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Is being yourself going to bring about change? Not if the majority of 'selves' don't purposefully drive it!
I've blogged before about how firms should find a way to let employees be themselves at work. Although, as one kind reader pointed out, that doesn't further the inclusion agenda if being yourself means working in a way that excludes others! Fair point. I buy into this vision. After all, it's one I created, spearheaded and have very publicly sponsored both within my firm and externally. But recently I got to thinking. If I care about inclusion (and I do) and I am passionate about disruption (which I am) how come we aren't disrupting diversity?
Please don't mention another program aimed at fixing women
Think about it. At the current rate of change it will take us about a century to have equal numbers of women leading Fortune 500 companies, according to Catalyst. According to the same company, women currently hold only 5% of Fortune 500 CEO positions, while the percentage of board seats held by women in both the United Kingdom and United States is 17%.
How can any firm hold its head high if just keeps running the same old tired initiatives while expecting different results. Isn't this the definition of insanity? And really, do we need just another program to fix women—just lean in a bit more, just ask for pay rises, just stay working in an old paradigm that wasn't designed for modern day living?
The business case for change? It's a no brainer
Before someone else points it out, I know I need to acknowledge that I am about to add to the agenda of HR teams (remember those poor folk who are working their socks off, with ever-increasing demands, too busy to see where the disruption may be looming?).
But of course this isn't just HR. This is everyone. Don't we all want to work for a firm that's more profitable? More effective? More creative? And yes, I am going to use the word, more diverse ? (A series of studies has shown that companies that achieve diversity in their management and on their corporate boards attain better financial results, on average, than other companies).
It's progress Jim, but not as we know it
So why are we stuck? Stuck doing the same things over and over again with small changes. I don't mean to knock them - mentoring, micro-inequities training, diversity stats monitoring, training—you name it, firms are doing it. And that's a much better place to be than where we were twenty years ago when it wasn't even talked about. But with the pace of change astronomical in every other industry, why is this one so slow?
Enough chat, what's the answer?
There's no easy answer here. But I think we need to try a few more radical solutions or we will be in a very similar place to where we were twenty years ago in terms of the number of women in senior roles in the workplace. In some industries (like mine - technology) it could even get worse.
What constitutes radical will vary wildly between company, industry and even location. But here are a few proposals that I'm also going to share in the context of our International Women's Day program.
As I said, these are my suggestions. What other actions would help us disrupt the status quo and accelerate gender equality in senior roles?
Are these disruptive enough?
Looking forward to hearing from you!
This content is provided by an external author without editing by Finextra. It expresses the views and opinions of the author.
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