Men leaning into Inclusion and Diversity

The last decade has seen growing awareness of the need for, and benefits of, gender equity in the workplace. However actual progress in advancing women’s careers and their opportunity to take on leadership roles has stagnated and some would argue has gone backwards. Post pandemic, the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) reports that “there are 560,000 missing female managers in the UK right now and to equal the proportion in the UK population by 2026 an additional 800,000 female managers will be needed – an increase of 24% from 2021.”

So drastic action is needed and one key lever to accelerate progress is to engage men, particularly male leaders and managers, in this change. Men are 80% of executives and some 60% of line managers, so men have a huge potential role to play in change. Research has shown that when men are deliberately engaged in gender inclusion programs, 96% of organizations see progress —compared to only 30% of organizations where men are not engaged.

However, recent CMI research shows that male managers are blocking efforts by companies to improve gender equality. Despite studies showing the benefits of gender equality for businesses, two thirds of male managers believed their organisation could successfully address future challenges without gender balanced leadership (not surprisingly only a third of female managers agreed!).

Ann Franke, CEO of the CMI remarked “Men have the potential to be great allies in achieving gender balance. But there has been too little effort devoted to communicating the enormous benefits that gender equity offers, including for better business and organisational performance as all talent is better developed and deployed.”

But it is not just better for business!? We believe there are also tremendous benefits for individual men from engaging in gender equity efforts and from becoming allies to those who identify as women or non-binary in the workplace.

So Token Man Consulting and Potentia Talent Consulting are partnering with WeAreTheCity to transform the conversation about male participation in gender equity. We want to make it the norm for male leaders to see this as critical for their career and personal development, as well as being business critical! Because change should ultimately benefit almost everyone.?

As a starting point, we are running a survey of men who have been active in gender equity to understand the benefits they have seen in their organisations, their careers and personal lives. You can find the survey here.

We plan to reveal the results at a special in-person We are the City event on 12th October and will follow up here with key results. Do get in contact if you would like to attend.