Five Areas for Improvement: What Companies are Getting Wrong about Advancing Women’s Leadership
Jeffery Tobias Halter, Gender Strategist
Corporate Gender Strategist, Author, Consultant, Speaker
What we're getting wrong about advancing women
As I noted in an earlier post, my mission when I launched YWomen 10 years ago has not changed. I wanted to help organizations recruit, retain and advance women, and I knew engaging men had to be a big part of the conversation. With 80 percent of senior leadership roles in companies held by men, we are 80 percent of the problem, but we can also be 80 percent of the solution.?
What is needed now more than ever is male engagement through awareness, accountability and advocacy.
Today, more best-in-class companies are engaging men in their diversity strategy and finding success! That’s the good news. The ones that are winning the war for talent and winning in the marketplace are doing some or all of these five things right, which is empowering them to advance women and engage men in the process.
Unfortunately, one of my biggest disappointments in the past 10 years is simply a lack of substantial movement by women into the top levels of organizations.?
As I reflect on the past 10 years and analyze the slow progress toward organizational gender balance, I have identified five areas that companies still need to work on in order to create more inclusive organizations.
Five Areas for Improvement
1. Lack of end-to-end strategy. Most companies lack an integrated Women’s Leadership Strategy that includes the strategy, tactics and measurements that tie their women’s initiatives to top organizational goals and weave the outcomes into performance reviews and ongoing discussions within the enterprise.
2. Failure to truly understand the customer and marketplace. Many companies fail to make the connection between women in the marketplace and in the workplace. In so doing, they fail to recognize the power and influence of women in the marketplace and in the workplace . According to she-conomy.com , women account for 85 percent of all consumer purchases, from groceries and home improvements to automobiles and health care. And when it comes to the enormity of the global buying power of women, figures like $20 trillion globally and $7 trillion in the United States alone are numbers that should make all companies sit up and take notice.
3. Lack of accountability. According to the McKinsey 2018 Women in the Workplace study, 76 percent of companies have articulated the business case for gender diversity, but only 13 percent hold people accountable for tangible results. While business leaders track EVERYTHING in their businesses, very few track ANYTHING when it comes to advancing women. Here are several metrics that every company should be tracking .
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4. The diminished role of the CDO and lack of CEO commitment. Many companies are moving to a model of placing the Office of Diversity in Human Resources and reporting to the head of HR. This diminishes the office's effectiveness in a number of ways that are outlined in this article .
Additionally, if we look at CEO advancement rates, it’s painfully obvious that many senior leaders simply do not display a strong commitment to advancing women and other underrepresented groups. One only needs to look at the continued lack of progress to conclude that many CEOs just don’t care.?
The companies that are advancing women and other critical groups have shown that visible and vocal senior leadership moves the needle. Simply put (and to summarize the failings already noted), they have a strategy, they understand their customers and consumers, they have built-in accountability (down to and including middle management) and they are committed to action!
5.? Committing to action. Best-in-class companies realize that active male engagement is one of the most critical elements in driving long-term systemic change in organizations. This is no longer a conceptual conversation. These companies and their leaders understand the compelling business case. Today, the conversation is shifting from talk to action at progressive companies. To assist you in advancing women and underrepresented groups in your organization, here are 10 free tools to engage men in your DEI initiatives:
As you examine all of these materials, reflect on the progress of your company and ask one question: Do we have significantly more women and other underrepresented groups in upper and senior leadership than we did 10 years ago? If not, how many of the issues raised above are happening in your company and how will you begin to help resolve them?
Finally, as you consider the list of 10 things companies are getting right and the areas for improvement, you might also be asking yourselves these questions:
I will explore the next 10 years in my final 10-Year Anniversary Reflections blog next week.