How to improve the balance - Building Gender Balanced Business

A new article, A business case for women in the McKinsey Quarterly sets out the rationale for improving the gender balance in an organisation. Promoting more women throughout and in particular at the top will help companies deal with two upcoming issues they face.

First, it will significantly help them fill the impending talent gap, caused in part by the retirement of the baby boomer generation. For example, Europe will see an expected shortfall of 24 million workers aged 15-64 by 2040. The authors report that raising the proportion of women in the workplace to that of men would reduce the gap to 3 million. Gender balance would also help organisations attract and retain talented people.

The second reason for doing something is the increasing evidence from Mckinsey’s own research and that of others that companies with a greater proportion of women managers and leaders do better, both in terms of financial and organisational performance.

McKinsey research has shown that “companies around the world with the highest scores on nine important dimensions of organization – from leadership and direction to accountability and motivation – are likely to have higher operating margins than lower-ranked counterparts do.” They also found that companies with “three or more women on their senior management teams scored higher on all nine organizational criteria than did companies with no senior-level women.”

How to make it happen

The McKinsey article identified five ways to improve the balance towards employing more women, currently delivering impressive results in several leading organisations.

1. Broaden the age range for identifying high-potential individuals from the traditional 28-35 one. The narrower band risks missing highly capable women who have taken a career break.
2. Train your recruiters and operational managers on the importance of diversity and on possible prejudices that might get in the way. JPMorgan Chase followed this path, along with a full commitment to diversity at the top. The result was that from 1996 to the present day they increased the number of women in senior positions from 19% to 27%.
3. Consider small but important issues that may be deterring women from applying for new positions. For instance, a job ad that features only men can be changed easily and can make a big difference. A case study was cited from Why Women Mean Business by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox and Alison Maitland.
4. Encourage women to move up the career ladder. Many studies show that women don’t put themselves forward to the same extent as men and often won’t do so unless they feel 100% prepared for a job. Nissan and Lloyds TSB have developed coaching and mentoring programmes aimed at women which have helped a great deal. Lloyds TSB had found that although female employees were 8% more likely than men to meet or exceed performance expectations, they tend not to apply for promotion. Therefore, it charged specific managers with mentoring high-potential women, advising them on how to get prepared for the next role and encouraging them. The article also cites independent initiatives such as the FTSE 100 Cross-Company Mentoring Programme which links leading CEOs and Chairmen to female executives. (Peninah Thomson and Jacey Graham, the co-founders of the programme have published a new book, A Woman’s Place is in the Boardroom)
5. Improvements in work/life balance can make the workplace more attractive to women.

Full article: A business case for women by Georges Desvaux, Sandrine Devillard-Hoellinger, and Mary C. Meaney, The McKinsey Quarterly More…