Alarming lack of women in executive roles in FTSE companies

Have you seen the recent Female FTSE Board Report 2022? The annual publication looks at trends in female representation on FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 boards (link to the report in comments).

It is appalling but frankly not surprising to see how the lack of progress for women in senior executive roles in large companies.

Meeting regulatory requirements to have more women in Non-Executive Director (NED) roles is a starting point but it is the bare minimum in my view if organisations want to make an impact through a diverse workforce, and a deep leadership pipeline.

After this report, several large organisations might jump into action to launch another leadership programme or a D&I initiative but instead of spending thousands of ￡￡￡ that tick more boxes and achieve little in terms of impact, my recommendation would be for business and HR leaders to slow down and spend a bit of time diagnosing the real issues that confront your organisation.

There are several areas that warrant attention and they may vary depending on your organisation and the progress you have made, but in my view, the following three areas deserve more attention in most large organisations.?

1. Unconscious Bias- Not another training programme, but talking about bias more openly without shaming people. How does unconscious bias play out in your organisation's policies and processes? In the promotion process, in those talent reviews where your experienced business leader talks positively about a talented female manager but still decides to promote the male counterpart.

If you are an HR business partner attending that meeting, do you challenge the business leader, what made them take that decision? Could you as an HR leader challenge them when the decisions are not based on evidence; or when the language they use is vague? Have you firmly challenged their assumptions about how they measure potential when considering whom to add to the succession plan for a C-suite role?

2. Talent Development at Early to Middle layers of management- Succession pipelines that focus on the C suite and Executive roles only are fantastic to get the process started. But how deep is your leadership pipeline? Do you know who are your future organisational leaders? Do you invest in developing leaders early on, when they are still new to the management responsibility and when the top performers in your business show tremendous potential? How are you investing today in developing the next generation of leaders?

3. Flexibility and work-life integration- The broadest well-meaning policies are rendered useless when the execution fails. So many leaders and managers fail to tap into the potential of new mums and families needing flexibility and extra support when children are still young, or when women take on caring responsibilities for ageing parents or when they take a career break to relocate with a partner.

The fact that women are not well represented in senior executive roles is a sign of deeper, more complex issues that concern the workplace and the society we live in. Not enough women will make it to senior executive roles if we continued taking a myopic view of the problem.?

As a leader each time, you show rigidity and overlook unconscious bias, each time you shrug your shoulders when your HR business partner alerts you about the multiple holes in your talent pipeline, you lose opportunities to grow a diverse and deep talent pipeline.?

Maybe it's time we step back and look at the challenges we face with a broader lens. Rather than looking for a band-aid fix, it is time we look at holistic and systemic solutions that treat the problem, not just the symptoms.

What are your thoughts on the report? I'd love to hear your input.