Women in Business - Q1- 2017

MARCH 2017

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Women in Business

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GENDER BALANCE

Griselda Togobo highlights the business benefits of diversity P2 WOMEN IN STEM

Dr Sharon James on the need to encourage the next generation into STEM P10

Carrie Green Founder of the Female Entrepreneur Association offers her 10 tips to boost women’s entrepreneurial spirit P8 PHOTO: THE FEMALE ENTREPRENEURS ASSOCIATION

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IN THIS ISSUE

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Women at the top Dr Jill Miller of the CIPD offers practical steps for businesses p4

Returning to work Jacqueline de Rojas of techUK discusses the skills crisis in the tech sector p6

Schoolroom to boardroom Brenda Trenowden of the 30% club on the need to start at schools when it comes to the gender balance

We all benefit when women do well in business Society and the economy gain if the full potential in professional women is unlocked, says Griselda Togobo, Managing Director of business support network Forward Ladies.

H

aving a gender balance at work and particularly in leadership positions brings huge rewards. Organisations benefit from having diverse opinions, passions and interests that reflect society and their customers. Seeing women doing well also inspires the next generation as girls realise they can achieve great things at work, become leaders and make a difference.

Mentorship and inspiration Employers must demonstrate they have a strong pipeline of female talent, which means assessing how they attract and retain women. If the pipeline is weak, it can be easy to claim they cannot find women for certain top roles.

Mentoring at work should be encouraged because women flourish when they can see what others have achieved, can talk about their own challenges and obtain valuable career advice.

Women think differently than men and, despite having the skills and adequate qualifications to succeed in their chosen career, can question their own abil-

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is still a need for women’s support networks at work to help women build the confidence and contacts they need to succeed and for companies to learn to accommodate the flexibility needs of their female and male caregivers.

ities. Through a nationwide programme of events, mentoring, training, leadership programmes, conferences and awards, Forward Ladies supports women to realise their full potential.

Women at senior levels It is also time to broaden the leadership conversation and not just talk about the need to have more women on company boards. Not every talented female leader wants to sit on the board, but we do need to question why women are still hugely under-represented in entrepreneurship, in politics, media and in other male dominated sectors such as the Science, Technology, Engineering and Manufacturing fields. This under representation is hurting businesses and the wider economy.

Why are so many women still leaving workplaces before reaching senior management levels?

And why are those that stay are often overlooked for promotion and are penalised with a gender pay gap?

Organisational culture can have the biggest impact on change. Too many career-pro-

MediaplanetUK

Griselda Togobo Managing Director, Forward Ladies

“We need our men to join us and set much needed examples for the next generation” gressing decisions are still driven by unconscious bias so everyone within an organisation needs to understand how prejudice can cloud their judgement and the impact it can have on achieving gender balance and the resulting impact on the bottom line. There

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Progress has been made but more needs to be done It is ultimately the responsibility of everyone, men and women, to ensure individuals reach their full potential, whatever their gender. We have seen some progress over the years but there is still a lot of hard work to do. The United Nation HeforShe campaign estimates gender equality in the workplace won’t be achieved until 2095!

More role models needed We need our men to join us and set much needed examples for the next generation. We need our male role models just as much as our female role models. We need both men and women supporting this agenda because gender equality is an opportunity that will benefit everyone.

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INSIGHT

Pavita Cooper Member of the 30% Club Steering Committee

Women need men on their side to achieve gender balance

By Steve Hemsley

T

here are huge benefits for businesses that have a diverse mix of people in the top jobs but men must play their part in supporting women to reach senior positions.

Men have a crucial role to play in ensuring there is a strong talent pipeline of women ready to fill executive roles.

This message comes from Pavita Cooper, a member of the 30% Club Steering Committee which includes company chairmen and CEOs committed to improving the gender balance in business.

“We are seeing chairmen having conversations with other chairmen and challenging them if they do not have enough women in senior roles,” says Cooper, who is also founder of talent and career insight consultants More Difference.

“Everyone talks about a meritocracy but there has to be a fair system in the first place which means more women on shortlists. When the 30% Club speaks to organisations we insist there are men in the room because they must be part of the conversation if change is to happen.”

Cooper says organisations should look at their employee data at every level and location and set sensible targets.

“Any aim to have 30% women in senior roles would be unrealistic if you currently have none, but you must be authentic.”

Unlocking the barriers for ambitious women to reach the top

By Steve Hemsley Women strive for senior jobs but too few of them are making it into the boardroom or into executive posts. Organisations must understand why if they are to boost diversity.

Employers should ask themselves what more they could do to enable women to reach their potential at work and secure executive positions.

Dr Jill Miller, policy adviser at the CIPD, the professional body for HR and people development, says more organisations do understand the business benefits of having gender diversity in executive roles but they are not always sure how to realise it.

“Employers should see if there are particular points in a woman’s career when they leave and why women are not applying for certain roles,” says Miller.

She believes the growing ‘sandwich generation’, caring for children and an older relative, needs additional support and employers must do more to embed flexibility into the workplace. This would boost diversity in the boardroom and across management positions, she says.

“If organisations do not offer flexibility based on an individual’s needs as they rise up the career ladder, they could miss out on the huge amount of ability that exists in their current and future female workforce.”

She also wants employers to assess their talent pipeline and analyse whether their current succession planning strategy is working.

Dr Jill Miller Policy Adviser, CIPD

“If organisations do not offer flexibility based on an individual’s needs as they rise up the career ladder, they could miss out” Miller suggests that visible female role models in executive positions send a powerful message to new female hires that the organisation promotes gender diversity. The recruitment and selection processes should also reflect the importance and business benefits of hiring from a more diverse talent pool.

Initiatives for progress “This is about having a level playing field and promoting women into senior roles based on merit,” says Miller. “Women are not going to just appear in executive team positions. They must be able to see people like them in key roles and employers must identify and remove the blockers of female talent progression at all levels.”

There have been a number of initiatives to create a pipeline of female expertise for posts below board level.

In the Davies Review final report published in 2015, Lord Davies set a bold target of having 33 per cent female representation on all FTSE 350 boards by 2020.

The Hampton-Alexander Review of FTSE 100 Women Leaders published last November called for similar action. It set a 2020 target for 33 per cent representation on FTSE 100 executive committee positions and in posts that report directly to that committee. The current figure is about 25 per cent.

“We are seeing movement in the right direction but it does not get to the grass roots of the issue. Many employers lose women at senior manager level; before they get to the jobs just below the exec positions,” says Miller. “It is important to keep raising awareness of the issues so targets are met, but we want women in these executive positions based on ability not their gender.”

She adds that more male CEOs are championing diversity because they see the benefits in terms of productivity, the utilisation of skills and the different perspectives businesses enjoy when it comes to innovation and ideas, as well as it being the right thing to do.

“Women have always had the ambition to reach the top but further action is needed to make gender diversity a reality,” says Miller.

COMMERCIAL FEATURE

Exciting opportunities for women in tech

Do employers work hard to deliver gender diversity?

By Steve Hemsley

By Steve Hemsley

Attracting more women into technology is an ongoing struggle for many businesses, but at Royal Mail it is a challenge Louise Blais is embracing.

Royal Mail has been distributing letters and parcels for 500 years and is trusted by the UK population. It has implemented new strategies to attract more women into the business.

Louise Blais has immersed herself in technology all her career and she loves it.

Now Head of Enterprise Architecture Domains for Royal Mail, Blais has worked for Canada Post in her home country and for Accenture and IBM in North America and in the UK. She joined Royal Mail in a permanent role four years ago.

Blais is responsible for determining what technology the business needs today and deciding what it must invest in to meet its future requirements. “These are exciting times for women to work in technology particularly for a company like Royal Mail because the architecture estate is evolving and transforming on a massive scale.” she says. An example is the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) which is a hand-held scanner used by postmen and women to improve delivery services and support tracking.

Career paths “Technology is an integral part of Royal Mail, so we need people to manage it and as part of that we have introduced schemes focused on bringing new colleagues into this part of the business and developing our talent pipeline. As part of our drive to encourage young people to apply for Apprenticeships at

Louise Blais Head of Enterprise Architecture Domains, Royal Mail

Royal Mail, we send ambassadors into schools to talk about the difference technology can make to our business and to society.” says Blais.

“I spoke at a school career fair recently and at first the only kids who came to see me were boys and many of them were coders.

As an industry, we need to explain that a career in technology is much broader than that.”

Blais says the gender split in the technology team at Royal Mail has improved. Royal Mail is trying to recruit more female graduates to become engineers and women are supported through the gender networks and successful mentoring schemes.

“Persuading women to enter and stay in the tech sector is difficult and at an industry level we need to see more women in senior roles,” she says.

She is determined to succeed in promoting technology careers to women. “Women bring different ideas to the table at all levels so we need to ask why there are not more women in tech, and I am really proud to be part of these initiatives at Royal Mail” says Blais.

Royal Mail can trace its history back to the time of Henry VIII and is used to changing with the times. One of the areas where this is especially true is on the issue of gender diversity. Women have traditionally been underrepresented in the industry and Royal Mail wants to change that. While turnover rates remain low at less than four per cent, the number of women in the business has grown in recent years, demonstrating how small changes can make a big difference.

As a business, Royal Mail believes that its workforce should be reflective of the customers and communities it serves. Head of Operational Systems for Royal Mail Group, Anna Gray, says improving gender and BAME diversity is a priority. “If Royal Mail started today, I think the employee demographic would be very different” says Gray.

Company initiatives Gray is an Oxford graduate who joined the business as a temporary member of staff 12 years ago and has worked her way up through the organisation.

“Things are changing, thanks to our thriving Women’s Networks that help with career progression and personal development. We also have The Springboard and Spring Forward Women’s Development Programmes.”

SpringBoard allows women in front line and junior admin roles to assess their current situation, decide their next steps for personal and work development and aims to equip individuals with the confidence and skills needed to take these steps. The programme not only aims to help women reach their full potential but also aims

Anna Gray Head of Operational Systems, Royal Mail Group

to make Royal Mail an employer of choice for those joining the workforce in the next five years.

Spring Forward allows participants in front line management roles to look at their career and personal development plans.

They find coaching and mentoring support to match their aspirations gaining valuable experience and insight which enables them to succeed in their career.

Gray says, “Every business must analyse its talent pipeline and look at where it can help retain women and provide support. We have our own Gender Diversity Steering Group, for example, and one of the things we identified early on is that designing recruitment ads that show the varied roles women hold in Royal Mail is an important part of enhancing gender diversity throughout the organisation”.

“In our recruitment campaigns we work across multiple media channels as well as job centres and universities, in order to raise the profile of Royal Mail as a great place to build a career. We are keen to capture the interest of those who may not otherwise have considered applying for roles in Operations, Commercial and Professional functions or on our Graduate and Apprentice programmes.” says Gray. “We aim to promote the career opportunities available and show how Royal Mail is taking gender diversity seriously.”

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Leaders: Women attend the Women Ahead conference at the Barbican, London.

Photo: 30% club

Karen Price CEO, Tech Partnership

Focus on outcomes to attract women into tech careers Girls get put off digital careers at a young age, but the key to changing that is to show how tech changes lives for the better, says Tech Partnership CEO, Karen Price.

When it comes to the gender balance in tech, the problem is attracting women in the first place. We’ve done research into this, and it is clear that disenchantment with tech starts young. At primary school over half of girls identify ICT as enjoyable, but by GCSE this has fallen to just over a quarter. The curriculum is at fault, but other issues are at play – for instance, parents and teachers are unaware of the breadth and excitement of digital careers, so they can’t motivate girls with a truthful picture of life in tech. Allied to the widespread negative conceptions of computing careers – that they’re unsocial, nerdy and overwhelmingly male – you can see why girls get side tracked into alternative roles.

Employers are working very hard to make improvements here. The Tech Partnership’s own #mytechfuture campaign is one example: it offers inspiring case-studies for girls, and resources for teachers. With the new focus on apprenticeships, there may be opportunities to reach girls at a younger age, before negative attitudes crystallise, and also to show that a tech career depends on aptitude and enthusiasm rather than qualifications – you can acquire those on the job.

We know that girls tend to be motivated by outcomes – what you can do with tech, rather than the nuts and bolts.

Anyone trying to attract girls to technology should bear this in mind – tech is a force for good in the world, and focusing on this is a powerful way of attracting women into the tech workforce.

Read more on businessandindustry.co.uk

How can employers help women return to work?

By Steve Hemsley The tech sector is suffering from a skills crisis which could be solved partly by enticing more women back to work, although it’s not always that easy to find them.

The rapid growth in the UK’s tech sector has created an urgent need to tempt more talented women back into the workplace.

The digital sector (both producers and users of digital technology) accounts for 16 per cent of GVA, 24 per cent of total exports, and three million jobs in the UK, says techUK, whose 900 members range from innovative start-up businesses to world-leading global tech companies.

Jobs remain unfilled, so in response techUK is launching a central hub of information for tech returners to help individuals who want to come back. It will also assist employers that need more support to implement their own returner programme.

The Returners Hub launched on March 8 and will include resources for returners, including information on free courses, reading materials, mentorship programmes, and more.

“There are almost two million women in the UK who are economically inactive due to caring commitments, and 76 per cent of professional women on career breaks want to return

Jacqueline de Rojas President, techUK

to work,” says techUK president, Jacqueline de Rojas.

She says the idea of supporting women returners is not new but there is an added urgency because the widening skills gap in the tech sector threatens productivity. Meanwhile almost every business has some digital element nowadays.

“The fact is we are creating more jobs than we can fill in the UK and the country will need thousands of additional workers with digital skills, especially post-Brexit,” says de Rojas. “This is not about diversity for diversity’s sake, although this remains a very male dominated sector.”

The Returners Hub will hopefully solve one challenge that many employers face, which is to actually find the female talent that has left the industry. techUK says companies must do more to ensure they do not lose touch with their skilled women in the first place.

De Rojas believes more

women would want to return to the sector if they were kept aware of new developments.

“We advise members to encourage women to stay in contact with the business,” she says.

“A returner programme should include sending out tech updates and inviting women to attend events while they are away from work. This will help them to feel more confident about coming back when the time is right.”

She adds that women also need to know how employers are embracing flexible working and how fast pay is growing compared to other industries.

“We need to land the story about a career in tech among women who have left the industry, and among schoolchildren.

This is not easy because many of the tech jobs that today’s schoolchildren will do don’t exist yet.”

De Rojas says male executives are keen to put in place returner programmes but it is important that women can return to leadership positions.

“Every tech company needs men and women who can drive the diversity agenda and support returners,” she says. “Men understand the career opportunities because they have wives, daughters and nieces, but we need women at the top table and not just in the room when we are having the debate.”

COMMERCIAL FEATURE

Can a proactive approach boost female numbers?

Many organisations talk about wanting to achieve greater gender diversity within their organisation.

CGI is on a journey to attract a good balance of women and men to ensure this becomes a reality in the UK and globally. Tara McGeehan, Senior Vice President for Energy, Utilities and Telecoms, tells us more.

Focussing on skills development to build a diverse business CGI is the fifth largest independent information technology and business process services firm in the world. We have approximately 6,000 professionals in the UK and are committed to ensuring that women are attracted to the business. We recognise that it’s about hiring skills, which are not specific to gender, in order to implement our services, including high-end business and IT consulting, systems integration, application development, and IPbased services and solutions.

We want more women in the business and hope to achieve this by providing more opportunities around science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) at entry level to develop and retain a more diverse employee base.

It’s not unrecognised, but it’s important to keep communicating that there aren’t enough women in STEM/IT right now.

We are focussed on ensuring that we bring in the right numbers of females, as well as men, to fulfil this growing and much needed skillset.

As part of helping support greater gender equality within the workplace, we regularly visit schools in our local areas to talk about career opportunities within the IT sector.

It’s vital children understand what’s available to them at a young age and that gender doesn’t

Tara McGeehan Senior Vice President for Energy, Utilities and Telecoms, CGI

dictate their choices. We believe it’s important to spread the word about the great opportunities and longevity a career in IT can offer and to inspire a young generation.

In fact, a recent business initiative to help demonstrate what’s possible by way of an IT career and to help encourage greater female skills within the workplace includes ‘Bring your Daughter to Work Day’. We hope that by showing young females what a career in IT has to offer will inspire them to make the right skills choices to make that happen.

Build opportunities for success As part of focussing on our workplace diversity, we are concentrating on enhancing our sponsorships and support of women looking to return to a career in IT.

It can be hard to get back into work, let alone IT, after having a family. At CGI, we always look to recruit the best talent and that can come from a variety of places, including mothers returning to work. We place a lot of emphasis on training and development as a business, and part of building and maximising key skills includes encouraging and supporting great women through training and coaching. This goes a long way to building confidence when returning to work and getting up to speed with new tools and systems.

We offer coaching and skills-building sessions across the company to boost confidence in areas such as negotiating, networking and soft skills.

And it’s important to state that this focus isn’t role specific, it’s applied to entry level jobs through to leadership positions.

We also hold Future Focus sessions where we enable women to identify their next career steps and to begin to prepare for them.

We have had to think more creatively around our resourcing and find new ways to encourage female development, including identifying roles that women can do on rotation due to family needs. This is also applicable to the men who work for us that also need to manage family life.

Helping our employees, male and female, to achieve a healthy work li-

fe balance is very important to us as an organisation. We offer flexible working hours and encourage managers to lead by example with a positive work balance that they would like to see for their teams.

We also have a commitment to improving wellbeing and mental health across the organisation for all employees. We want to build a creative and supportive environment for all to ensure that everyone has access to support to maximise their success in the business.

Finally, we have recently introduced unconscious bias awareness sessions for our leaders and are in the process of rolling this out across the wider business. We believe that a company culture that values the power of different opinions, perspectives and cultures will be more successful in creating the highest performing teams. This focus on diversity and inclusion is integral to how we deliver real value to our clients, develop our people and play a strong leadership role in our local communities.

Read more at www.cgi-group.co.uk

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INSPIRATION

STATS

10 ways to boost women’s entrepreneurial spirit

By Steve Hemsley

Women-led smaller businesses contribute to over

£75 billion to the UK economy.

If women set up businesses at the rate of men, it will at an estimated

£600 billion to the economy.

34%

of women business owners have experienced gender discrimination in the workplace.

Carrie Green is the Founder of the Female Entrepreneur Association and her book ‘She Means Business’ is out now. Here are her top 10 tips for female entrepreneurs.

Expand your mind “Before you start your business, and throughout your business journey, immerse yourself in learning. There is so much information and advice out there at your finger tips, so use it! Read business books, look at relevant websites, take an online course to boost your skills. Being an entrepreneur is all about expanding your mind, never stop learning!”

Get clarity

Only 18% of businesses are majority run by women.

Britain is ranked one of the

top three places

in the world for female entrepreneurs.

37%

of women starting a business found confidence in their skills in their chosen sector.

60%

of women say improving their business strategy skills will be useful to growing their business.

Less than

one in five

of businesses are majority run by women.

Source: Federation of Small Businesses (FSB)

“Be clear about what you want your business to achieve.

What is at the heart of what you want to do? This will drive you forward during the tough times.

Everything you do as an entrepreneur must align with your underlying business objective, so get really clear on your business mission.”

Just do it!

“One person might tell you your idea is rubbish but that is just their opinion. Don’t be put off, just get started and keep moving forward. The entrepreneurial journey is not a straight path, but if you believe in your idea and yourself you will build your business in whatever way works for you.”

Be inspired, be motivated “You’ve got to have the right attitude to achieve success. There will be times when you feel in despair and doubt everything you’re doing, so trust yourself to make it happen. Find a way to move beyond any barriers. Stay clear on your goals and come up with ways to keep yourself

Carrie Green Founder, Female Entrepreneur Association

contacts will lead you and how someone will help to grow your business. When I started out I networked like crazy and made so many amazing connections and friendships. There are so many networking events out there so just go to as many as you can. I have been to some events that weren’t that good, but met one person who was able to help me and it made the event so worthwhile.”

Commit inspired. I have a playlist of inspirational music from the movies that I put on when times get difficult and it really fires me up!”

Plan to grow “In order to grow you need to have a really clear understanding of who your customer is. You might have a great business idea but you won’t grow your business unless you know who your audience are. If you can understand their challenges and their needs, then satisfy these and go above and beyond to wow them, you’ll soon have raving fans who will love what you do and want to come back for more.”

Be social “Social media can be the secret to your success, but make sure you choose the right platform for your business and concentrate on that. Don’t try to juggle all the social media platforms at once. Learn how to make the most of one and become amazing at it. You wouldn’t start by learning two instruments at once, so don’t feel the next to do it with social media. Discover which social platform is the most likely to make your target audience fall in love with you and concentrate on that.”

The power of networking “It’s so important to make connections online and offline.

You never know where those

“You have to commit to your business 100 per cent.

This doesn’t mean working every waking hour, but you’ve got to have the discipline and focus to do what you need to do to succeed. Be honest with yourself, what percentage are you putting in? If it isn’t 100 per cent what could you achieve if you did commit 100 per cent?”

Ask for support “Surround yourself with positive and like-minded people. The entrepreneurial journey can be lonely, so find people (both online and offline) who can cheer you along and help answer the difficult questions you might have. I met one of my best business friends networking online and she lives in Hawaii. Though we’ve never even met, we chat all the time online about the challenges we face and her support is incredible.”

Judge your success “It can be hard to know when your entrepreneurial dream has become a success, sometimes it’s not so easy to recognise because it’s an evolving process. You can feel success at the start just by the sense of empowerment. Too many people quit when they are on the verge of making success happen. Trust yourself.”

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STATS Progress has been made since 2010, but statistics show much more still needs to be done.

2010

2015

Representation of women on FTSE 100 boards

12.5%

23.5%

Change 2010-2015 +11 percentage points

Number of companies with 25%+ representation

Women in STEM: Getting young women and girls into STEM subjects is key. Photo: Thinkstock.

12

“Teenage girls and parents must talk about science”

41 +29

Change 2010-2015

Total number of women on FTSE 100 boards

135

By Virginia Blackburn

263 +128

Change 2010-2015

Number of women Non-Executive Directors

117

239 +122

Change 2010-2015

Number of women Executive Directors

18

24

5.5%

8.6%

+6

Change 2010-2015

Number of women Chairmen

2

3 +1

Change 2010-2015

Number of women appointments in the year

18

(out of 135)

Change 2010-2015

52

(out of 164)

+34

Source: Women on Boards Davies Review Annual Report

Businesses boom when they have a high female presence on the boards. So what can we do to persuade women to take a greater interest in the STEM areas in the future?

Dr Sharon James is Senior Vice President of R&D at RB and is working with the WISE campaign to encourage more girls and women into STEM careers.

Initially studying medical biochemistry at Royal Holloway and taking a PhD in Neurobiology at UCL, Dr James went on to attend Henley Business School and is very clear on the importance of gender diversity in a business.

“The bottom line, after looking at reports into companies that have at least one woman on the board over the last 10 years, is that the more women on the board, the higher the return on growth,” she says. “Gender diversity translates into higher returns. And in a company like RB, this makes particular sense.

Women make 85 per cent of retail decisions and when it comes to over the counter medicines, that figure rises to 93 per cent. A man may have a common cold or man flu, but it is women who are buying the products to relieve their symptoms. There have also been some fantastic female inventors over the years, for example windscreen wipers, coffee

Dr Sharon James Senior Vice President of R&D, RB

filters and disposable nappies were all invented by a woman.”

Dr James believes women encounter particular barriers that can be self-imposed. “Women do behave differently from men,” she says. “We often lack confidence and tend to undersell our capabilities, whereas men can tend to oversell. We can also be perfectionists and many fear making mistakes in public. Personally, I’ve found that when I’ve been the only woman in otherwise all-male meetings, the differences can often be exacerbated.”

Getting into STEM Dr James’ career path has been an interesting one. The first in her family to attend university, she says: “Aspirations were set for me. When I was very young I heard my headmaster telling my mother I was going to be a doctor.

I was interested in the arts but the

sciences were more difficult, and so when choosing GCSEs and A-levels I opted for the sciences as attaining them meant I had a greater sense of achievement. They were more of a challenge, but at the same time I came from a very practically oriented family and I thought they would make it easier for me to find a job.”

Certainly, Dr James’ personality was suited to the route she took: as a child she remembers playing with her brother’s Lego and Meccano sets. But she is adamant that parents have to play a role in guiding their daughters into a career in the STEM industries. “If parents want to get their children into the sciences, it’s a conversation they have to have early,” she says.

“A recent report show that in the US, kindergartens spend an average of 19 minutes a day on the sciences and 90 on language and the arts. So as parents, we have to introduce more science into their lives.” She points out that when they are in years seven or eight, girls tend to enjoy science but a paucity of career information means they often don’t pursue it in later years.

“Parents have got to fill these gaps,” she says. “We have to show them the value of a career in science and make it plain that if they opt out of STEM subjects, they are opting out of certain careers in the future.”

COMMERCIAL FEATURE

Q&A: Why is gender diversity in business so important?

A business needs a strategy and goals enabled by people bringing both diversity of ideas, and consumer relevance, within a culture that is inclusive and open to innovative thinking. To me, gender diversity, but also diversity more broadly, is an enabler for a business to thrive and win over its competitors.

What barriers have you come up against as a successful woman in business during your career?

I was very lucky in that I have inspiring parents, who were entirely unbiased in how they thought about the contribution of men and women to the community, within my family, and in the workplace.

I did spend a few years in a field of expertise that was dominated by men, which taught me, the tough way, how to remain confident and resilient in the face of bias, drawing from what my parents raised me to believe. When I

Mairéad Nayager, Human Resources Director, Diageo, answers some key questions on how her own experience has shaped her vision for the future. joined Diageo in 2006, there were few women in senior leadership roles, and none on the executive team of the company. However, over time, that picture significantly changed. My hope for emerging talent coming through the organisation, is that members of the executive team who provide more diversity, can inspire others, and in particular women, within the organisation to become the leaders of tomorrow.

Did you always want to work in HR? Since graduating from Business School I always knew that I wanted a career that combined my passion for people development and brands with working for a successful global organisation and all of the variety of experiences that would bring. I also wanted to know that I could contribute to the strategic and cultural direction of a business and at Diageo, working in HR provides me with all of these things and I can’t imagine being anywhere else right now!

What more can employers do to increase gender diversity at work and in leadership roles?

1. Setting ambitious goals on attraction and selection

of diverse talent: A more balanced leadership team means broader conversations and a better reflection of society and consumers. Be bold with your targets for your own company. At Diageo, we are particularly proud that over 35% of our Board and almost 40% of our Executive Committee are women.

2. Setting up clear development plans for every em-

ployee: We’ve found that this is one of the most effective ways of retaining our most talented employees – male and female – and getting them to leadership positions in the right timeframe.

3. Supporting the creation of an inclusive environment for

diverse talent at work and in the community, enhanced by programmatic and policy led interventions: We expect each of our General Managers in every market and within our global function to have a strategy and measurable plan in place that will help us achieve our ambitious goals and foster greater inclusion and diversity.

4. Creating and nurturing a pipeline of future female leaders:

We do not focus only on our leaders; all our graduate and mid-career development programmes ensure they have an equal intake of women and men and attract, retain and grow the best talent. For example, we are committed to ensuring that 50% of hires to our global graduate programme are women.

You grew up in Ireland and worked there, in Europe and in Africa for Diageo. How do you think different cultures affect how women are perceived by and progress in business?

What was your role in Africa and in Ireland?

Mairéad Nayager Human Resources Director, Diageo

HR does seem to be quite a female-dominated profession. Why would this be and can other business functions learn from HR? Traditionally HR has been seen as quite a female-dominated profession but not always at senior levels. I believe this is changing. Twenty years ago, you would have seen more men as CHROs and in more commercial roles and women in ‘back office’ and junior roles. This is now not the case anymore.

Within Diageo, for example, the women on our Executive Committee represent a wide range of functions and include our Chief Financial Officer, our General Counsel, our Chief Marketing Officer and the President of our North America business.

How does your ‘people’ role help to develop women’s potential within Diageo?

As the Global Human Resources director, I feel passionately about developing women’s potential within Diageo. I genuinely believe that companies will grow quicker if they embrace all diversity, not just helping women to progress.

However, I do believe that HR has a key role to play. It is the function that can objectively challenge the rest of the business to attract and grow diverse talent, using analytics and insights to explain why this will make a difference to our performance and growth. HR is also the function that can shape culture, strategy and policy on inclusion, talent management and the environment that will enable women to succeed.

I joined Diageo Ireland in 2006, and later spent six years working in our Africa business, before moving to South Africa to work for Brandhouse, our then Joint Venture with Heineken. I then became HR Director for Diageo Europe before being appointed Global Human Resources Director in October 2015.

My reflections are that all over the world women are perceived as having so much potential. However, it does depend on where you are, as to how easy it is currently for women to achieve their goals. Different cultures will bring different barriers and opportunities for women. I think that Governments, companies and the demands of broader society will see the pace of change evolving more quickly in the coming years.

Did your work with the Irish Business and Employers’ Confederation help you to promote women in business in any way?

At IBEC, I represented and advised employers in industrial relations and employment related matters, which gave me a good understanding of how companies can proactively support employees to succeed, through effective policy creation and strong development plans. It also enabled me to influence companies to implement support for women through policies and good working practices, who might otherwise have been ignorant to the value such policies and practices could create.

Find out more at www.diageo.com

Read more insight from leading women in business online Find information and advice about closing the gender pay gap, why inclusivity at work must become the norm, and why gender is still an issue for graduates entering the jobs market.

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