PROVOKING THOUGHT
GENERATING DISCUSSION
ENGAGING EMPLOYEES
DELIVERING RESULTS
Knocking down the diversity brick wall
Effective action to build more inclusive organisations What to do with your gender pay gap report
Hearts and minds vs. cold hard processes
How to recruit for diversity
“ Diversity has turned into blah blah blah. It’s the vegetable samosa of HR: no taste, no impact, just something that everyone sort of likes but no one really cares about.” Simon Fanshawe
Cover Shutterstock / Inner Shutterstock
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Richmond Human Resources Forum, May 2018
thinkBites Ian Barrow, Client Services Director
Paul Jones, Senior Engagement Consultant
Liam Quinn, Project director
It’s time to stop banging our heads against the brick wall - and to start knocking it down and making real progress on diversity. At the HR Forum in May 2018, we heard both Dame Helena Morrissey and Simon Fanshawe agree, despite their different approaches to the subject, that progress has been seriously limited and it’s up to us, as HR professionals, to be more radical and reboot our approach. We use this issue of thinkBites to approach this thorny, pressing issue, and track the debate about how organisations can do the right thing and the smart thing on diversity. Gender pay gap reporting has put the issue centre-stage on the ethical and political agenda, and we explore what you can do practically to act on your gender pay gap report (p4-7). With some investment companies selecting their targets based on positive gender pay gap reporting, it’s evident that diversity pays dividends in a literal as well as a figurative sense.
Approaches to boosting diversity remain controversial. We try to advance the debate by weighing up whether it’s more important to win hearts and minds or to redesign your processes to create the right environment for change (p8-9). Then we consider the evidence for unconscious bias training, another common but unproven approach which some suggest is leading organisations to waste millions every year (p10-11). You can also find practical tips on how to help your organisation recruit for diversity (p12-13). No self-respecting publication on diversity would be complete without a diversity of topics – so we take the opportunity to investigate a completely different issue: the future of the workforce and what it means for culture, organisational structure and management style (p14-15). Finally, we wrap up this issue with reviews of the recent publications of some of our speakers at May’s Forum (p16-17). We hope you enjoy exploring the ideas and issues from the Forum, and we’ll look forward to continuing the conversation next time.
Intro
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What do we do with our gender pay gap report? The hard facts on the gender pay gap
1 in 3
78%
of large businesses pay men more than women
Construction and finance companies have a majority of women among their top earners
have the biggest imbalances in favour of men
Source: Gender Pay Gap Service, gov.uk
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Gender diversity and equality in organisations is front and centre in the mainstream news agenda. Gender pay gap reporting is dominating headlines and watercooler conversations against a backdrop of broader cultural shifts in attitudes towards sexism, from the #MeToo campaign against sexual harassment through to trans and nonbinary rights. But how can HR functions leverage this topical momentum and use the gender pay gap moment to focus on what really matters on gender diversity?
“ A round a third of FTSE 350 companies still have very few women on their boards or in senior leadership roles.” Sir Philip Hampton
The deep need for urgent action Dame Helena Morrissey highlights the lessons learned through her experience as a founder of the 30% Club, a UK initiative aiming to achieve a better gender balance on company boards. From 12.5% female representation on boards in 2009, the initiative has led its organisations to achieve a level of 28.9% today, just below the 30% target set in 2010 – this includes a fall in the number of all-male boards from 152 to ten over the last six years. Morrissey is clear that gender diversity has to go beyond ‘women talking to women about women’s issues’ and become a focus relevant to the core strategy of the business: ‘Diversity programmes fail when gender diversity is seen as a women’s issue, not a business issue’.
Nevertheless, she’s clear that there is a signal need to reboot action on diversity, with the gender pay gap clearly underlining the enduring need for reform. To her mind, we are suffering from ‘diversity fatigue – we’ve done diversity to death, but we still haven’t made as much progress as we should have done’. To reinforce the pressing urgency of the issue, the Hampton-Alexander Review, which is committed to increasing the number of women on FTSE boards, has recently released evidence of embarrassingly dinosaur opinions persisting among senior leaders. Excuses for the failure to promote more women to the boardroom include: ‘all the ‘good’ women have already been snapped up’ and ‘women don’t fit comfortably into the board environment’.
What do we do with our gender pay gap report?
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Can we learn from the BBC and Iceland? The BBC has had a head-start on the current gender pay gap, as the publication of on-air talent salaries last July caused a revolt among female broadcasters, leading to the highprofile protest resignation of Carrie Grace as China editor. Since that point, many male presenters have agreed to voluntary salary cuts, with The Today Programme’s John Humphrys agreeing to see his remuneration fall from £600,000 to £300,000, alongside other household names including Nick Robinson, Andrew Marr, Nicky Campbell, Huw Edwards and Jeremy Vine. At an organisational level, Director General Lord Hall of Birkenhead has promised to close the gender pay gap of 9.3% by 2020, and a new pay framework imposing clear and narrow salary bands has been promised (although it is yet to be published). The BBC’s answer to speedily resolve its gender pay gap is to curb high-level pay for senior male talent – whether most organisations have the will to do this is doubtful.
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Iceland has been ranked the best country in the world for gender equality for the past nine years running by the World Economic Forum: it has a female PM, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, and has pioneered legislative approaches to improving gender equality – previously requiring companies of more than 50 employees to have a quota at least 40% of women on their boards. In January 2018 (more than 40 years after the female population famously went on strike) Iceland became the first country to force companies to prove they pay people in similar roles equally – no matter their gender, sexuality or ethnicity. Despite an equal pay law dating back to 1961, this law is forcing organisations to undergo the difficult and complex process of quantifying the value of different roles that might traditionally be done by different genders, for instance warehouse employees and retail shop floor assistants. It signals the direction legislation may well head in across Europe: towards much greater transparency and an onus on the organisation to prove it is taking the right action on gender equality.
Alamy
Do ongoing gender pay gap discussions among senior leaders at the BBC resemble the corporate black hole of W1A? Let’s hope not. So, what do we do with our gender pay gap report then? Embrace the opportunity to reset the conversation with new urgency. If the appetite doesn’t exist in your organisation to follow the BBC in restricting high male executive pay, then underline the way the law and public opinion is moving (use the Iceland example) and galvanise your C-suite with the only viable alternative: increasing female representation among the higherpaid roles of senior leadership. This, for most organisations, is the central reason the gender pay gap exists at all.
But interrogate the data to identify the real barriers to progression in your organisation. Typically, the gender pay gap is tilted towards women for employees in their 20s, equal for those in their earlier 30s, and only diverges from that crucial career point. Is this the case in your organisation? And why? Is it the impact of maternity leave on career development? Is unconscious bias contributing to the gender pay gap? Only you can answer these questions and identify the areas for urgent action.
October 24 1975. Nine in ten of Iceland’s women went on strike: refusing to work, cook or care for children. Icelandic Women’s History Archives
What do we do with our gender pay gap report?
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o succeed in reaping the dividends T of diversity, you need to build an appetite for change, underpinned by a clear, specific rationale about what diversity will help you achieve as an organisation. Simon Fanshawe
A strong campaign creates the intellectual awareness and emotional commitment necessary for leaders to embrace and embed broader changes in systems and processes.
What should you focus on in order to shift the dial on diversity: changing hearts and minds or hardwiring processes to avoid unconscious bias? We consult a diversity of thought to resolve the debate.
Hearts and minds
Paul Jones, Senior Consultant at Karian and Box
You have to engage and inspire people from diverse backgrounds to believe your organisation is genuinely inclusive so they apply for jobs or promotions in the first place. Forum participant
xxxxxx
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Start by accepting that our minds are stubborn beasts. It’s very hard to eliminate our biases, but we can design organisations to make it easier for our biased minds to get things right. Iris Bohnet, author of ‘What Works’
or cold, hard processes? So – it’s more nuanced and mutually supportive than a straight choice. But, given organisations have tried and failed with campaigns alone in the past, the latest thinking suggests you need a fundamental redesign of your recruitment and promotion processes wrapped in a campaign that builds understanding and commitment to change.
The real issue is that the policies and systems of the organisation are often inconsistent with all the fine talk about increasing diversity. Dame Helena Morrissey
rganisational culture is a O heterogeneous, evolving, highly contingent beast which a campaign cannot tame alone. Judgements and choices are driven by biases and rules of thumb operating within a business environment of systems, structures and processes. Ghassan Karian, Founder of Karian and Box
Hearts and minds or cold, hard processes?
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The mythbuster: does unconscious bias training really work? Starbucks has just closed
8,000
of its US stores for the day to give employees unconscious bias training focusing on race following a widely publicised incident which saw two black customers wrongly arrested. Many organisations are investing heavily in mandatory unconscious bias training, often in combination with the Implicit Association Test
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@quanle2819 - Unsplash
But the research suggests limitations
Why does this happen?
Despite this heavy investment, research shows counter-productive effects. One study shows that mandatory diversity training leads to declines in ethnic diversity in management roles (‘Why Diversity Programmes Fail’, Harvard Business Review, July-Aug 2016). Other studies suggest those trained to be more aware of stereotyping appear to express more stereotypes (Condoning stereotyping? Journal of Applied Psychology: 2015 Mar; 100(2):343-59).
Anecdotal evidence suggests people going through mandatory unconscious bias training can:
Nevertheless, training raises awareness
So what?
Despite these potential issues, the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s very recent assessment of the evidence on unconscious bias training highlights that unconscious bias training is definitely effective at raising awareness of bias, even if its report concludes the jury is out on whether this training leads to behaviour change. (EHRC, ‘Unconscious bias training: an assessment of the evidence for effectiveness’, March 2018). This resonates with a Google study, which found Googlers who went through similar training have a much better understanding of unconscious bias than others, and were slightly more motivated to try to mitigate bias in the workplace.
• React defensively: ‘I feel like I’m the problem, not the solution’ • Think defeatist: ‘Biases are unconscious and unchangeable: I can’t do anything about it so I won’t even try’. • Become complacent: ‘I’m trained now so I’m cured – I can’t ever be biased again!’
As Simon Fanshawe argues, “behaviour changes thinking, thinking doesn’t change behaviour”. Cultural change is much bigger than just one sheepdip training course, and takes a lot longer. You need a balanced programme of communications and education – in tandem with the redesign of your people processes and systems to nudge managers away from acting on their unconscious biases. However, as the evidence so far shows that unconscious bias training seems to be primarily effective as an awareness and understanding tool (when done right) and not as a behavioural change cure-all, we conclude that there are better (and cheaper) ways to win hearts and minds.
The myth-buster: does unconscious bias training really work?
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How to… recruit for diversity
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Be clear on why you need diversity How will diversity specifically help you deliver your business’s strategic ambitions in your sector? What kind of diversity do you need to achieve that? Work backwards from these strategic questions to define your recruitment strategy and gain real traction in your business. For instance, imagine you are: • A UK retailer: ‘We have a diverse customer base, so we need a diverse workforce that understands their needs and can engage with them effectively.’ • A global financial services business: ‘We have to disrupt our industry – and diversity of thought will help us break out of our current lack of innovation.’ • A mining conglomerate: ‘We have a strategic aim to achieve zero harm in our operations – and gender-equal teams are proven to be safer.’
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Recruitment is one of the essential processes that we can use to create more diverse populations – but it’s an area where many organisations consistently underperform. Use these tips to beat unconscious bias and get the diversity you need in place. Recruit into teams – using cultural analytics As Simon Fanshawe suggests, although ‘we know achievement is collective, we don’t recruit in a way that helps us put together great teams because we retain an heroic, individualistic view of success’. One way to counter this tendency is to use cultural analytics tools to give you a clear sense of what the current culture is like in your teams – and how you can effectively profile the right cultural and behavioural traits to recruit for – which will help you take the next step towards a high-performing team dynamic. Instead of recruiting for ‘cultural fit’, you should be recruiting for cultural ‘misfit’ – this is the different traits that your teams need to make the right next step. For instance, if your cultural profile is showing a team is heavily ‘moderate’ (not rocking the boat) over ‘radical’ (direct and challenging), then your selection process should prioritise the people with ‘radical’ traits who will give you the extra something you need.
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Attract and shortlist the diversity you need Once you’re clear on what kind of diversity you need and why, think about whether your employer brand and job ad will attract the right people to apply and especially if your CV filtering / early assessment tools will enable them to get through to interview. Consider using software that blinds you to candidates’ demographics. Dame Helena Morrissey highlights one example of the complexity of this issue. Imagine you use an assessment centre to shortlist candidates for interview. Of three candidates: two get seven out of 10 questions right, and one gets four out of 10. But the candidate who only got four out of 10 right managed to answer correctly the three questions which the other two candidates got wrong. So, who is giving you something different? Who should you shortlist? What needs to change in your current process to make that happen?
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Redesign your interview to mitigate biased minds The best of intentions fall short when implicit judgement influences how we evaluate candidates. So we need to follow the example of US orchestras, who have used blind auditions at interview since the 1970s to stop unconscious biases making hiring decisions. You know what this looks like – you’ve seen it on The Voice. Put the CV to one side, stop interviewing (which really only tests presentational skills), and enable people to show you how well they ‘play’, through ‘real work’ mock tasks and role-play.
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Probe for experiences, not for demographics One unspoken truth about diversity is that organisations are far too focused on boosting demographic diversity, and not enough on recruiting for diversity of thought and experience. But it is experiences that really create diversity of thought: the experience of being a mother, the experience of relocating to a different country, the experience of growing up belonging to two cultures and speaking two languages. Address this with situational ‘what if...?’ interview questions.
How to…recruit for diversity
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Creating an organisation fit for the workforce of the future Diverse demography and diverse needs will characterise the future workforce. Automation, AI and globalisation are driving huge operational shifts, while lifelong learning, the ‘seven career’ trajectory and the gig economy are profoundly reshaping the meaning of work. As HR leaders, it’s up to us to shape business fit for the workforce of the future, and a workforce fit for the businesses of the future. Here’s what forum participants had to say.
Managers can get a breadth of experience across teams and structures.
Rethink organisational structure
Make sure employees can work across many roles to collect their ‘basket of skills’. This makes them more adaptable to cultural and structural change.
These evolutions are significantly impacting organisational structure. The age of the monolithic corporation is over, as large organisational structures give way to nimble, lattice-type structures.
rganisations pull together bespoke O teams from across the business for a particular challenge or problem, benefitting both the business (through agile decision-making) and employees (through cross-skilling).
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Millennials want challenge and responsibility, but that causes problems within structures for longer-standing more experienced employees. It’s difficult to create structures that suit everyone.
Put culture front and centre Culture is king, with organisations putting more focus on it than ever before by recognising its role in fostering an engaged workforce and attracting talent – in a wider context where people want to work for businesses that align with their own values and beliefs. This has created the pressure and expectation for businesses to define the culture they aspire to, and leaders to shape this through their own behaviours. But culture is difficult to define and also doesn’t just come from the top. And what’s the role of HR in all this?
Culture doesn’t have to be ‘one size fits all’. Every organisation has its tribes.
Culture is created and moulded by employees. There’s a shift in power from company-led to employee-led cultures.
HR’s role should be about coaching leaders to be more agile, not telling them how to behave.
Make managers matter All of this change impacts the role of managers in engaging and training their teams. Managers face serious challenges including managing remote workers virtually, and leading teams with rapidly evolving and increasingly interdisciplinary work. Reverse mentoring is one solution, helping younger employees to educate more senior managers on the latest tech developments and current trends.
Learning agility is key – leaders need to be old dogs who learn new tricks and constantly adapt to manage an evolving workforces. Shutterstock
Our role is to coach leaders to cope with teams where they could have a 70 year old and an 18 year old – who have very different needs.
Reverse mentoring is a great solution – but only for some, not for all.
Workforce of the future
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illiam Collins / Stour Publishing / W LID Publishing
Books in brief Disruptive times A Good Time to Be a Girl Helena Morrissey Positive on the progress made on gender equality in our society so far, Dame Helena Morrissey draws on her experience as a CEO in the city, mother of nine, and founder of the 30% Club to issue a clarion call for leaders to take advantage of the current opportunity for change, which, she argues, has never been greater. Five years after Sheryl Sandberg advised women to ‘lean in’ and push themselves forward more forcibly at work, Morrissey advocates, in contrast, wholesale reform of the tainted outdated patriarchal system deeply embedded in many organisations. Technology is the great agent of change in her argument, radically disrupting traditional power structures and the very nature of work – opening up opportunities which didn’t exist 10 or 15 years ago. The potential for rapid advances is all around us, provided we can make gender diversity part of the common solution to the complex challenges we face and not just another problem to ‘solve’.
“ A ll of us have a part to play in making it not just a good time to be a girl but a better time for everyone.” Dame Helena Morrissey
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Workspun wisdom
Periodic tables
Workplace Fables Mark Price
The Elemental Workplace Neil Usher
Stories are our emotional guides to life, bypassing the internal guard dog of logic and hitting us right in the heart: moving and inspiring us to imagine ourselves in different situations.
Always feel tired? Demotivated? Muddle-headed? It might not be you after all. It could be your workplace. The lack of natural light. The absence of any meaningful personal choice or influence. The compulsory hot-desking. The deplorable toilets.
With this book, former MD of Waitrose and Secretary of State for Trade and Investment, Lord Price shares the stories he has collected through his long and successful career in business and government (apparently all true, although all names and distinguishing features have been removed). The fables are bitesize and organised by theme, making the book ideal for those rare moments of repose and reflection during the working day. Each story forms a sticky gobbet with a clear ‘moral’ that will lodge in your mind for weeks to come – whether it’s about the pitfalls of becoming morally indebted to others (‘The Football Fan and the Supplier’) or a salutary reminder not to be a busy fool by making sure you’re focusing on the right kind of detail (‘The Micro Manager and the Wrong List’).
The impact on the environment on our performance is a pretty obvious nobrainer, yet, as Neil Usher argues, it’s often neglected due to business as usual busy-ness, political nonsense, or sheer lack of empathy and imagination. There is a better way, and this book outlines a simple approach to designing more productive spaces, by considering 12 fundamental ‘elements’ of fantastic workplaces. Usher’s attractive style assembles an eclectic album of philosophical principles, case studies and research nuggets. He’s especially good at returning to a clear and specific focus on what really matters, avoiding the trendy prescription of start-up hipster gimmicks like graffiti walls or yoga balls. Instead he draws attention to vital but neglected constituents of workplace experience, like sound, from happy background ‘buzz’ to the invasive and disruptive ‘noise’. Books in brief
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Next events: The Human Resources Forum 22 November 2018 Savoy Place, London
The Richmond L&D Forum 20 March 2019 The Savoy Place, London
The Communication Directors’ Forum 22–23 November 2018 The Grove, Hertfordshire
The Human Resources Forum 14–15 May 2019 The Grove, Herefordshire
To receive an invite to attend one of our forums as a delegate, please contact: The Human Resources Forum Sophie Katon, Delegate Manager Tel: 020 8487 2261, Email: skaton@richmondevents.com
The Communication Directors’ Forum Vicki Barford, Delegate Manager, Tel: 020 8487 2202, Email: vbarford@richmondevents.com
The Richmond L&D Forum Jack Richards, Delegate Manager Tel: 020 8487 2224 Email: jrichards@richmondevents.com
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