in larger numbers than any of their previous generations. The female millennial has likely outperformed her male counterparts at school and at university and is the most confident of any female generation before her. She considers opportunities for career progression the most attractive employer trait. When it comes to the female millennial we really are dealing with a new era of talent; both in terms of the make-up of the workforce she enters and the career mind-set with which she enters.

The female millennial sounds pretty amazing, right? But how will organisations lean in to this new era of talent so they are successful in capitalising on these stellar traits? The Next Generation Diversity report shares six key themes that matter to the female millennial and positions the difficult questions that employers need to be cognisant of when it comes to this significant cohort of talent.

Female Millennial Demand for Global Careers

Let me delve a little deeper into one of the themes: ‘Global Careers’. I choose this theme because I am a millennial woman who was lucky enough to undertake an international assignment to PwC’s Boston office in 2006. This experience was life changing – throughout my 14 year career it is un-paralled as an experience in driving such an intense level of both personal and professional development. In essence, I know the impact an international assignment can have on a woman’s career.

Millennials have a strong appetite for working abroad, with PwC research telling us 71% are keen to do so at some stage in their career. What’s compelling – and critical for employers – is to realise that this is not a male phenomenon.

Read more

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