Breaking bias and building balance

Most of you might not know but car crash test dummies were long modelled after a man’s average weight and height. The good news for women is that for instance Volvo have long been using female crash test dummies and you will be much safer as a result.

?Biomedical research and toxicology are another area where women were not included in clinical trials. This has led to cases where women had adverse reactions to medication as dosage is recommended based on the weight of an average man.

?As the world is becoming more complex, we need to increase the representation in STEM. More diversity allows for greater creativity, innovation and better decision making. Tech teams need to be able to really anticipate and understand the needs of their end users. All of us have a tendency to design solutions that work well for ourselves and may not be aware of the needs of others.

?Therefore, we need educate our best leaders and thinkers. We need to create more diversity to get a greater perspective and therefore solutions that is well suited for all of us - and to achieve gender balance, we need to break the bias. Another reason why both gender and ethnical diversity plays an important role in work life and in general of course, is that we see a positive correlation between inclusiveness and profits.

?How is diversity and profits related?

?A report released in 2020 by McKinsey based on their 2019 analysis finds that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on executive teams were 25 percent more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the fourth quartile. It shows not only that the business case remains robust but also that the relationship between diversity on executive teams and the likelihood of financial outperformance has strengthened over time. Furthermore, it was found that the greater the representation, the higher the likelihood of outperformance. Companies with more than 30 percent female executives were more likely to outperform companies with 10 to 30 percent, and in turn these companies were more likely to outperform those with even fewer women executives, or none at all. A substantial differential likelihood of outperformance—48 percent—separates the most from the least gender-diverse companies.

?So how do we encourage women to both join and stay within STEM? We have to ‘SHOW’ them how, and, by that, I mean it starts at School, Home, and then the Office and Workplace (SHoW).

?Schools: It begins at a young age. With our STEM skills we need to be proactive and start at school. We have seen this being successful in primary school where mums working in Tech have volunteered to teach girls and boys Scratch, Minecraft and using Raspberry Pis. It has been successful when the teachers know coding. We need to carry on and continue to encourage later in life as well. STEM focus for girls/women should be throughout life, not just early education.

?At home: We need to start breaking the patterns and shake up the norm. Role sharing / reading to both sons & daughters (because you need to address both). As a family we actively choose stories that have gender reversal such as, the princess gets to save the prince. When I build IKEA my husband gets to do the homework and the cooking. My sister who is a science teacher in the UK actively challenges her students on their unconscious bias, asking them to draw a scientist. In most cases 100% will draw a cartoon version of Albert Einstein. In our household we read “Rebel Girls” to both our children that showcases different women throughout history.

?In the workplace: We can attract more women via cross training, STEM exercises with young women, strategic marketing of engineering roles. To ensure low attrition for existing women in technology we need to have sponsorship, flexibility, equal treatment in compensation, recognition, and opportunities for promotion etc. It’s also important to acknowledge that life events such as beginning a family or going into menopause can have an impact on confidence or career choices. We also need to look at the attrition rate for senior women where we can boost the women in leadership by giving the right support.

?At Fidelity we are taking a holistic approach and shifting our focus from looking for candidates who could fill business openings immediately, to identifying high calibre individuals who we could develop to meet the future needs of the business. Making this distinction allowed us to be more inclusive in our approach to candidate sourcing. In addition, this quarter we also launched an ISS Gender Group (@McCormack, Anne-Louise, @Smart, Kimberley, @Murray, Ciara, @Lau, Gavin, @Power, Helen, @Eklind, Felicia) that is actively looking at improving gender balance as well as D&I, watch out for upcoming posts and events.

?For us work-life balance and employee wellbeing go hand in hand just as much as a thriving workforce go hand in hand with Fidelity’s success overall. We believe that investing in employee wellbeing is also not just the right thing but the smart thing to do: A highly engaged workforce with high levels of wellbeing is much more likely to perform well and stay with Fidelity long-term as well as attract top talent.

?Martina Satherlund & Felicia Eklind

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#IWD #Breakingthebias

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