The debate around women in the boardroom has continued to rage once again, with the latest report from the Cranfield International Centre for Women Leaders highlighting that numbers are stalling. In its research, Cranfield found that over the last six months, levels of FTSE 100 board appointments going to women have dropped significantly.
Compared to the figures last year – which showed an encouraging 44% of new FTSE 100 board appointments going to women and 36% on FTSE 250 companies – the figures have this year dropped to 26% and 29% respectively. This has understandably brought the quota issue back on the radar, with many leading HR professionals continuing to argue for and against the introduction of targets which has been pushed by EU commissioner Viviane Reding.
While I agree that we’re not there yet when it comes to a perfectly integrated diversity strategy, I would argue against the quotas at this stage, simply because they do not address the real barriers to diversity.
Despite popular belief, creating a diverse working environment isn’t a simple case of head count at board level. Yes there are too few women in leadership roles, but simply putting a number to paper won’t address the actual question we should be asking ourselves; why aren’t women going for more senior level roles?
As I mentioned in my last post, there are three main barriers which HR professionals and senior management need to address:
• Understanding the current workforce to provide an accurate benchmark for changes
• Building communities over pipelines to support attraction of a diverse range of talent
• Helping management and business leaders experience exclusivity
As of yet, there hasn’t been a solution which addresses these three issues; and quotas most certainly won’t help. If we are simply encouraging women into senior roles for the sake of numbers, we won’t see a sustainable result. What HR professionals need to be doing is addressing this issue of exclusivity mentioned above.
While a company can bring a female onto the board, if they continue to feel excluded it’s highly unlikely they’ll stay in the role. And having had a negative experience, the female is unlikely to want a repeat experience in another senior role – thus we end up in a circle of discouragement which is perhaps holding many women back.
The results of the latest Cranfield research support this point. Yes there was a flurry of activity around the time quotas were originally being discussed, but as this begins to drop off the radar we’re seeing numbers fall. If we’re really to make an impact on the diversity issue, we need to be looking at a sustainable solution which really addresses the problem.
At Ochre House we’ve held think tanks with senior level HRD’s on this topic and are always striving to give HR professionals the tools to succeed. As the debate continues, we are working with international HRD’s to identify some of the best practice examples which can really drive this issue.
About Helena Parry
14June 2013
I agree with Helen Parry, – “are we addressing the real
diversity issues”, quotas are not the
optimum way to increase the amount of women in the boardroom as these do not
address the real barriers to diversity, but I don’t agree that the EU
commission quotas idea patronises women, – any action to publicise and motivate
change in recruitment behaviour and hold organisations to account can only be
beneficial to gender equality.
The debate has been going on for years, aspirations, quotas,
targets, sanctions… and the question of transparency is mentioned time and
again. This surely is not still about
the practices of the large corporates who have the time and money to get it
right, and for them to showcase and share their practices with their supply chain
and customers, it is about providing the many thousands of medium sized
organisations in the UK with support and
access to the processes and procedures that enable them to recruit
fairly, to identify where they need to make improvements and to help them to
understand how to attract, employ and retain qualified female employees for
jobs.
Certainly Maria Miller’s move to boost good quality,
affordable and reliable childcare and get more women into the workforce
allowing them to realise their ambitions is positive but if the jobs are hard
to find or the culture in the organisations they join is male-focussed, then
this is not the solution it may appear to be.
Maria Miller talks about quotas undermining the business
case, yet how do organisations that need cultural change to become more
equality friendly go about making the transition?
There have been several Equality Standards operating
successfully in the UK over the last 12 years; organisations that adopt the
information, support, audit and monitoring processes inherent in these
Standards generally evolve into better employers, with higher retention rate, a
happier workforce, and, believe it or not, are more profitable. Robust recruitment and employment practices
ensure that employers recruit openly and fairly and annual gap analyses
demonstrate improvements. If gender
inequality is an issue, support is at hand to focus on how to adjust
recruitment procedures and improve the gender imbalance.
This is a practical method to assist organisations, rather
than beating them about the head with quotas. Perhaps it is time that
government looked again, and supported the business case by empowering
employers to have the tools necessary to get it right.
Janet Mitton Lakhani, Embrace Equality Ltd
I have to say I like the idea of an “Equality Standard” as a way of moving the issue forward. Legislation does not help, nor political initiatives. Legislation does nothing to prevent it, it merely makes it illegal with the prospect of a small fine, it doesn’t change the behaviour. Initiatives are usually just a cheap political gesture.
The key may be through getting people to see what is happening within their workplace and changing attitudes and behaviour. No quick fix I guess, but you need to start somewhere.
I am not sure what an “Equality Standard” is to be honest and therefore not sure how it can help
An Equality Standard provides and organisation with support, performance management, monitoring, outcome measures and audit to guide progress on good equality practice. Laws and sanctions do not inspire the cultural changes needed for equality; equality and diversity management literature arising from discourse on race, multi-culturalism, gender and disability, including gender mainstreaming show a need for a change in “culture” to address physical, psychological and social barriers that maintain and support structural patterns of discirimination.
Evidence -based learning, scrutiny and accountability inherent in Equality Standards assist organisations to become “fair employers” and embed robust procedures and practices that lead to culture change. Empowering women is a fundamental need, but so also is empowering organisations to understand how to improve their recruiment and employment practices to close the gender equality gap.