Equality for Women: Why You May Be Missing Some of the Best Talent

Early in my career I worked for a bank that encouraged competition among employees. Everyone had to fight for every promotion, raise, or bonus with everyone else. Only the most aggressive survived, and they were usually men. I watched top notch women walk out the door because they weren’t treated fairly. At the bank, I learned what not to do.

With today being Women’s Equality Day, I want to share what I’ve learned about creating work environments where women can excel… and why that’s good for business.

First, I believe it’s every CEO’s job to find, hire, and keep the top talent in any given pool. When businesses lose female brainpower and experience every step of the way, it’s a sign we’re failing women and our companies. If you’re not fair to your diverse talent, you’re going to lose a big percentage of that talent, including your best female talent. We also have to ask ourselves how much better could we be if we utilized all the top talent available to us?

Second, for me, it’s all about fairness. Is it fair when men get paid more than equally talented women because they negotiated starting salary and raises more aggressively? Is it fair that when managers consider promotions for the people who work for them, they end up promoting more men, even in some cases when a woman’s performance is the same or exceeds that of her male counterpart? Even when the gender bias that some leaders bring to promotions is unconscious, is it fair?

I know from experience that by creating a work environment that is fair to women, companies find and keep more top female talent. In addition, a more diverse group of people at the table results in better decision-making and a better understanding of diverse customers.

If you want to be able to say the same thing about your organization, here’s my advice.

1. Start with a diverse slate of candidates.

How many times have you heard a recruiter or hiring manager say they can’t find qualified women? Or that to keep the hiring process moving, while looking for qualified women, you should start interviewing men? The problem with interviewing men only first is you might lock in on one of them before you’ve interviewed any women.

I encourage you to keep pushing until you have a diverse group of candidates and hold off interviewing anyone until you can interview a diverse slate, including men and women. I’ve done this at Jet.com and Walmart eCommerce. And guess what? In both companies, we’ve ended up hiring more diverse candidates, including more women.

2. Bring people in at the right level and pay them equitably based on background and experience.

One pretty radical thing we did at Jet.com was to have the same salary for everyone at a given level, regardless of job function, previous experience and what they were making in their last job.

Because of pay differences between male and female candidates, it won’t surprise you that many of the women who came to work for us got large pay increases from what they were making at their last jobs. What might surprise you is some of the men who came to work for us took pay cuts. They did this because it wasn’t just about dollars and cents. They were drawn to the work environment we’d created, where everyone was empowered to do their best. (For more on my perspective on this topic, see my LinkedIn post on hiring missionaries, not mercenaries.)

I realize this model is much easier when you start a company from the ground up, but you can work toward equalizing salaries in this way in a company of any size.

3. Pressure test decisions about promotions.

 A note of caution. Even with practices in place designed to weed out gender bias in hiring, it’s important to pressure test decisions when it comes to promotions. For example, if in your company a particular peer group has more men than women up for promotion, I encourage you to ask managers to explain why those who were selected are better qualified for the position. Not always, but often, just asking the question and having a conversation motivates managers to make sure the best people are selected for promotions.

 4. Keep diversity top of mind.

Practices that promote diversity and inclusion are easier to seed in a work environment from the very beginning. But that doesn’t mean you can’t bring them into more established companies. What matters is commitment. I’m now in a very large company, yet, because of the company’s commitment to diversity, we’re making steady progress. In Walmart eCommerce, we’ve increased the number of women being promoted to corporate officer and VP positions and hired more women into leadership positions from outside the company. Like all of the Fortune 500, we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, but we’re committed.

Frankly, whether you start a company with practices that encourage diversity and inclusion from day one, or bring new practices into an established company, sustaining your commitment requires constant attention. At my companies and now at Walmart eCommerce, we focus on three areas: 1) frequent training, more than one and done; 2) taking care to consider potential issues of gender bias and fairness in every relevant conversation; and, 3) at every major decision point, asking ourselves the tough question: “Is what we’re about to do going to help or hurt our efforts to create an environment that empowers everyone?”

 I encourage you to do the same.