FTSE chiefs call for change - Building Gender Balanced Business

There are two attitudes to the advancement of women in senior positions in business and public life. One is to say that the current financial crisis and the expected recessionary slowdown should take priority. This view was expressed by a sizeable number of senior male executives in the Men’s Corner debate at the Women’s Forum in Deauville in October. To read more on this click here for Avivah’s blog of October 20, 2008.

The other more hopeful and progressive view is that now is the time, more than ever in fact, for business leaders to make this a priority. When times get tough, organisations need to develop, retain and attract the very best talent available. Therefore, unlocking the potential of women is mission critical.

Support for this view had been increasing in recent years from the very top of British private and public life. In particular, a unique mentoring initiative known as the FTSE 100 Cross-Company Mentoring Programme, has managed to attract support from 33 organisations, mainly FTSE 100 businesses but also the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Through the scheme, the Chief Executives and Chairmen of companies such as Tesco, Rio Tinto, National Grid and BAE Systems, have made themselves available as mentors to high-potential women working in FTSE 100 companies.

The mentors underlined the case for having a much larger number of qualified women in UK boards in the private and public sector at a colloquium at the London Stock Exchange convened by Praesta Partners LLP, specialists in executive coaching for senior men and women and McKinsey & Company.

To support this view further and encourage change across the nation, 17 of the mentors (representing all of the participants in the Cross-Company programme) sent a letter to the Daily Telegraph newspaper calling for just such a commitment.

The FTSE 100 Cross-Company Mentoring Programme has been running for several years in support of women reaching the top and has been sponsored by Praesta Partners LLP. Click here for more information on this programme.

Peninah Thomson of Praesta Partners and Jacey Graham, a partner at the strategic management diversity consultancy, Brook Graham LLP, have managed the FTSE 100 Cross-Company Mentoring Programme since its inception. To read a review of their latest book, “A Woman’s Place is in the Boardroom: The Roadmap”, based on the experiences of the programme, click here.

We would like to thank Peninah Thomson for her kind permission to allow us to reproduce the letter in full on WOMEN-omics.com(see below).

We are living through extraordinary times, and extraordinary times call for innovative solutions. We are convinced it is essential to accelerate the progress of women into senior positions, given the UK’s need to deploy the best talent available. This need is greater than ever in the current economic climate.

We are all mentors of senior women in the FTSE 100 Cross-Company Mentoring
Programme, sharing our experience, guidance and networks with them in order to address the barriers to women’s advancement into the boardroom. We are frustrated by the glacial pace of change.

The number of directorships held by women in FTSE 100 companies is only 12% of the total, a meagre increase from 6% at the turn of the millennium. In many other areas of UK society, the rise in senior women’s participation has stalled.

At a colloquium at the London Stock Exchange convened by Praesta Partners, LLP and Mckinsey & Company we, together with senior women executives and delegates from six other countries, underlined the economic and business case for having a far greater number of able and appropriately qualified women on UK boards in the private and public sector. Women contribute to properly balanced boards, and from our personal experience we are clear that their participation has a beneficial impact on the character and culture of the board.

Business leaders have spoken out on the need for action on climate change and povetry; it is time to do the same on gender. Our organisations are not all at the same stage of evolution in relation to having women on the board. The important thing is that we are all moving in the same direction, and actively working to make progress. Mentoring talented senior women who want to be credible candidates for executive and non-executive board roles is a practical and powerful action to change the status quo.