Suggested Actions for the CEO and Executives

The Chief Executive and his or her team determine whether or not gender diversity is mainstreamed in the day-to-day operations of the organisation. Their commitment and actions impact whether the teams they manage think diversity is important to the organisation. In a survey of line managers, Opportunity Now found that the “behaviour of senior leadership” was the single most important factor for women in developing good management practice with respect to gender equality. Men ranked “public statements from senior leaders” as the number one factor.

1.   Make your commitment known

►    Communicate your organisation’s business case for diverse leadership and integrate these concepts into strategic and business conversations across the breadth of the organisation’s functions and operating areas. Seek opportunities externally and internally to be a champion and communicate the importance your Board places on it.  Brief your marketing, PR and stakeholder relations teams to look for these opportunities.

►    Ensure a senior executive has accountability for your gender strategy; they should report back at executive meetings, review diversity in senior leadership (metrics, surveys, etc.) annually with agreed actions to be reviewed at future meetings.  Ensure this gender champion has an organisation-wide remit with the backing to engage others across business functions and areas.

2.   Ensure pro-active talent management

►    Succession planning and talent management programmes are critical to developing executive board members for the future.

►    Formalise talent management and make it transparent. Every aspiring male and female should know what is required to be included in it and how decisions on candidates are made. The use of external assessors to evaluate candidates against objective criteria helps reduce bias and the perception that selectors choose people who look and act like themselves.

►    Insist criteria for inclusion be based on future organisational needs. Don’t assume that tomorrow’s leaders will look and act like today’s leaders.

►    Audit participation, progress and promotions for those in developmental programmes. If women aren’t progressing, find out why and put corrective action in place. Assume that if you recruit talented men and women, they should progress in proportionate numbers through development programmes and promotions.

►    Provide senior women with influential, board or executive level mentors either from within the organisation or from outside it. 

►    Encourage and support women to take a board position with a FTSE 250 company, a non-departmental public body, or a voluntary organization as part of their development. Consider the gender balance of your own subsidiary boards.  Offer training opportunities internally or externally on being a board director.

►    If you are a global organisation, ensure that senior women have opportunities to gain international experience.

3.  Open up the “old boys network”

►    Audit your own personal and professional networks and ask your direct reports to do the same. If less than a third of your contacts are board level or executive women, strategically target new contacts.

4.   Create inclusive corporate cultures

►    Train senior managers to recognise and act on their own unconscious bias that results in women’s skills and experiences being stereotyped and their talents and abilities overlooked.    .

►    Encourage senior executives to field mixed teams when delivering management presentations, project assignments or pitching for business even if it means looking for “expertise” rather than “hierarchical position”.

►    Engage in dialogue with senior women’s networks and support them as important to the organisation and its aspiration for diverse leadership.

►    Create flexibility in the design and execution of senior roles.  The assumption that senior roles can only be designed as they currently are and that a long hours culture is essential disadvantages many talented women.

5. Hold yourself and your team accountable

►    Make recruiting, developing and retaining senior women part of your organisation’s performance metrics. Members of the executive committee should have identified actions to take or outputs to deliver in support of these metrics.  To be truly effective, these should be included in performance appraisals and be part of decisions on pay and rewards.