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CGP 16 | Diversity In Cybersecurity
Feb 8 2022 0 Comment

Diversity in Cybersecurity: Jess Figueras On What’s Causing The Cyber Skills Shortage

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Diversity in the workforce is an issue that many industries are striving to improve. But what about cybersecurity? Jess Figueras sheds light on the matter with host Sherry Bevan. Jess is an independent tech industry strategy adviser and the Vice-Chair of the UK Cyber Security Council. She has experienced first-hand the lack of and the need for more women in the profession. In this episode, Jess discusses the cyber skills shortage and factors that contribute to a skewed diversity in the field. Technology is producing information faster than the professionals going in. So, what is putting people off from cybersecurity? And, is this a chance for more women to get into cybersecurity? Get the answer by tuning in.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Diversity in Cybersecurity: Jess Figueras On What’s Causing The Cyber Skills Shortage

In this episode, I’m delighted to be talking to Jessica Figueras, a tech industry strategy advisor and Vice-Chair at the UK Cyber Security Council. What we are going to be looking at and exploring is how we attract and keep female talent in the cybersecurity space. If this is a topic of interest, I do still have a couple of spaces available on The Executive Round Table on this topic on the 24th of March 2022.

We will be looking at why the sector needs more women in cybersecurity. We will look at ways that organizations can tackle unconscious bias in hiring. We will have a look at the role that internal mobility plays and how to close that gender pay gap in cybersecurity. Back to our guest, a very warm welcome, Jessica. Thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you for having me.

Perhaps to set the scene, it would be helpful if you could tell us a bit more about your career and how you’ve got interested in digital trust and cybersecurity issues.

It is important to remember that you can start from anywhere. When I graduated with my English degree, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I ended up in Public Relations accidentally. It was technology public relations doing a lot of work for companies like Microsoft. As it turned out, PR was not for me. However, I found the technology industry fascinating and quickly gravitated to the most complex bits of emerging technology where pretty interesting industry dynamics were emerging. From there, I became an industry analyst.

I worked at a company for a long time, focusing on areas of emerging technology, where interesting dynamics are coming out. Companies are competing in different ways and using cases affecting society and changing consumer behaviors. That’s how I got in it in the first place. Digital trust started to interest me somewhere around 2014, 2015 when I started working in a role specializing in government and public sector use of technology, how government strategy, different emerging technologies, and methodologies were going to be playing out in that sector.

Lack of diversity is a problem. If you only have the same kinds of people trying to solve the problem, you don’t have a full toolbox.

The role of digital identity became important. At that point, the government has been trying to implement a new framework for digital identity in government for quite a long time. It was called the Verified Program. It’s a way for citizens to sign into digital services online and have their identity verified.

It was a very complex undertaking. The government ran into a lot of trouble with that program. It didn’t deliver. It has been phased out and replaced. You are looking at how that digital identity is not a technocratic question. It’s not a question of how you can make the tech work. It also raises interesting questions, which are more civil society questions about the role of citizenship if everybody has access to the credentials you need to prove your entitlements to use different government services.

That leads to questions around equality, all sorts of different kinds of dimensions. We saw it with the Windrush scandal when many British citizens were deprived of their citizenship simply because they had arrived in the country as children and didn’t have credentials. We can see the horrifying consequences when the government doesn’t get this right. That’s where my interest started.

How did you get involved in the UK Cyber Security Council? That sounds like a fascinating role to me.

The UK Cyber Security Council came out of the government’s National Cybersecurity Strategy in 2016. One of the weaknesses that the government identified in the UK’s overall security posture was the profession itself and lots of different dimensions there. Firstly, endemic skill shortage continues to be the problem. The demand for skilled people consistently outstrips supply.

There are a lot of issues around skills, career paths, professional development because of our young professionals. It’s changing and evolving very quickly. It’s very difficult for organizations to know what qualifications they should be asking for in their people and how they map onto each other. It’s about one million and one different qualification you can take. It’s not always obvious how they map.

CGP 16 | Diversity In Cybersecurity
Diversity In Cybersecurity: Cybersecurity skewed away from the kinds of people who would naturally see their job primarily being about communication and engagement.

There’s a lack of diversity as well, which is a problem. If you only have the same people trying to solve the problem, you don’t have a full toolbox. It also plays into the skill shortage. That’s why the UK Cyber Security Council was set up. Initially, it was sponsored by the government and set up by the industry. I was taken on as 1 of 4 founding trustees. Our job was to bring the work done to fruition to launch the council as an independent charity. The fact that I had a long background in technology but also that I had a lot of experience in charity governance as well, that was why I ended up joining. That has been very exciting.

What’s the role of the UK Cyber Security Council? What can organizations get from it? How can it help them?

We are here to strengthen the profession. We do that in lots of ways. We map all of the different qualifications out there. We have a career pathways map. We map that onto the jobs available in the market. We give a lot of information and advice to people interested in careers in the sector. We will be doing professional registration at some points. The government is starting to look at whether any form of regulation needs to be put in place. We support that process. We are supporting the drive for diversity as well.

Cybersecurity is quite a young profession. It has not been around forever kind of thing. How do you think it’s doing in terms of promoting diversity?

The data that has been collected so far on this suggest that technology, in general, has a diversity problem and cybersecurity has even more of a problem within the tech sector. The stat side source suggested that the tech sector is about 20% female. Cybersecurity is about 15%. That’s the big gap. There is also a lack of diversity in terms of ethnicity, particularly with the lack of Black people working in the industry as well. It’s not diverse.

However, one interesting fact about the cybersecurity profession, which probably will be recognized by people working in it because often doesn’t get recognized externally is in terms of narrow diversity. The interesting thing is more neurodiverse people are working in cyber than in the general population. It’s more inclusive. Like most professions, they have a bias toward certain types of demographics. It’s quite common. Looking at the whole picture of who we’ve got lots of and less of, it’s the female candidates, which is the glaring omission.

There are more neuro-diverse people working in cybersecurity than in the general population.

What’s the benefit to cybersecurity companies to have more female candidates in their ranks? How does it benefit them?

I find it hard to answer this question, honestly, without resorting to stereotypes. In the cyber profession generally, one of its weaknesses is the ability to communicate more broadly. That’s where the weaknesses are. We know that the weaknesses are two crucial ones. It’s around lack of user awareness, which is why our users are still clicking on dodgy links and doing all sorts of things that they shouldn’t be doing.

Secondly, the business as a whole, is it from the board level down? Does it understand what the risks are? In both of those cases, you have skilled professionals working in the organization on the ground and it’s their responsibility to communicate with those groups and get themselves into positions of influence in the organization where they can change thinking.

That is much more likely if those professionals are great communicators. We have talked about how the profession is skewed towards certain demographics. It’s skewed away from the people who would naturally see their job primarily being about communication and engagement. People with those skills tend to find them in commercial jobs, sales, marketing, and policy. We know that there’s a huge agenda bias there.

Effectively what you see is that cybersecurity could do with better communication skills and engagement skills, understanding the business, the risks for the business as a whole and not for individuals, and being able to communicate that to our users. Perhaps having more women in there, I don’t mind going back to the stereotypes but women tend to have perhaps more polished or better communication skills. I also wonder whether that’s also one of those skills that are perhaps less valued in the business.

A big weakness of the profession is the image of the cyber security professional, the cyber security hack or whoever it is. It’s these hackers in hoodies thing. It’s glamorized in an unhelpful way. It’s both off-putting to people that don’t see themselves in that way, which applies to many men as it does to women. It causes us to mix up two things because there are people who we are up against it. Although, the enemy is very organized and professionalized.

CGP 16 | Diversity In Cybersecurity
Diversity In Cybersecurity: A big weakness of the profession is the image of the cybersecurity professional as these hackers in hoodies. It’s glamorized in a way which is really unhelpful.

The response has to come from the whole of the business and civil society. We are not criminals. It has to come from mainstream organizations. You have to understand how these people think but if we say that we can only respond to the cybersecurity threats via a tiny elite character, a very unusual people, we’ve got a real problem. The solution has to be a lot bigger than that.

There’s a global demand for cybersecurity professionals and pacing supply. There’s not enough talent. Could this be a real golden opportunity to get more women into cybersecurity?

It is. Some organizations are doing innovative and cool things around upskilling, training, certifications and so forth, where they are very explicitly targeting groups that have been typically underrepresented, particularly women, which is fantastic. The key is there are two things. Number one is we have to do something about the level of gatekeeping in the profession. To my mind, the most pernicious thing is the demand for competing degrees or more cybersecurity degrees. When we ask for that, we immediately cut off 80% of the women. Those degrees we know so gender imbalanced in the UK. That’s arguably where the problem starts.

The other thing also is we need to think about, “What does a career in cybersecurity look like? What does a cyber security job look like?” It’s much more diverse than we usually think. There are some areas where there are probably a lot of women working. If you expand it to the broader risk management, there are lots of women working in that field, working as in-house legal councils, working in data protection and in all sorts of areas, which should be thought of as if not complimentary, in the discipline. The question is who’s at the table? When is an organization making decisions about this stuff? Does it have a broad enough group of people there?

It’s interesting what you are saying about the demand when people are looking to fill talent spots that they are looking for a degree in Computing, Computer Science, Cybersecurity or something. You are a prime example of somebody who’s done English as a degree, and then you are working in that space. There are plenty of valuable skills you get from studying other subjects. It doesn’t have to be English or History. There are analytical skills that are very valuable in cybersecurity.

Anything that teaches you critical thinking and the ability to appraise evidence is going to be valuable. The challenge for employers generally, and this is not specific to cybersecurity but it goes to many technical professions is that we often hear from employers that there is a mismatch between the skills that graduates have and the skills that they want in their entry-level people. They often want their entry-level people to do very practical things.

We have to do something about the level of gatekeeping to the profession.

If they’ve gone to university, they may have spent three years studying a lot of theoretical concepts. Particularly in computing, by the time you have done your three years, not of universities, you are already going to be out of time. A lot of universities are not good at keeping the material up to date. There are general questions about education and preparation for technical jobs.

To my mind, what excites me is those providers who are explicitly looking for people with no relevant background at all who will take people from whatever level they are. They will give them practical training. There is some good work being done in the open university. There’s a company I have come across that has great upskilling programs. That’s where to look.

Some of the other companies I have been talking to are very much looking at internal mobility and who they already have in the organization that they could upscale or retrain and allow for those sideways to move. It reduces the cost of onboarding because those people already know the organization and are familiar with the company’s values. They know they are a good fit. That’s a real rich vein of talent sitting there waiting for you to come and ask them to do something different.

It’s important also to make clear that cybersecurity professionals in an organization do have lots of opportunities to progress. That’s one thing that people will want to know. That’s the whole package. Are we making it an attractive job? The one piece of feedback we hear a lot, which is worrying, is the level of burnout in the profession and how stressful many of those roles are.

It’s a problem for many professions. It’s not bad luck but it’s happening at a time when some of the most crucial professions for keeping us all safe are burnt out. You see it in health and social care, too. At the time of COVID, that’s the profession we need to be looking after. We can’t afford for them to be burnt out and cybersecurity is true as well.

It’s not because we’ve got that gap in supply so there’s more demand. We need more of these people to exist.

CGP 16 | Diversity In CybersecurityCGP 16 | Diversity In Cybersecurity
Diversity In Cybersecurity: The amount of power the tech industry has gathered is extraordinary and that has gone hand in hand with ta relegation of the role of women.

Technology is producing more and more intelligence that professionals can act on. It’s overwhelming people. You see the same dynamics inside social media platforms. They have moderation teams who are responsible for looking at the worst of the worst that goes on. You see similar dynamics there like stress and burnout because there’s a sense that whatever you do, it will never be enough.

Organizations, to my mind, have a moral duty to look after these people. What particularly troubles me is when you hear stories about organizations that have developed a bit of nasty blame culture. You can see why it happens. When particularly companies in the public eye suffer a cybersecurity breach, it can be financially and operationally damaging. On top of that, if you end up with a regulator investigation get hit with a fine, that’s bad.

We are in this mentality of shame, cover-up, people are fired, heads roll, and hasn’t fixed the problems often. This is complex. The solution is multilayered and complex. Probably outside the most egregious cases of negligence is how can it be effective or fair to pin the blame on one person. As long as we have that culture around cybersecurity, secrecy shame, and blame, we are not going to end up in a good place. Getting over that and getting to a good place is also about accepting the fact that this is an endemic problem, which everybody has. Everybody has weaknesses and is under threat.

Before we finish, I want to ask you about one more thing. I read an interview with you at Information Age and you talked about occupational feminization. I would love to hear more about that and how that affects cybersecurity.

This is a term to describe this interesting phenomenon, which is where a profession that starts off being dominated by men. The professions that we know are mostly our work. Over time as they attract more women, they become less well-rewarded and prestigious. To give an example, we are here in the UK. Many years ago, the figure of a school teacher was an important local authority. The schoolmaster would have been then. I don’t know what the exact figure is but women play a big role in education. It is not respected in the way it was then. It’s certainly less well remunerated.

With tech, what’s interesting is the reverse has happened. It has been a reverse occupational feminization. We go back to the ’50s and ’60s. The tech as it was then was dominated by women. Women were mainly the first coders. The tech industry back then was payroll processing and huge rooms full of most gigantic IBM mainframes. It would have been dominated by women, creating the punch cards writing their routines.

We’re very comfortable with the idea of a male tech genius but it doesn’t seem to work for women, does it?

At some point in the mid-’80s, that started to change. The tech industry started to become an industry. It started to attract attention, investments, and funding. Pretty quickly, here we are. It’s male-dominated and has been probably since the ’90s. As an industry, it’s probably secondary to banking in terms of levels of paying remuneration. Prestige, here we are with big tech ruling the world.

The amount of power the tech industry has gathered is extraordinary and that has gone hand in hand with a relegation of the role of women. I would humbly suggest it is not coincident. We see this occupational feminization as something that has been studied by academics, looking at big data sets covering different professions. It’s a phenomenon.

I started in technology in the mid-’80s. In the department I worked in, we were easily 50% female, probably more than that. I worked in that company for a long time and probably left there towards the end of the ’90s. I hadn’t realized there was a problem for women in technology because I had been surrounded by other women in technology at the company where I worked. It feels like things have gotten worse ever since. It’s a male-dominated industry. The industry as a whole is missing out on having that diversity.

It is about where prestige attaches. Where are the female equivalents of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg? I find it interesting also that we do have the odd powerful female figure in tech of the likes of Sheryl Sandberg, who has been an incredible advocate for women, and how much criticism she’s taken, so much of it from women. There’s a real tall poppy syndrome going on there. I find it troubling. We are very comfortable with the idea of the male tech genius but it doesn’t seem to work for women.

It doesn’t fit with our unconscious ideas and perceptions of how a woman should behave. Jessica, I have loved talking with you. Thank you so much. If people want to get in touch with you, how do they do that?

You can go to my website, JessicaFigueras.com, and send me a message or look me up on Twitter or LinkedIn, whatever your platform of choice. I love to hear from you. Thanks so much for having me. It’s been great.

Thank you so much for joining me with Jessica Figueras. We have been talking about we improve diversity in cybersecurity. You can find more episodes at SherryBevan.co.uk. If you want to take a deep dive with other HR and talent professionals, how we can attract and retain more women in cybersecurity, please do get in touch because I do have a couple of spaces left on my Round Table on this topic on the 24th of March 2022.

If this conversation has sparked a thought in your mind, let’s talk. An exploratory call with me will allow you to ask any questions you have about the work that I do with cybersecurity companies on how to do more, attract, develop and retain your female talent. You can close the gender pay gap. Get in touch by emailing me. Thank you for reading. Thank you again, Jess.

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About Jessica Figueras

CGP 16 | Diversity In CybersecurityJess is a tech industry strategy adviser. She works with start-ups and scale-ups on growth strategy and product development, and advises UK government on tech policy relating to security, trust and online harms.

She’s also Vice Chair at the UK Cyber Security Council and former Chair of NCT, the UK’s leading charity for parents.

CGP 15 | 2022 Gender Pay Gap
Jan 25 2022 0 Comment

Five Key Trends And Predictions To Close The Gender Pay Gap In The Year 2022

Podetize HostingGender Pay Gap, Podcast

2021 was a very challenging year for most of us for various reasons. We all experienced a decline in productivity and anxiety brought by the pandemic. Then, just when we thought it was all over, another surge began. And women at work are going through even more burnouts, stress, and confusion. What will the next year await? In this episode, Sherry Bevan explores the five key trends and insights that will impact the gender pay gap in 2022. This way, we could have a clear view of what we could expect this year and decide on the actionable steps we could take.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Five Key Trends And Predictions To Close The Gender Pay Gap In The Year 2022

In this episode, I would like to explore some of the key trends and insights on Closing the Gender Pay Gap in 2022 in the technology sector. Before I start talking to you about trends, predictions, and insights, I want to let you know about an exciting round table that I’m organizing on the 24th of March 2022. We are going to be looking at how to attract more women into cybersecurity. There are some topics that we are going to be looking at specifically.

We are going to explore, “Why does cybersecurity need more female talent in the first place? How does it help your productivity? How does it help the quality of the products that you are able to deliver?” We are going to look at ways that organizations can tackle that unconscious bias in hiring. We are going to take some time to explore, “What role does internal mobility play?” We are going to be looking at, “What are some of the specific actions that you can take? What are the specific initiatives that are going to help you close that gender pay gap?”

If you are interested in joining the round table, I do still have a few spaces. I generally have no more than 6 to 8 companies on any round table topic. I organize this about 3 or 4 times a year. If you are interested in getting involved, then please do reach out. The topic for the 24th of March is very much focused on how to attract and retain more female talent in cybersecurity.

Let’s think about the specific topic that we are going to cover in this episode. We are going to be looking at some of the trends and predictions that I foresee for 2022. There is no doubt about it. 2021 was a tough and challenging year. For me, personally, it has been a tough year for various reasons. I had a family bereavement at the start of the year. I was trying to get my stepmother moved into a care home. It was a tough year for my children. One of them was supposed to be at university and ended up doing all of her lectures online.

You need the numbers, but you also need the analysis. You need to understand the narrative and the story behind those numbers.

One of the toughest things about 2021 is that we thought it was all over, and then we looped back around again into that lockdown with the pandemic. However, let’s stay positive for 2022. The sunshine outside my window gives me a good omen for the year. Let’s focus on what we need to do now to close the gender pay gap in the technology and cybersecurity sectors. I’m going to start by sharing a few facts, and then move on to look at some of my trends and predictions of what that’s going to look like in 2022.

Let’s start by looking at some of the facts. Women remain underrepresented in technology and cybersecurity, particularly in those niches that require disruptive skills. It’s things such as cloud computing, engineering, and artificial intelligence. One study suggests that women only make up 25% of the cyber workforce. The gender pay gap reporting regulations require employers in Great Britain with 250 or more employees to publish the overall mean and median pay gaps based on the gross hourly pay for men and women expressed as a percentage. They are also required to report on their mean and median gender bonus gaps.

The other thing that employers are also required to publish as part of their gender pay gap report is the proportion of male and female employees within each quartile of their pay distribution. How many women do you have in the top quartile or the highest-paid section of your workforce? How many women do you have in the second-highest-paid section? You have got quartiles 1 to 4. You are required to report on how many men and women you have in each of those quartiles.

Generally, what we see is that you get this pyramid shape. In the lowest-paid quartile, very often, the proportion of men to women employees is about even. It’s 50/50. Sometimes it’s even slightly higher for female employees. In the next one up, it’s a little less balanced. It may be 60/40. In the next one up, it’s less balanced again may be 70/30. In the top tier, the highest-paid employees, it’s often out of balance. You have got this pyramid effect that gets created.

Employers are also required to report on the proportion of both men and women who have been paid a bonus in the preceding twelve-month period. That gender pay gap data needs to be reported annually. What we see is that, on average, the gender pay gap in technology is around 18%, which means that women are only getting paid 82% of what men on average are getting paid.

What is slightly worrying is that the gender pay gap gets even wider for employees age 40 and above. We can assume that those employees age 40 and above are the ones who are likely to be in your senior roles. Not only is that gender pay gap there because you have got more women in the lower-paid roles and more men in the higher-paid roles, but even at that senior level, there is a gender pay gap between people on the same level getting paid quite different sums.

CGP 15 | 2022 Gender Pay Gap
2022 Gender Pay Gap: Women remain underrepresented in technology and cybersecurity, particularly in those niches that require disruptive skills.

Hybrid Moves From Concept To Reality

Let’s think about five predictions. I’m going to bring five trends, insights, and predictions for you. The first one doesn’t come as any surprise to anyone who has been living through it since 2020. The hybrid working model is going to move from concept to reality. We have nearly all been working in a hybrid or flexible way. What we want to see and what I expect employers to be doing more is to take that hybrid work model from that concept.

We have ended up doing that forced homework without necessarily having thought about all of the policies and best practices that go along with it. We had to suddenly move one day from working in the office, factory or client sites to working from home. We are moving now from that concept and that put together nuts and bolts to get it moving into reality. Organizations are now doing more work on developing best practices and guidelines. They are making sure that their line managers know how to support their employees in that hybrid world.

What we saw in the 2022 Global Culture Report is that for 64% of workers in the UK, what they have prioritized from their employers is needing clearer guidelines, more clarity about the way that hybrid working is going to work and how it’s going to be implemented, “What does it mean for me as an employee? What does your hybrid working look like?”

Over the last couple of years, we have all introduced hybrid working in many places but perhaps there has been understandably not as much clarity as you would have expected if you implemented that hybrid working from scratch without the pressure of a lockdown and pandemic going on. The UK workers want to see more clarity around the way that hybrid working is implemented.

One of the things that I did in 2021 is I ran a round table on the impact of hybrid working on the gender pay gap. If that’s something that you are looking at doing, getting your hybrid work model black-and-white and creating practices and policies, then check out my white paper on The Impact of the Hybrid Revolution to make sure that you are aware of the potential pitfalls of hybrid working and how that might affect your female talent in a way that’s different to how it affects your male talent.

You get highly motivated employees by creating that positive employee experience.

Moving to that reality and having clarity on the way that’s implemented is going to give you a strong, competitive edge. Particularly, what we are starting to see is salaries are going up because of the Great Resignation and more people are looking to change roles. The clear process and policy around the hybrid work model are going to give you a competitive edge.

Internal Mobility Gives Competitive Advantage

The second insight or trend that I predict over 2022 is that we are going to see more internal mobility. We are going to see employers needing to look inside themselves to find that senior female talent in particular. This is going to give you a competitive retention edge in the market. If you are finding it difficult to recruit good female talent into technology or cybersecurity, look at your current workforce. Look at ways that you can make it easier for people to move sideways inside your organization.

Look at the departments and people that you have. Who could you retrain? Who could you develop the skills more quickly and cost-effectively than buying in that talent from outside? That’s not to say I’m encouraging you to pay people less because they are internal. One of the reasons why people often leave an organization is because they can see that new talent comes in and gets paid at a higher rate. You have got this incredible workforce who already understands your culture, values, policies and best practices.

Look at your internal workforce. “Who could you retrain? Where could you develop skills?” Rethink the career pathway and ladder that are available to your staff. Doing that will help you in many ways. For example, it’s going to increase your retention figures, which means that it’s going to reduce the cost of recruitment. It’s going to accelerate how quickly those new hires become productive because they already know your values and their way around the systems. They already know what learning and development are available. It’s going to increase and speed up how quickly those new hires or internal moves can get productive.

It’s going to reduce the time to recruit, which also means it’s going to reduce the cost of the recruitment process because you do not have to pay for job ads and recruitment agencies. The other fantastic benefit to looking at internal mobility and your current workforce or making it easier to move sideways is it’s going to increase your employee engagement, which means that you are going to build an even stronger employer brand. That in itself will make you more attractive to talent outside.

CGP 15 | 2022 Gender Pay Gap
2022 Gender Pay Gap: Employers who provide exceptional employee experiences have highly motivated employees.

The third prediction or trend that I have for you is more focused on data-driven decisions. When we are looking at the gender pay gap, very often, what we are doing is we are looking at the numbers. It’s not just about the numbers but it’s also the narrative and story behind those numbers. When I work with clients on helping them to develop their gender pay gap narrative, it’s so important to be open, honest and not try to hide the reasons why your gap is large.

If you have made progress in that gender pay gap to be open and honest about what has helped you to get there, you need the numbers but you also need the analysis. You need to understand the narrative and story behind those numbers. Having that information about the numbers, analysis, and data means you are more likely to put into place the right actions and initiatives that will help you to close that gender pay gap.

For your resources in HR, people or talent management team, you need that data literacy. You need people who can understand and work with data. Very often, what I see when I work in organizations is you have got more data than you know what to do with. It’s important that when you are making decisions on what actions and initiatives to take, you are not just making those decisions based on hunches and intuitions. You need to have that backup of the data as well.

Focus On Data-Driven Decisions

Take a moment now to think about, “How many of the people in your team would you say are data literate? How many of your decisions are based on data? What can you do to change that? What can you do to encourage more of your team to become more data literate? How can you make sure that you base your decisions on data, not just on hunches and intuitions?” That was number four. I can predict in 2022 and I have already seen this from companies that I have been talking to in January. It’s going to be more focused on having data-driven decisions and emphasis on having data-literate staff in your team.

One of the number one causes of burnout at work is feeling that you’ve been unfairly treated.

Positive Employee Experience

The trend that I see coming up is how important it is to create a positive employee experience. Many of us have been going through burnout. There’s a study by Gallup and Forrester Research that shows that employers who provide exceptional employee experiences have highly motivated employees. That’s hardly surprising. It means they have got higher engagement and increased productivity. What that means for your clients and customers is increased customer satisfaction. If your employees love working for you and doing the work that they do, that’s going to shine through into the service and products that your clients and customers receive.

It’s about looking at each stage of that employee life cycle for the whole employee experience. It’s about looking at how you do recruitment and onboarding. Remember, first impressions count. I’m sure, like me, you have seen how willingly new employees will share photos of how they have been welcomed into the organization, particularly while we have been in lockdown. That all helps to create and strengthen your employer brand.

The next stage of that employee life cycle is about career and personal development, “What are you doing to enable and empower people to take responsibility and have accountability for their career development? What are you offering to them?” Over the last couple of years, what has been important is the overall employee well-being. We are looking after the staff that we have so that we are more likely to keep those staff. How you get highly motivated employees is by creating that positive employee experience. I can see that organizations are starting to put more emphasis on creating that experience.

Widening Gender Burnout Gap

The final insight that I would like to share with you is the gender gap in burnout. What we have seen is that the burnout gender pay gap has widened. I predict that we are going to continue to see that gap even larger. Women are more likely than men to feel burned out at work. It’s 34% of women versus 26% of men feel burned out at work. That’s from Gallup’s research. What we see is that since the lockdown and pandemic, the burnout gender gap has more than doubled since 2019.

That’s scary because that’s not right. We can all see that there are lots of different factors involved but it’s worrying that women are experiencing this more than men. What we see from the research is women in non-leadership positions are affected especially. Burnout is common. 1 in 4 men experiences burnout regularly. When you do experience burnout, you are more likely to take time off, take sick leave and quit. There has been a disproportionate increase in burnout among women since the pandemic. There’s no one factor at play here.

When women work remotely in individual contributor roles, they are more likely to experience burnout. If they are working in project manager roles, they are working in isolation almost rather than working in specific leadership roles. What was interesting in looking at the research is that when you look at the difference in burnout by gender among workers in managerial positions, there wasn’t that much difference. Where we see it specifically is for those women who are working in those individual contributor roles.

What can you do? You have got to enable the conversation. You’ve got to make that conversation acceptable and available. Talk about the causes of burnout. Educate your managers so that they have the information and resources, so they know how to get the conversation started and the signs to look out for. It’s important that you measure and track employee well-being.

CGP 15 | 2022 Gender Pay Gap
2022 Gender Pay Gap: By having information about the numbers, the analysis, and the data, you’re more likely to put into place the right actions and initiatives that will help you to close that gender pay gap.

One of the number one causes of burnout at work is feeling that you have been unfairly treated. Your alarm bells should start ringing if your conversations or data uncovers a gender gap in burnout. Give your managers the opportunity to manage the burnout conversation. Make sure they have the information, education, and awareness of the signs of burnout. You are being proactive and prompting those conversations rather than waiting for the person to completely burn out, take time off sick or worst, to quit.

Those are my five trends and predictions for what we are going to see in the technology sector. They are going to influence and impact how quickly we are able to close the gender pay gap. The first one was looking at how we are going to be moving from that hybrid work model concept to the hybrid reality. Employees will need more clarity on your practices and policies because that’s what employees feel is missing for them. If you focus on internal mobility, make it easier for people to make a sideways move. That is going to give you a competitive retention edge.

I can predict that we are going to see more focus on data-driven decisions, which means that you are going to need to make sure that your people in your team have that data literacy so that you are making decisions based on data, not just based on hunches and intuitions. If you want a productive and highly engaged staff, it’s all about creating that positive employee experience. I can see employers being able to go back to focusing on doing that. Finally, the last thing is about keeping an eye on that gender gap in burnout because that has widened over the last couple of years. I would hate to see that widen even further.

I would love to hear your thoughts on these key insights and trends in closing the gender pay gap. Now that you have read this, what are the things that you and your organization need to do? What do you need to change to get different results? What do you need to commit to achieving those results? If you want to talk through any of the trends and insights that I have talked about, and if you would like to have an opportunity to talk through with an external objective consultant, then please feel free to give me a call or get in touch with me by email at Sherry@SherryBevan.co.uk.

If you are interested in that round table on attracting more female talent into cybersecurity, then please do get in touch. The round table takes place on the 24th of March 2022. I still have a few spaces left on that. If this conversation sparked a thought in your mind, let’s talk. An exploratory call with me will give you the opportunity to ask any questions you have about the work that I do. For me to share key insights and trends that I’m seeing from other organizations that I work with that want to do more to attract, develop and retain female talent, which means that you start to close that gender pay gap. I would love to hear from you. I will be back next time. Thank you.

Important Links:

CGP 14 | Career Negotiation
Dec 21 2021 1 Comment

The Power Of Negotiation: Protecting Your Career From Falling Foul Of The Gender Pay Gap

Podetize HostingPodcast

As a woman, you should know your worth. Join Sherry Bevan in this episode as she discusses how women can protect their careers in this complicated world. Closing the gender pay gap requires a two-pronged approach. At the organizational level, we can implement initiatives to tackle female talent development and retention. At the individual level, there are actions that individual women can take to protect their careers from the gender pay gap. But, of course, all of these will still depend on the person’s willingness and courage to show their value.

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Listen to the podcast here:

The Power Of Negotiation: Protecting Your Career From Falling Foul Of The Gender Pay Gap

Welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for joining me. I’d love you to come back next episode and to make that even easier, you simply need to subscribe to the show. Let’s get into the show. In this episode, I’m doing something a little bit different and we’re going to explore what individuals can do to protect their own careers from the gender pay gap.

When we think about the gender pay gap, one of the questions I often get asked is, “Who’s responsible for closing it. Who’s responsible for dealing with it? Who’s responsible for making that gender pay gap go away?” I’ve always believed that we have to take a two-pronged approach. We need to tackle it at the organizational level because there is unconscious bias and things don’t work the way we want them to work but we also need to tackle this at an individual level. That’s what I’d like to explore in this show.

In the very first episode of this show, we looked at equal pay and why equal pay is not the only solution for closing the gender pay gap. Equal pay is the law. You have to pay people the same amount of money for doing the work that is of the same value but we still have a gender pay gap even though equal pay came into law many years ago now. Since 2017, companies with more than 250 employees in the UK have been required to report on their gender pay gap. That is calculated as the difference between the average hourly earnings of men and women as a proportion of men’s average hourly earnings.

If we look at the most recent gender pay gap data, we can see that overall, in the UK, the gender pay gap is 18%. In other words, women earn 82% of what men earn. However, what we also see from the data is that the pay gap is highest for employees aged over 40, which is quite interesting. It does vary from sector to sector. In information and communication, it’s 18%. If you look at professional science and technology, it’s 16.2%.

You have to pay people the same amount of money for doing the work that is of the same value.

When I’m working with companies, when I first approach them, often, they tell me, “We’ve got an equal pay policy. We’re okay.” I hear from individual women, “We’ve got equal pay law. Why is there still a gender pay gap?” Some people don’t believe that there’s a gender pay gap. “We’ve got equal pay. There can’t still be a gender pay gap.” One thing we know for sure is that the evidence tells us otherwise. We’ve got equal pay but there is still a gender pay gap. It’s complicated. There are so many different factors.

We know that there are fewer women working in senior roles, which are getting paid more. That’s going to affect your gender pay gap. We know that women are less likely to negotiate on their starting salary and that affects your gender pay gap. Women are less likely to get promoted. Women are more likely to work part-time. There are more men than women in the higher-paying sectors such as technology and financial services. We know that women tend to prefer to work from home more often than men do.

What we also see is that while homeworkers may be 13% more productive, they get promoted less often. That’s something that I explore in more detail in my white paper that got published on The Impact Of The Hybrid Revolution On The Gender Pay Gap In Technology. Do pop over to my website and grab your copy of that white paper for more information about that.

For example, if we look at women in sales and technology, although women hit or exceed the quotas that have been set, they are often paid less in salary and commissions over time. Putting aside your role as an HR professional or a diversity and inclusion leader for one moment, putting aside the whole range of initiatives that hopefully you’ve got going at your organization to tackle this issue at the organizational level.

What I’d like to do in this episode is talk about what women as individuals can do from the other side, at the individual level. It is this two-pronged approach, tackling it at the organizational level and on the individual level. When I work with women on a one-to-one basis, I talk about introducing or implementing the triple-A plan. Tackling that pay gap and initial starting salary is important because whatever starting salary you get, that is going to affect over time your salary, pay rise, bonus and eventually your pension contribution.

CGP 14 | Career Negotiation
Career Negotiation: It’s important to talk about what you want. Talk to your manager about your ambitions, about where you want to see your career going, and other growth opportunities that you want.

It’s a knock-on effect because very often, your pay rise, bonus and pension contributions are done as a percentage of your salary. If one starts at $50,000 and one starts at $60,000 and to make the sums easy, let’s assume a 10% pay increase the following year, the women would be on $55,000 and the man would be on $66,000. If they then get another 10% increase the following year, that will add $5,500 to the woman’s salary and $6,600 onto the man’s salary. You can already see how that gap between the two is starting to widen.

Let’s look at the triple-A plan to protect your career from the gender pay gap. This is what individual women can do to protect their careers from that gender pay gap. The triple-A plan is about always asking for more, articulating your ambition and then auditing the work you do and the value of that work to the business. Let’s start with asking for more. In fact, I encourage my one-to-one clients to always ask for more.

Do women negotiate less often? Yes, they do. There have been numerous studies on this. The one that I’m referencing was published by Robert Half in 2018. They surveyed more than 2,700 workers employed in the US in professional environments. This survey was conducted by an independent research firm. What they looked at was the percentage of workers who tried to negotiate higher pay in their last job offer. They looked at this by gender and age. When we look at the overall figures, 39% of people try to negotiate higher pay, while 61% didn’t.

Overall, not even everybody tries to negotiate a better job offer. When we look at the figures by gender, what we see is that 46% of men, nearly half will negotiate or did negotiate a higher pay in the last job offer. Whereas for women, only 34% tried to negotiate higher pay. Interestingly, the data that they published also looks at age and it seems that the older you get, the less likely you are to negotiate on salary, which surprises me. When they’re looking at the 18 to 34 age bracket, 45%, they try to negotiate higher pay, 35 to 54 dropped down to 40% and then for 55 plus, it dropped down to 30%.

It’s all very well me telling you to always ask for more. How do you do that? There are a few different pieces involved. Before I start to talk about how I tackle this with my one-to-one clients, what I want you to do, first of all, is to check out the book called Ask For It by Linda Babcock. She sets out all useful strategies, how to structure that conversation and get what you want. The first thing to do when you’re asking for more is to take care of the mindset piece.

Make the most of the opportunities you’re offered, and don’t feel that you’ve got to say yes to everything.

Often, we don’t ask for more because we look at salary negotiation. We look at this as something personal and whatever you get offered is about your personal worth but it’s not. What you’ve got to remember is this is a business negotiation. It’s not a personal negotiation. Take care of that mindset piece first and get yourself into the frame of mind that this is a business negotiation.

Do your research and preparation. Find out what the salary ranges on that job are. If it’s not published and you are going through a recruitment agency, ask them. If it’s not published and you are going through it directly, who do you know works at the organization? Also, look at what the market research is telling you. What are these types of roles being advertised in the marketplace? When you’re talking about salaries and doing that negotiation, stay calm. Don’t allow this to become an emotional discussion. Try not to take it personally and talk about salary ranges.

The other thing that often my clients say to me is, “What if it’s not negotiable? Should I ask first?” Don’t ask if it’s negotiable. Assume that it is. Assume that it’s okay to ask for more. If it’s not negotiable, they’re going to tell you anyway. Why ask? Even if they say the salary is not negotiable, I would still ask. Don’t forget. Your job offer negotiation isn’t just about salary. It can also be about the hours you work and the benefits you get. It’s not about the actual money on the paid price.

When you’re talking about salary or job offer negotiation, it’s not just about the salary that you get. It’s also about looking at the benefits, flexible working, increased holiday and pension contributions. It’s not just about the money. If they present you with a job offer, you can go back and say, “That’s less than I was expecting for someone with my experience.” You can be very specific and tell them what you’re expecting. You can also give them that salary range.

The key thing here is to be ambitious and ask for more than you want but certainly, more than you expect. What we also know from the data is there’s a direct correlation between how much you asked for and how much you get. You’re going to be kicking yourself in the foot if you ask for an extra $10,000 and they say yes straight away because, “Could I have asked for an extra $15,000 or an extra $20,000?” Always be ambitious and ask for more than you want or expect. That’s part one of the triple-A plan is to ask for more always.

CGP 14 | Career Negotiation
Career Negotiation: While homeworkers may be 13% more productive, they get promoted less often.

Part two of the triple-A plan is to articulate your ambitions. What we often see is that the people who get promoted are the ones you’ve talked about and articulated their skills and their ambitions. It’s important to talk about what you want. Talk to your manager about your ambitions, where you want to see your career going and the growth opportunities you want. Don’t assume that your manager will hear about everything that’s available and will always be looking out for you. You’ve got to do some of this work yourself.

If you hear about an opportunity in another team, an opportunity to go on secondment or an opportunity to get involved in a project that’s not directly related to what you’re doing, ask about it. Articulate your desire and what you want to get involved with. That’s important because it keeps you in front of mind. The other thing when it comes to articulating your ambition is, very often when we look at the way the girls at school and then as women when we get to university, the way that we tend to behave and communicate is different from that of boys and men when they get to school and then university.

Women often are brilliant at working hard. We graft, work hard and get great results. While you’re at school, college or university, that’s brilliant because you work hard, you study hard, you do your revision and you get brilliant grades at the end of it. That works when you’re at school or in the education system. In the workplace, that is completely different. People might notice that you’re working hard or see that you’re getting good results but the thing is, everyone is so busy working hard themselves.

People need to be reminded and be told that you’re getting these results and that you’re working hard. Working hard on its own is not enough. You need to be getting the results. You need to articulate your ambition and make sure that people know that you are ambitious and you want to move on and make progress. The final piece in the triple-A plan is about auditing the work that you do. What’s important is that when you’re working hard and getting those good results, audit the work that you do and how valuable is that work that you do to the business.

Audit everything that you do and grade it from 1 to 10, where one is the business couldn’t care less about that piece of work, to 10, where it’s absolutely critical and has a direct impact on the profitability of the organization. Review the work that you do. If you’re doing work that’s less than 7 out of 10, what can you do to make sure that you’re getting the opportunity to do work, to work with clients or projects that are graded 8, 9 or 10? When you’re doing work that is valued by the business, you are more likely to get seen. You’re more likely to get noticed and therefore, get promoted.

Always be ambitious and ask for more than what you want or expect.

Don’t get caught up in being busy and doing stuff that doesn’t affect the bottom line. Although, I have to say sometimes that can be smart and strategic. When I worked at Arthur Andersen many years ago, I volunteered to get involved with organizing the dinner dance for the firm, which took up an awful lot of time and energy but it was great fun and fantastic. It was a small group of us.

Sometimes, it can be smart or strategic to volunteer and get involved in things like that. I did this because I wanted to have fun and I love organizing events and doing that thing but also strategically, the managing partner was on the organization committee that year for the dinner dance. I wanted to get the opportunity to talk about my career and articulate my ambitions in front of him.

Doing stuff that doesn’t affect the bottom line isn’t always the most valuable use of your time but sometimes it can be smart or strategic to do that. Make the most of the opportunities you’re offered and don’t feel that you’ve got to say yes to everything. Be strategic, audit the opportunities before you say yes and do the ones that you can see will be of value to you in your career or have direct value to the business.

That is my triple-A plan for women who want to protect their careers from that gender pay gap. The triple-A plan is to always ask for more, articulate your ambitions and then finally audit the work that you do and its value to the business so that you can be sure that you’re doing work that is valued by the company.

Thank you so much for joining me. I hope you’ve got something valuable from this episode, exploring what individuals can do to protect their own career from falling foul of the gender pay gap.

If reading this has sparked an idea for you and your organization, please do book your exploratory chat with me. This will give you the opportunity to ask any questions you have about the work that I do with technology and cybersecurity companies on attracting, developing and retaining your female talent so that more of them get promoted, which means that you close the gender pay gap. You can get in touch with me by email at Sherry@SherryBevan.co.uk to book your call. Thanks for reading. Speak to you soon.

Important Links:

CGP 13 | Motherhood Penalty
Dec 7 2021 0 Comment

Motherhood Penalty: How It Affects The Gender Pay Gap

Podetize HostingGender Pay Gap, Podcast

Aside from the still unaddressed gender pay gap, women face yet another employment issue: motherhood penalty. Numerous studies show that women’s earnings and career are negatively impacted after giving birth to their first child. Mums also earn far less than those who don’t have any kids. Sherry Bevan presents the worrying statistics of women not getting the salary they are due just because they are mothers. She also provides several possible solutions to end this motherhood penalty, giving women the earnings they truly deserve.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Motherhood Penalty: How It Affects The Gender Pay Gap

Welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for joining me. Do come back to read to the next episode and to make that easier, you simply need to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player. Now, let’s get into the show. In this episode, what I’d like to explore with you is how the motherhood pay penalty affects your gender pay gap, and as an organization, what can you do to prevent this?

The irony is I’m doing this episode the week after Equal Pay Day on the 18th of November 2021, as well as International Men’s Day on the 19th of November 2021. These are seemingly two major gender campaigns jostling for attention in the press and media at the same time. The motherhood penalty is a major contributor to the gender pay gap and to that Equal Pay Day because we know that women’s earnings dropped by almost half after the birth of their first child, so the price of being the primary carer is pretty high.

On the other side of the gender coin, we often hear younger fathers talking about their frustration of being stereotyped as the breadwinner and not being able to have the time to be that engaged father they want to be. Let’s start with the basics. When we talk about the motherhood pay penalty, what are we referring to? It’s the pay gap between working mothers and similar women without dependent children. It’s certainly not unique to the UK, and its existence has been recognized for some time now. This is different from the gender pay gap because that measures the pay gap between all women and all men in the workforce.

Many women who took maternity leaves delivered a negative impact on their careers, self-confidence, and self-esteem.

There was a study published by the TUC in 2016. This looked at a cohort of full-time working men and women born in 1970. The overall gender pay gap for that cohort is 34%, which I think is quite shocking looking at full-time working men and women, and yet, there’s still that gender pay gap of 34%. The research says that by the age of 42, mothers who are in full-time work are earning 11% less than full-time women without children.

It’s interesting because their research suggested it affects those mothers who had their first child when they were under 33. Women who had their first child at 33 or older experienced a wage bonus of 12% compared to similar women who haven’t had children. It also affects single mothers more than those who are in a couple at birth. There’s a much smaller, but still significant, gender pay gap between the childless women and men of 12% compared to 42% between the mothers and the fathers. That’s what we’re talking about when we refer to the motherhood pay penalty.

There’s a new study conducted by the University College London, which reveals that women earn 45% of what their salary would have been without having children in the first six years after giving birth. In that first year alone, salaries for new mothers dropped by 28%, equating to a fall of roughly 306 parents each month. The thing is, you’ve got to balance that against the cost of childcare for women who go back to work. The average cost of sending a child under two to a part-time nursery place for 25 hours per week is over £7,000 pounds in 2021, which is about £138 pounds a week.

CGP 13 | Motherhood Penalty
Motherhood Penalty: Women’s earnings dropped by almost half after the birth of their first child.

Whenever the woman returned to her role full-time or part-time, that had a significant impact on the pay penalty that they faced. We know that caring responsibilities fall more heavily on women, and of course, that often means they’re less able to accommodate some working patterns and hours, and particularly so in the technology sector where we’re often expected to be online or delivering service to our clients who are looking for a 24/7 service, and of course, we need to be able to cover those hours on the support team and on the service delivery team.

What’s interesting though, is that women’s employment rates jumped sharply from about 90% to 75% after giving birth. The other fact is that the average weekly hours of work for those still in paid work is it falls around 40% to less than 30%. You can see that all of these factors are exacerbating that motherhood pay penalty, and in effect, opening up your gender pay gap.

There is another study conducted by researchers at London South Bank University that half of the women surveyed felt that taking maternity leave had a negative impact on their career and that in itself led to a negative impact on their confidence and their self-esteem. You may well have noticed that when you’ve had women coming back to work after maternity leave. What they report is that they have been refused bonuses, pay raises, and promotions.

Women are less likely to seek out training or higher-paying roles because they are more likely to experience career interruptions or reductions in working time.

The lead researcher at that piece of work done at the London South Bank University said that all women that gave feedback about maternity said that since they became pregnant, men in their companies had treated them differently. The most common microaggressions that were talked about were discriminatory comments about the women having a preggy brain when doing their work or comments about their pregnancy. I remember receiving those comments myself when I was pregnant at work, but there are also negative assumptions made about taking additional time off work upon return, being less available to attend meetings or conferences, or not wanting to be as ambitious and not wanting to take on those bigger roles.

This is what’s destroying women’s career prospects. It’s those microaggressions and discriminations. It’s that unconscious bias, stereotypes, prejudice, and organizational culture. When you start to destroy women’s career prospects like that, inevitably, you are going to affect the gender pay gap at your organization. Isn’t that sad and upsetting? As a mother myself, the more children you have, the greater the penalty that the woman pays, or the more time away from work.

For example, if you take a career break to look after your children, the longer it takes to catch up. What we have in this society is often the older women who perhaps are in their more senior roles then get caught in the sandwich between looking after younger children. We all know the impact that’s had to do with forced homeschooling, but also, these women are typically the ones who are caring for elderly parents and taking on the bulk of the responsibility there, so they’re being squished in two places.

CGP 13 | Motherhood Penalty
Motherhood Penalty: Women who become pregnant are usually treated by their male workmates differently. They mostly receive discriminatory comments about their maternity.

What are the reasons for this motherhood pay penalty? Let’s spend a fair bit of time looking at that. Is it that women are less likely to seek out training or higher-paid roles because they know they’re more likely to experience career interruptions or reductions in working time? Maybe you feel that women are more likely to commit to more family-friendly employers, which sometimes are lower-paying. Often, women opt for part-time roles, which means perhaps less responsibility and, therefore naturally, less money or lower salary. What are employers doing to build traditional stereotypical expectations into their hiring and promoting decisions? Why is it that women’s work is undervalued and underpaid?

The report of the Institute for Fiscal Studies in 2018 found that by the time a couple’s first child is age twenty, many mothers earn nearly 1/3 less than the fathers. Generally speaking, people in paid work see their pay rise each year as they gain more experience, whereas the Institute for Fiscal Studies research shows that part-time workers miss out on those pay rises or on those gains. We already know that the vast majority of part-time workers are women, especially mothers of young children.

Those are the facts. That’s what we’ve got to live with. Those are the challenges that we’re facing that we need to tackle. What can you do about it? Here are some ideas and some recommendations. The first thing is to make flexible working work for everyone. Make it easier to apply for flexible working, so that it starts to become something for everyone, and not just a woman’s thing.

Women often opt for part-time roles, which means less responsibility and lower salaries.

In fact, we’re in a pivotal moment in corporate history because many organizations are starting to introduce the hybrid work model, but it is about making sure that the hybrid work model works for all. For more information on that, you can download a copy of my published white paper, which is all about The Impact of the Hybrid Revolution on the Gender Pay Gap in Technology.

Other recommendations for you or things for you to look at, and initiatives to start to implement is to look at increasing the take-up of shared parental leave. Often, we find that when we talk to fathers who’ve taken shared parental leave is that they suddenly have a whole new understanding and awareness of the pressures of being a full-time carer for a young child. That can affect how they behave, communicate, and the empathy that they will have for other women or mothers in the workplace.

Do you have role models who are taking advantage of flexible working and shared parental leave? How can you showcase those people, particularly if they’re working in senior positions to normalize that shared parental leave and flexible working so that women don’t see that it’s something that’s out of reach or is only acceptable for women?

CGP 13 | Motherhood Penalty
Motherhood Penalty: Most part-time workers miss out on pay raises, and many of them are women, especially mothers of young children.

What can you do for your returners? They are the women who are coming back to work after a career break or after maternity leave. Can you offer them return to work maternity coaching that can be helpful and powerful in helping them to assess their career, review their work-life balance, and how they make work and family work together so that they still feel empowered to take action, articulate their ambitions, and make progress in their career?

It is important to give your line managers or those with line manager responsibilities the opportunity to raise their awareness and to educate them on the benefits of having a diverse workforce of the additional challenges perhaps women might be facing and to make sure they’re aware of your robust criteria for job hires and promotions so that you minimize that unconscious bias as much as you possibly can.

In the hybrid world, it’s important that you are intentional in the way that you design your hybrid work model so that it’s inclusive and fair for everyone. You can also publish salary ranges on your job descriptions. We know that women tend to negotiate less when it comes to a salary, but if you publish the job salary range, they’re much more likely to negotiate and, therefore, much less likely to be at a disadvantage right from the get-go when they join your company.

CGP 13 | Motherhood Penalty
Motherhood Penalty: Women tend to negotiate less when it comes to a salary. But if you publish the job salary range, they’re much more likely to negotiate. Therefore, they are much less likely to be at a disadvantage right from the get-go.

There are more information, ideas, and thoughts to inspire you and look at the initiatives that you’re taking and decide which ones you’re going to focus on in 2022. You can get a copy of my white paper on The Impact of the Hybrid Revolution on the Gender Pay Gap in Technology at SherryBevan.co.uk/WhitePaper-Request.

I hope that’s been helpful for you to start to explore the motherhood pay penalty and how that might be affecting the gender pay gap in your organization. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my thoughts and ideas on this. You can get more episodes of this show at SherryBevan.co.uk/Podcast.

If this has sparked a thought in your mind and you’d like to know what you can do to implement initiatives to reduce that motherhood pay penalty in 2022, please do book an exploratory chat with me.

That call will give you the opportunity to ask any questions you might have about the work that I do with technology and cybersecurity companies on attracting, developing, and retaining your female talent so that you close the gender pay gap. Email me at Sherry@SherryBevan.co.uk to book your call. I’ll be back for the next episode. Thank you for reading.

Important Links:

CGP 12 | Career In Technology
Nov 23 2021 0 Comment

Joysy John And Hana Abdi: How To Motivate Women To Find A Career In Technology

Podetize HostingPodcast

People who have a career in technology are only composed of 19% women. With this industry dominated by men, what can be done for women to get into this thriving community?

Sherry Bevan explores this subject further with Joysy John, CEO of 01 Founders, and Hana Abdi, Tech Leader at 01 Founders and the Founder of Bridge The Gap In Tech.

Together, they talk about the strongest motivating factors that push women towards a career in technology, ultimately finding their purpose and building a better world. They also talk about the most daunting barriers that limit women from becoming successful in this industry, from the lack of better opportunities to the stereotyping that these jobs are only for (bearded) men.

Free-to-access London coding school: https://www.01founders.co/

Bridge The Gap In Tech: https://www.bridgethegapintech.com/

Joysy John on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/joysyj/

Hana Abdi on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/hanaabdi/

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Listen to the podcast here:

Joysy John And Hana Abdi: How To Motivate Women To Find A Career In Technology

In this episode, we’re exploring what motivates women to start a career in technology and what the barriers are to attracting more women. I’m super delighted and excited to be talking to not one but two amazing women. First, I’ve got Joysy John who is the CEO of 01 Founders, which is a tuition-free coding school with a job guaranteed to improve diversity in technology and tackle the digital skills gap. The work that they’re doing is incredible.

We’ve got Hana Abdi who is the Tech Leader at 01 Founders, as well as the Founder of Bridge The Gap In Tech. We’re going to be talking about what motivates women and what will motivate them to have a career in technology. A warm welcome to you both, Joysy and Hana. Thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you so much for having us.

Let’s get started. I did a brief introduction there about 01 Founders. To set the scene for anyone reading, could you tell us a bit more about the work you do there?

01 Founders is a public-private partnership to address the digital skills gap. We are cofounded by one of the largest Effie College, Capital City College Group, one of the preeminent entrepreneur networks in Europe, Founders Forum and 01Edu who have over 25 years of experience in peer-to-peer learning pedagogy. In addition to these three cofounders, we also have founding partners such as Nominet, Peloton and Faculty, who are all keen to work with us to address the digital skills gap but also to improve diversity in tech. Hana is going to talk about what we are doing here on campus and how we are different from any other coding school or talent agency.

We help and bring people in that don’t have any background in tech. We welcome them with no qualifications. They come as they are. We give them the help and support they need to get to a middle or senior level in tech. We teach them languages such as Golang, JavaScript and Rust. We have a three-week selection pool where they come in, meet their fellow peers, work together, collaborate and be curious about technology.

CGP 12 | Career In Technology
Career In Technology: More women need to be encouraged to break into tech. They must attend more events, use various platforms to engage, and take advantage of different opportunities.

We facilitate different talks for them to try and get them interested and keen on the industry. Throughout those three weeks, they pick up key skills and experiences. Hopefully, they get put onto the selection pool once they’ve passed and done well. With a 1 or 2-year fellowship, they get the skills and the coding experience to become mid to senior-level developers.

In addition to the free learning, we also provide a job guarantee. When they finish their two years of learning, they have three options. They can either join one of our corporate partners as a software engineer, set up their own company and we will support the entrepreneurial venture or join our talent agency and work as a software engineer for any company that’s looking for talent.

What are the people that are being attracted to your course? Who turns up? What’s the gender and ethnicity split like?

It is a very diverse cohort. When you come on campus, that’s what you see first because 77% of our fellows are from Asian, Black and ethnic minority backgrounds and 36% are female. We still have a long way to go to get to the 50% gender target that we set ourselves. In addition to that, you’ll see that people who have come on this program, the age range varies widely as well. We have a nineteen-year-old and somebody in their late 50s as well.

It is about lifelong learning and finding people who have the talent but never got the opportunity. We’ve got people who dropped out of school or university and people who’ve got a Master’s in Cyber Security. It’s a wide range. 40% of our fellows had no prior coding experience but 26% of those had some background in Computer Science.

That sounds like an extraordinary cohort where you’ve got that incredible range of experience. Thinking back to when I did it as studies, it’s quite nice to have a mixed range of experience and knowledge in the group because the students will presumably be then supporting and helping each other to grow and develop.

If you don’t believe in yourself that you can learn, you’re more likely to give up. Be confident that you can learn.

From what I’ve seen, everyone has been working together regardless of how much experience they’ve had. The ones with a bit more experience have been helping the ones with the lower experience. It has been great.

What we’re talking about is you’ve got a range of people with no experience and loads of experience. I imagine therefore that you’re going to get that lovely environment where you’ve got the more experienced students who have already got some pre-existing knowledge and experience, helping and supporting those without any knowledge and experience at all.

We’ve created a body system to help the students that don’t have any coding experience to work with the students that do have coding experience. That has been working out great. We’ve also created a bunch of social events to get the students from the different cohorts and selection pools to work together. It has been good to have people with different experiences in bringing different things to the table.

When you’re bringing in people who have got that previously lived experience, it means you’re going to end up with a more diverse workforce. To come back to the gender split that you’ve got, we don’t need any research or studies to tell us. We only need to look around. It looks like that applies to your cohort as well that there’s a significant gender imbalance in technology. I would like to talk a bit more about that. Why don’t more women work in technology? What have you learned from your cohort?

One of the biggest hurdles I’ve seen so far has been the lack of female role models and lack of self-belief, trying to see people who are in these industries already and getting women into it. Most of these women that have come to the course have either had a long career break, childcare and various different things. They need that reassurance in permitting female role models and being visible faces of our company, which is the majority of our team are females. They’re seeing women in tech. They’re having conversations with us and seeing that they can do it.

Having support from their peers as well as us has been life-changing. I feel like more women need to be encouraged to break into tech, attend more events, use various different platforms to engage and get that support to encourage them, pull each other up and take advantage of different opportunities. I feel like 01 Founders is creating and opening doors for women to walk through and also building the confidence to have the selection pools so they can see that, “I can learn something new and I am trying. I am getting support and feeling my self-worth.”

CGP 12 | Career In Technology
Career In Technology: To inspire women to do things, they need the opportunity to have something flexible that works around them.

This process is building confidence. It’s not, “Start a university course and struggle through it for three years.” It’s, “Try to start for three weeks, build the self-confidence and self-worth, go through a two-year course and you can do it.” They start with something. We’ve had some women that have started but never opened a computer before. Now, she can explain algorithms to me and break down various different things. It’s life-changing.

It must be such a heartwarming project to be part of. I cannot imagine how good that makes you feel in the morning to go to work.

We were both emotional when we were calling up fellows to say that they had got through those three weeks of intense training. A lot of them didn’t think that they belonged here. We had a bus driver, a woman who had worked as a chef for seven years and another woman who had trained as a homeopath before and was new to this country.

There were so many people from such different backgrounds that felt they didn’t belong in tech but because they persevered and didn’t give up, it was amazing to see the progress that they had made. It was emotional when you feel that you can impact not just their life but their families and society at large. One of the women said to me, “I’m doing this not just for myself but for my daughter so she has an amazing role model.” That’s inspiring.

What have you noticed about what motivates women in their careers? Some of these women are having quite a significant career change. They’re going from homeopath to technology or from a chef to technology. What motivates them at work? What can we learn from that?

What motivates women is that they want to make an impact and a difference. That’s why a lot of women tend to be attracted towards medicine social work or other areas where they feel that they are making a difference. Due to media stereotypes where tech jobs are seen as a guy sitting behind a computer with poor hygiene and lots of facial hair, a lot of women don’t feel that they fit in. That’s the key factor. How do you make sure that you show enough role models but also communicate that it’s the best way to solve problems and make a big impact in the world?

That’s so true because there’s a lot to be done still to get over those stereotypes that some people have of the IT industry. You’re talking about women who want to make an impact, make a difference or have a purpose. I personally think technology is one of the best ways that you can have an impact because you’re always problem-solving, creating something new or troubleshooting. It’s a brilliant career. I have somewhat of a bias, having worked in technology all my life. Tell me more about how women can make an impact in technology. What are the ways that you would encourage women who might be reading this to say, “You can do that in technology with that as your career?”

Learning anything new is hard and challenging. You have to be willing to be uncomfortable, fail, and pick yourself up when things don’t work.

There are many ways that people can step into a career in tech. The first and foremost is building skills and that could be done by trying out some programs online. There are lots of free resources available. Take a tiny step to experiment, learn and see if that works but also come on campus and see what we are doing here. This is zero risk for you because it’s something as simple as playing a game online and then coming on campus for three weeks and learning with your peers. If it’s something that you don’t like or you’re not suited for this kind of learning or working then you have other options as well. That’s the first thing, build your skills.

The second thing is to build your confidence because if you don’t believe in yourself that you can learn, you’re more likely to give up. Be confident that you can learn. If Hana and I could learn it, I’m sure anyone can learn it. The final thing is to build your network. In addition to building your skills and confidence, you need to have a network so that you can find work placements, internships and full-time job opportunities. That would be my advice.

Building a community is huge. You can get resources and job opportunities. Having that network around you to build you up and you can ask questions to is crucial, especially as women in tech. Tech is so diverse. There are so many industries you can go and tell people every day. You can go into beauty, health, fitness or pet care. Some of my friends are working with dogs and they’re doing things in tech.

That’s the key. Technology is so diverse because technology runs the world at the moment. If you want to get involved in whatever it is that you’re fascinated by, you can still do that and have a good career in technology. What do you feel are the other barriers to attracting more women into technology? I’ve talked about the stereotypes. What else puts women off?

There are a number of barriers. The basic is access to Wi-Fi and a device because if you don’t have that, you can’t learn to code. The next level is willingness. Learning anything new is hard and challenging. You have to be willing to be uncomfortable, fail and pick yourself up when things don’t work. That’s the second barrier. You need to build your willingness and sometimes it’s hard to do it alone. That’s why you have such high dropout rates when you’re doing it online alone. Try and build your peer network. Come on campus and build your community. Hana’s Bridge The Gap In Tech Community is another example where you can find and connect with people who are going on a similar journey.

We work with underrepresented people in tech. I bridge the gap in tech to get them into opportunities, share free resources, do some coding practices with them and get them into jobs as well. I also think it’s the lack of opportunities as well. There are so many free resources out there but it’s the lack of opportunities for women. I feel like some of the courses aren’t as flexible and suited to women that have other things that they need to be doing, such as support needs. In order to inspire women to do things, it’s the flexibility and the opportunity for them to have something that’s flexible that works around them.

CGP 12 | Career In Technology
Career In Technology: Tech is so diverse. There are so many industries you can go from here, andnot just from a digital standpoint.

I love what you were saying, Joysy, about that willingness to feel uncomfortable. That’s such a key thing. Particularly, when you’re looking at changing your career or developing a new skillset, you have to accept that you’re going to go through that period of time where it feels scary or you don’t know what you’re doing. To have that willingness to feel uncomfortable, that’s a lovely way of phrasing it because we all go through that in everyday life in many respects.

I’ve loved talking to you both. It’s fascinating to hear what you’re doing at 01 Founders and the work that you’re doing. This is the first cohort that you’re running. This course is two years. Hopefully, at the end of two years, we’ll have some amazing people going out into the world, doing more with technology, which is fantastic. If people want to get in touch with you and find out more, how do they do that?

They can visit our website, www.01Founders.co or they can come to visit us on campus. We are right by Regent’s Park at Longford Street NW1 3HB. The best way to see what we’re doing is to come to meet the team and the fellows who are going through the learning.

Joysy and Hana, thank you so much for joining me. It has been an absolute pleasure to talk to you. I can’t wait to see what happens in two years’ time.

Thank you for having us.

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I’ve enjoyed exploring what motivates women at work and the barriers to attracting more women to technology. If this conversation has sparked a thought in your mind then let’s talk and explore. A call with me gives you the opportunity to ask any questions you have about the work I do with technology companies on attracting, developing and retaining your female talents so you can close the gender pay gap. Email me at Sherry@SherryBevan.co.uk to book your call. Thank you for reading.

Important Links:

About Joysy John

CGP 12 | Career In TechnologyJoysy is CEO of 01Founders, tuition-free coding schools with a job-guarantee to improve diversity in tech and tackle the digital skills gap

About Hana Abdi

CGP 12 | Career In TechnologyHana is the Tech Leader for 01Founders, as well as founder of Bridge The Gap In Tech

CGP 11 | Fujitsu
Nov 9 2021 0 Comment

How Fujitsu Is Working Towards Closing The Gender Pay Gap With Rachel Marsh

Podetize HostingGender Pay Gap, Podcast

There’s a lot of talk on how to close the gender pay gap but what are companies actually doing to make it happen? In this episode, Head of Digital Transformation, Rachel Marsh, shares what Fujitsu has been doing to stay ahead in terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion. She chats with Sherry Bevan on what’s worked and what hasn’t on their end. Rachel also shares how they keep track of their progress and what other companies can do to continually empower and promote the closing of the gender pay gap. They also touch on flexible working, and their research on the ethnicity pay gap. Stay tuned and get value from this insightful discussion on how to become a more proactive and progressive organization for your employees.

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Listen to the podcast here:

https://oembed.libsyn.com/embed?item_id=21076673

How Fujitsu Is Working Towards Closing The Gender Pay Gap With Rachel Marsh

In this episode, we’re going to be exploring some of the initiatives that Fujitsu has implemented in order to make progress on closing the gender pay gap. To do this, I’m delighted to be talking to Rachel Marsh, who’s Head of Digital Transformation at Fujitsu. We’re going to be looking at how Fujitsu has tackled the gender pay gap and the effectiveness of those initiatives. Rachel, very warm welcome to you. Thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you very much.

To get us started and to set the scene and put this into context, could you tell us a bit more about your role at Fujitsu?

I’m Rachel Marsh. I’m the Head of DX at Fujitsu. What does that mean? It’s around enabling digital transformation for our customers. We have a group of people who work with existing or new customers to provide insight, advice and guidance. What we were trying to do is work with our customers to see how we can inspire them to think and act differently, to deliver business and social impact through the innovative use of technology.

Sometimes that might be technologies we can bring, or they already have systems, services and operations, and it’s how they can expand that use. For example, getting better value out of the data they have to inform how they work, generating collaboration in the way they work across their business or their ecosystem, helping them implement change and transformation, and helping them roadmap where they’re trying to go. It’s anything in that spectrum. That’s what we do.

Since gender pay gap reporting was first introduced, I know you’ve made progress in reducing the gender pay gap. I’d love to hear from you about some of the initiatives you’ve tried and how they’ve worked.

We’ve made a decision to publish early. As soon as gender pay gap reporting came in, we were in the first 1% to publish. Our results at the time, we had a median gap of 17.9. We had a lot of work to do. Over the years, we have made improvements. We’ve published our latest report and we’re at 11.8%. It’s a significant reduction but still more to do. In terms of the changes, we’ve put in place a number of initiatives. Firstly, by doing the reporting, it means we’re measuring and tracking what we’re doing.

Work your way in consideration of the work you do, the team you’re a part of, the customer you’re on, and your own preferences.

We’re holding ourselves accountable to our employees and to the public. Putting that spotlight on it has helped in the first instance. We then set out an action plan that we have built on and developed every year. We focused on four areas around how we recruit, retain, enable, and also look across this pay specifically in terms of equality at different levels. Those four areas plus the data we drive help us determine the actions, measure those actions, and see the results and the outcome.

That increase or decrease depending on which way you look at them is a huge change. Although you look at the bare numbers, it maybe doesn’t mean much. In order to achieve that, you’ve put a lot of hard work into that. You’re right. The first thing you’ve got to do is to report and measure because you can only manage what you measure. What about some of the initiatives that you’ve tried? What’s worked well for you to help you reduce your pay gap?

A number of things. If we look at recruitment, sometimes we’re working with all of our supply chains in recruitment to try and get equal lists. We’re hiring shortlists that have equality of men and women in them to even consider into roles. We’ve looked at how we advertise our roles, the language we use, the style, and change them quite significantly. We now have a single standard template that all roles must use.

We’re reducing the number of bullet points, changing the language, the style and the description to be much more inclusive. We’ve also looked at our hiring managers and the hiring approach. We have done some training for our hiring managers to support them in it, but also looking at things like having mixed panels, more than a single person so that you have a much more balanced and inclusive view when you are recruiting.

In terms of retention, we’ve put a lot of effort into the programs we do to address women’s careers and support them so that we don’t get to a retention situation. Through all of our programs, we can see a real shift in that.

By April of 2021, our attrition for female roles dropped below that of men. We’ve seen that change. A lot of the changes over the last couple of years and our response to COVID have helped in that as well. We’ve been very flexible and supportive in that space. In terms of enabling people, we have a number of things running. We have a women’s business network that’s been running for a number of years.

CGP 11 | Fujitsu
Fujitsu: By doing the reporting, we’re measuring and tracking what we’re doing. We’re holding ourselves accountable to our employees and to the public.

We have executive sponsorship, co-chairs from the business. That’s very voluntary across the group. We have lots of initiatives. They will run events, training, get-togethers, networking sessions, and also some targeted programs.

We have two specific talent programs, one for our earlier career females. Those who are in the beginning are looking for more mentoring advice and guidance. That’s called Future Me, and one called Leading Lights, which is about helping women get into those more senior positions. All of those things together are adding up to making the change. Each year, we review what we’re doing, the impact it’s having, measure it and then tweak the next level.

You are constantly reviewing, refining, and continuing to do more to close that gender pay gap. What do you think has had the biggest impact? What’s made the most difference?

It’s a daily conversation now. It used to we want to have a program and initiatives, and it gets spoken about. Now it’s something that’s talked about all the time. It’s become a very common conversation. As an individual, personally, the things that have had an impact where I’ve either taken part or been a participant have been some of our talent programs. When I speak to people who’ve joined those, they’ve rated them highly.

For example, our Future Me program aimed at earlier career talent is recognizing the coaching and advice people might want, particularly for females. We’ve picked nine topics. It’s a structured mentoring program. It might be how to have your voice heard in meetings, networking, presenting, a number of those kinds of things where we can talk through. I’m a mentor in the Future Me program. I’ve worked with the ladies there. We talk through each topic. We share some actual insights, research studies, practical advice, and also about my own experiences. I’ll ask them about the situations they’re going through and explain what they might try.

The next time we meet, we’ll talk about the things they’ve tried and how did it work. It’s a supported learning journey around topics that we know have value at that point. The feedback there is good. We’re on another year of running that program. The Leading Lights program as well is supporting women to get into more senior roles. If we look at our gender pay gap reporting, where we can see the biggest impact for many companies is that the proportion of women in more senior roles is definitely smaller.

How can we support people in that career through the business? We have good figures at the lower ends, and we’re improving at the upper. How do we move through the middle of it is now going to be our next focus as well. It’s those specific talent programs. They’re more than just an event, it’s a continued conversation. It becomes very personal to the individual. Those are the things I get feedback from people. They are valued. More than anything, it’s the fact that this is a continuous and consistent conversation.

You mentioned there that it’s now become a daily conversation. It’s being talked about all the time. In other companies, I’ve heard people say that when it gets to that point, sometimes they worry about it. Is it going to turn people off having the conversation because it’s talked about all the time?

Certainly, that can happen. There have been points where you start feeling, “Is it too much? Do we need to ensure we’re looking across the rest of our populations?” We have a good program of initiatives across all types of diversity and support all talent in our business in how they progress. We’ve looked at how we have supporting conversations and change our performance management type conversations with every individual. We are making sure we’re trying to be balanced, but there have been times where you could see some of the reactions among people, both men and women of, “Is this too much?”

It’s about bringing it back to the personal value and the business value, and ensuring we are fair and equal. That way, we can stand up to, “Is it too much? Is it fair? Is it appropriate?” We have internal processes for let’s say somebody gets promoted or changed. In the paperwork you submit, ask the question, “What impact will this have?” Along the way, you’ll continue to be reminded to think about it. We make decisions without thinking about the broader consequences. When you then pause to think about them, it puts it front of mind, “Am I doing anything that helps or am I doing anything that’s detrimental?”

It’s those little constant reminders. People with the very best intentions will forget or do something that’s not quite appropriate, but it’s having those constant reminders to give you the opportunity to take that step back. With forced homeworking during COVID and locked down, how has that affected your gender pay gap or your female talent?

We’ve published reports every year. Our numerical results for 2021 are pretty much unchanged from 2020. We’ve had a drop of 0.2 on our median numbers and an increase of 0.1 on our mean. They’ve stayed the same, it has not changed. Considering the several months, to stay the same, I find it quite phenomenal. As a company, our response across the globe as an individual employee of the company was brilliant.

As an example, we already have policies in place to support carers’ leave. We instantly published that carer’s leave is available to everyone for whatever reason they need to take time off, whether it’s to look after children or elderly people themselves. Also, as soon as we rolled into January of 2021 and we realized we were going straight into another lockdown, day two of the year, there was another note out, “We’re going to do the five days again this 2021.” As a working mother with children in lockdown, I’ve had ten extra days of paid leave to support the carer’s leave during 2020 and 2021. For me individually, that’s a massive thing that’s helped.

We’ve also said straight away that everyone can work from home. As an organization, we’re a technology organization. As soon as it was looking likely, we started testing if that was going to be possible. It has been possible. All of our employees are operating fully from home. The approach from everyone was employee first, support our customers, everything else, don’t worry. That very flexible approach has continued. We’ve formalized it more now. A lot of companies have said, “You must come back to the office or you will work at home.”

Our stance, we call it Work Your Way. Every individual can decide what’s right for them. Also, a lot of the time, we might work with other teams or customers. It’s not just an individual choice. It’s a guided framework to look at, why do you need to connect, what do you need to be doing work-wise, and what’s your home situation. Not everyone has the home environment that supports that and personal desires. It’s that balanced view. You keep relooking at that through the year and making decisions that suit you, the work you’re doing, and the customer and team you’re a part of. That’s our approach going forward.

All of those things have meant that for everyone but also for working women, we’re seeing that approach of flexibility and support. Care has come out strongly. It’s come back in our employee engagement type surveys that employees have seen that increase in feeling cared for by the company and supported through this period. The fact that our reporting figures for 2021 stayed the same with everything else going on, I feel positive about what the last months have been like as an employee of Fujitsu and how they’ve responded.

It’s one of the key things moving forward as more organizations are following your approach to having that flexibility about how often you work from home. We see in the press that some organizations are having a very black and white, “You must be in the office five days a week. You must be in the office at least three days a week.” With organizations like yours who are taking that more flexible “work your way” approach, longer-term, it means you’re going to attract more of the best talent regardless of their gender or their ethnicity. People want that approach now from an employer.

You bring your whole self to work, and that is welcomed. That diversity of behaviour, thinking, and experience is valued.

In terms of the spread geographically, therefore, where you can appeal to employees and people are making choices. We’ve seen in the press in the market, people are making choices about where they live. As you go through your career, different choices are important to you according to what’s happening in your life at that point. The fact now is that you’re able to make more choices. I’ve got people who have moved near a family, moved away from cities, and changed their home base completely. People have changed the type of work. People are rethinking their careers in terms of training and development as well. All of those things are more possible. We want to show that we’re supporting that.

At the end of the day, we’re a business. We have customers to support, and it has to be done in context, which is why we’re not saying it’s black or white. We’re saying, “Work your way in consideration of the work you do, the team you’re a part of, the customer you’re on, and your own preferences.” In the meantime, our buildings and our locations, we’ve got a bit of a hub strategy in terms of key offices and buildings where we will have a presence. We are already refurbishing some of them moving to more collaborative working spaces. We’ve continued that program.

As we’ve started reopening our offices, we’re opening our main hubs first, and putting effort into some of the refurbishments in those areas as well. If I go into our London head office, there are hot desks available to book, but there are less desks because it’s more a place where you’ll go for meetings. There are more circular tables or meeting spaces rather than necessarily meeting rooms for more formal and informal types of working spaces.

These are the things we’ve done. If you do go in, it’s supportive. If you don’t, how do you mix the half in and half out? We’re working hard in terms of our hybrid space as well. With my own teams, we’re having team meetings. Some people are there. Some people aren’t. How can we make everything work so that everyone is still included? We’re not there yet but we’re all learning.

Some of what you mentioned there is reflected in the white paper that I’m publishing on the impact of the hybrid work model on the gender pay gap. It’s about looking at these things and being intentional about how you implement and what to implement rather than just being a bit more ad hoc about it. Fujitsu has done lots of great work over the past years to reduce that gender pay gap. What have been your key learnings?

That it is a continual and long process. It takes concerted effort. It’s also helped and it’s reflected in other areas. For example, we have published our ethnicity pay gap. We made the decision to publish early. The learnings of the work we’ve done over the years were able to apply to other areas as well as we continue to try and improve. We have a phrase, “Being completely you so that you bring your whole self to work.” That is welcomed. That diversity of behavior thinking experience is valued.

CGP 11 | Fujitsu
Fujitsu: The approach from everyone was employee first, then support our customers. Everything else, don’t worry.

What you’ve done at Fujitsu is great. You’ve been able to see those gaps close. It’s demonstrated to other organizations that if you set about making progress, you can achieve it even though perhaps at first it might seem like it’s hard work and that it’s taking time. How much you’ve reduced your pay gap bias is quite significant.

It has been good and it’s nice to see. It also shows we still got quite a way to go and we haven’t got it all right yet. We are continuing to work on our programs. We’re seeing a shift in our more senior positions but we’ve got a long way to go. For example, we’ve seen some women from our Leading Lights program, which was supporting those in the most senior and move into key leadership positions. We’re seeing promotion opportunities for those in the younger space. We measure those things. It takes time to see the results and the impact. It’s not attributable to the fact that they’ve been in a program. There’s so much more that goes on, but seeing the order of these things are adding up to making a difference.

We have to continue to do that work, particularly for our middle level, those quarters 2 and 3 of both salary or grading, however you look at it in your organization. That’s important that we keep doing that. Building more data, we’ve made a point over the years of enhancing the data that people are voluntarily able to add about themselves so that we can track more.

For example, with ethnicity, we’ve been pushing and sharing that people can add their ethnicity data. They don’t have to but we’re encouraging everyone to do it by talking about the reasons why and the value. We allow people to pick multiple categories and what they prefer not to say, or they don’t have to participate. Through giving examples, we’re encouraging all of these things that when we run programs and we’re in schemes, we’re tracking it all so that we have more data into helping us determine the next set of actions.

It’s fantastic and I’m very positive. To bring us to a conclusion, Rachel, if people wanted to get in touch with you and talk about what you’ve done at Fujitsu, how can they best do that?

I’m on LinkedIn. I’m happy to be contacted and continue this conversation. Fujitsu also actively tries and plays a part where we are keen to learn from other people. We’re happy to share the learning that we’ve gone through, both good and bad. We do not get everything right all the time. That’s a part of the continued conversation of helping overall the situation improve for everybody. It speaks to the values that the company have that we express in how we operate. That resonates for me personally. I’m happy to be contacted.

 Thank you so much, Rachel.

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Thank you so much to my guest, Rachel Marsh, who’s Head of Digital Transformation at Fujitsu. I enjoyed talking about how Fujitsu has been tackling the gender pay gap and doing it successfully.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode. You can find more episodes at SherryBevan.co.uk/podcast. If you are thinking about or you’ve already introduced a hybrid work model into your organization, you’ll find it useful to download a copy of my white paper that I’ve published on the website as well. If that sparks a thought in your mind, book an exploratory call with me and you’ll have the opportunity to ask any questions you have about the work I do at technology companies on attracting, developing, and retaining your female talent so you can close the gender pay gap.

Email me at Sherry@SherryBevan.co.uk to book your call. Thank you.

Important Links:

About Rachel Marsh

CGP 11 | FujitsuRachel is Head of Digital Transformation at Fujitsu.

CGP 10 | Job Vacancies
Oct 26 2021 0 Comment

Recruitment Tips That Will Help You Attract More Women To Apply For Your Job Vacancies With Nicola Spooner

Podetize HostingPodcast

There has been a shift in organizations where the value of diversity in the workforce is now recognized. But how do we also shift our recruitment strategies to attract more women to apply for job vacancies, especially in male-dominated industries? In this episode, Sherry Bevan sits down with Nicola Spooner of Nicola Spooner Consulting to give recruiters tips on how to achieve just that. An expert in project management recruitment, Nicola has valuable insights on mitigating gender inequalities through your recruitment processes. Tune in and learn how these can help you drive your business forward!

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Listen to the podcast here

Recruitment Tips That Will Help You Attract More Women To Apply For Your Job Vacancies With Nicola Spooner

Thank you so much for joining me. I’d love for you to come back next episode and to make that even easier, you just need to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player. Let’s get into the show. In this episode we’re going to explore how to attract more women to apply for your job vacancies so that you start to close that gender pay gap. I’m delighted to be talking to Nicola Spooner of Nicola Spooner Consulting. She is an expert in project management recruitment and we’re going to be discussing how you can attract more women to apply for your job vacancies. Welcome, Nicola. Thank you so much for joining me.

Sherry, thanks for having me.

To set the scene, it might be helpful if you could just explain to us a bit more about what you do and that will set the scene for people and set the context of the discussions we’re having.

When it’s more recruitment business, we are focused on project management recruitment. What that generally means is we have a very male-dominated industry that we work in. Not only that but a lot of those projects are technology-related projects. That adds another dimension of gender inequality in terms of people that work in that space. I’ve been recruiting for many years and I’ve worked in lots of different areas. I did spend quite a long time focusing on HR recruitment, which was very female-focused. I’ve seen both sides of the gender side of that.

You’ve got loads of recruitment experience. One thing I noticed, recruiters and Talent Acquisition Managers, they’re often bemoaning the lack of women applying for roles because their company is asking them to provide a diverse shortlist. Yet, when I work one-to-one with female talent, who’s got the experience, the skills, they talk about the lack of opportunities available. It seems to me there’s a big disconnect between the recruiters and the female talent. I’m just wondering, is this something you’ve noticed as well?

Businesses as a whole, both recruiters and Hiring Managers have shifted away from any discrimination against women to a general positivity about wanting to attract women into their businesses. They can see the benefits of that diverse way of thinking and diverse approach to project management. You’re right. there is a bit of a disconnect because there are lots of businesses wanting to attract women into project management or technology project management specifically but then they don’t seem to be as many opportunities out there for women.

The real disconnect is around when women are looking for work, how they perceive those job adverts. There are hundreds of jobs adverts out there for project managers in a range of different industries. I feel that sometimes they’re not necessarily written in a way to attract the market that they’re looking to target.

That makes perfect sense. When you say they’re not written in a way to attract that target market, what could recruiters do to make sure those job ads are appealing to the female talent?

CGP 10 | Job Vacancies
Job Vacancies: A job ad is a sales document. It should speak to the target audience.

There are two things about it. First of all is the job ad itself. Traditionally, they’ve been a copy and paste of a job description because it’s quick, easy and it just gets it out there. There’s also a lot of adverts with a long list of bullet points of what criteria somebody needs to meet. That’s quite an old-fashioned way of attracting people to businesses.

Essentially, this is a sales document and it should be speaking to the target audience and it should be trying to attract people to that opportunity within that company, rather than having a list of a certain number of years experience, you must’ve worked with this technology or managed a team of X number of people. All of those criteria can put people off especially women who feel that they need to have achieved everything on the job description to want to apply. It’s a different approach that they have to job seeking. If companies look at that as a sales document to start with, that’s automatically going to attract more people to them, to speaking to the people that they want to attract.

The second point is around the language that they use. This is where it gets interesting because men and women are attracted to different words. When I first started in recruitment many years ago, we would look for people and target people, using words like assertive, dynamic, driven, confident and all of those strong words to try and find the people that we were looking for roles. What I’ve realized more is that those words do appeal to male applicants and put female applicants off. By changing the language that you use can open up those adverts to speak to women.

Interestingly, I did a bit of work on this for a Senior Manager for a project delivery team and I wasn’t finding any female applicants applying. It’s the more senior you go up and project management, the fewer women there are because there hasn’t been open to that for quite a while. What I found was by changing the language I used on the advert, very quickly, there were many more female applicants applying. I was using words like collaborative, honest, supportive, inclusive and trusting.

It attracted good-quality female applicants, which made a huge difference to that shortlist. The shortlist was much more diverse going forward. I’m one of those applicants who got the job and started and is doing a fantastic job there. Those words just appealed more to people or to females. Interestingly, it doesn’t seem to put male applicants off.

That was what I was going to ask. You’ve ended up with a fantastic diverse shortlist. My question in my head, as you were talking is “What happens to the male candidates? Does it put them off,” but you’re saying it doesn’t?

By changing the language that you use, you can open up your job adverts to speak to women.

I did a poll on LinkedIn. I put four words out there to say, “Which one would appeal to you most when you are looking for a job.” I used collaborative, honest, self-sufficient and driven. Two of them were collaborative and honest, and I thought what would happen was women would say that and the men would say self-sufficient and driven. That’s not the outcome that I got. Significantly, more people went for collaborative and honest. Of those, they were 50/ 50 men and women split. When I looked at self-sufficient and driven, there were a lot fewer people that were attracted by those words and of those many more women.

I’m just wondering then, when you found that you got this diverse shortlist of candidates, which is fantastic, did you attract a different type of male project manager? Could you put your finger on something being different about those or it didn’t put men off so you still got the same quality of candidate to apply?

The quality of the candidate was really good. I probably did have a different style of candidates apply. The role itself was very much a man management role looking to coach, develop and mentor people. All of those words very much suited the style of person that would fit well in that role. It did attract a different type of candidate that I would normally purchase, a senior manager role within project management. That’s what we needed someone to be collaborative, empathetic and supportive of their team. By speaking to the people that you’re trying to attract, the hope is that you would attract better-aligned people to your role.

It seems to make great sense what you’re describing. You’re making sure that job ad is a sales document so that you’re selling the job and presumably selling the organization as well. I would just like to come back to the other question that you talked about. We talked about the language so words like collaborative, empathic are more likely to appeal to women. You mentioned as well about having that long list of criteria. Talk to me a bit more about that and how that influences the candidates.

It’s like a checklist. If I sent on a job description chances are, they’ll come back and say, “It looks great, Nicola but I haven’t done points 18, 19 and 20. I’m not sure I’m right for the role.” People want to feel that they can do the job but women approach that in a slightly different way to men. Most of the female applicants that I speak to like to think that they could go in on day one, be competent and capable of doing everything on that criteria list.

Whereas, the male applicants are happy, “I’ll give it a go and I’m sure I’ll be fine.” It’s because of that, if you do want to attract more female applicants and we’re talking now about shortlist, we’re not talking heavily about being the right person for the role but if they’re not applying in the first place and you don’t even get them in the mix to consider them, a list of criteria is just going to put people off.

I always think it’s good to imagine, you’re talking to somebody over a glass of wine or a coffee and telling them what that job is as you’re talking to a person. If you approach a job a little bit more like that then people can imagine themselves in the role a bit more rather than checking off a list of criteria, which quite honestly not all of it is going to be essential to deliver that role in a good way.

CGP 10 | Job Vacancies
Job Vacancies: By speaking to the people that you’re trying to attract, the hope is that you would attract better aligned people to your role.

I sometimes see on job ads some organizations will have essential and then desirable criteria. I know when I work with women on a one-to-one basis they’ll read these twenty different criteria for the role. They’ll then say to me, “I can’t apply for this job. It’s my dream job but I can’t apply because I haven’t got any experience of ABC and it’s difficult.” Does that apply equally whether you’re using essential and desirable criteria?

In my mind, you don’t want to be discounting people at this stage. As a recruiter, there are always people that will apply that don’t have the necessary experience with skills to deliver that role. I’m huge on transferable skills and giving opportunities for people in looking at the potential in people. Ultimately, they need to have some core ability to deliver roles, desirable or essential, the list just discounts people and good example is a global experience.

I do a lot of work with law firms and they’re implementing global technologies. A lot of people wouldn’t apply for a role if they didn’t have global experience. Now all the hiring managers that I would talk to would say, “It doesn’t matter about the global experience. We’ve got people on the ground and all of our regions that can do X, Y and Z. All they need to do is understand that’d be an added complexity to that piece of technology being delivered.” It’s on the job ad and job description as an essential. It’s putting people off when it’s just becoming an unnecessary blocker.

That’s an interesting one because having worked in a law firm previously myself, it wouldn’t have occurred to me that I had global experience. We’re an international firm, so we had offices all over the place and any rollout that we did or any project that we were managing, inevitably, we were doing it across multiple offices and countries. Are there other criteria that get put on the job ad because it’s needed but not really essential like the global experience?

Legal experience is one that I come up with a lot. One of my favorite things to do is challenge hiring managers on why and look at transferable industries and experiences that can come to that. Several years of experience is another one. They must have between 3 to 5 years experience. That might fit into their brackets within their salary bandings or team structure. There’s no reason why someone with 6 or 7-years’ experience or more couldn’t do that role if they would be happy to.

All of these things can add up to a very quick, “That role is not for me,” but it could be a really good opportunity. Rather than trying to put off applying for that role so you just get people that take your perfect criteria list, why not open it up and tell people why it’s such a great company to work for? What they will get out of coming to work there? What opportunities are available for career progression? You’re talking to people who will then get excited about that opportunity and it could be the right person for the role. Their lists of criteria do put people up and stop people from applying.

I suppose it’s a bit like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole that you try and squeeze yourself in. If you think that you’re not going to fit then it just puts you off.

You can’t just keep throwing salary at roles to attract people. There has to be more about it than that.

It absolutely does and everyone does. People want more diverse teams. They want diverse ways of thinking in their teams. Project management in technologies is quite a male-dominated industry. There are some good females coming up through the ranks. We want to encourage them to go for these more senior roles and to push themselves. On the flip side, as much as all the companies that can do around how they change the way they speak and attract people, initially there is that blocker that women do have, which is around not believing that they can take that next step up and do that challenging role. That’s another thing that’s a difficult thing to overcome.

I definitely say that in my one-to-one work, the number of times I’ve worked with women, they’ve seen their dream job and they think, “I don’t think I can quite apply for it because I’ve only got 7 years experience and they’re asking for 8 years’ experience” when 1-year experience is not going to make much difference. It often seems to me, that the hiring manager or the recruiter, it feels sometimes some of the criteria have been plucked out of the air.

I know that when you do get to talk to the organization themselves, I suppose it’s not enough thought has gone into that job ad. Women and men tend to have different ways of behaving and communicating. Women tend to want to be the perfect candidate before they put themselves forward but nobody’s a perfect candidate.

You’ve hit the nail on the head. They just approach it differently. There is a bit of responsibility for women to try and change their own way of thinking and look at themselves for doing that having a bit more of a growth mindset and challenging themselves. If you put it all together and you challenge yourself to apply for that role, even if you don’t meet all the criteria because the job ad is speaking to you a lot more personally. It’s making you feel like it’s a place you’d want to work in, a job you’d like to do, you could be successful in. If all of that comes together then you might end up with more applicants that would bring value to your business and deliver that role. It would be a more diverse shortlist as well.

We’ve talked about the job ad. We’ve talked about the language, the criteria that are used in making sure that you have a sensible list of criteria. You’ve talked about starting off by making it more of a sales document, what else can companies do to attract more female candidates?

It does come down to flexibility around working. It’s been fine for months. Businesses have been hiring. It hasn’t been an issue but it will be moving forward again in terms of flexibility around working hours and how that can fit in with people’s personal lives. A lot of businesses are quite savvy to that now.

As we start to going back to perhaps the work hours that we had pre-COVID, do you think some of the companies that are refusing to move or being obstinate in how they adopt or accept flexible work, those companies are going to be on the back foot and find themselves missing out on the best talent, male or female?

Absolutely. You’re right. It’s not just male or female. There are so many people that I speak to who have a better quality of life, a better relationship with their children. They’re not wasting hours and hours on commutes and still delivering great outputs. People has missed the interaction of being in the office. I do think that those firms that are open to a more hybrid way of working will ultimately attract better talent.

You can’t just keep throwing salary at roles to try and attract people. It has to be about more than that. That’s going to be a real driver moving forwards. The firms that I work with that have established a flexible approach are the ones that are able to attract a much wider range of people. They’re filling their roles quicker and getting better quality applicants.

At the end of the day, that means that they’re going to have a better level of service within the organization, whether they’re working with external clients or with internal clients. That flexible working and the policies that they might have around that, needs to be part of that sales document that you’re talking about, that the job ad ought to be.

If you put on the job ad out there that said, “A brilliant place to work related to career opportunity and great potential.” You then finish up by saying, “We have a flexible working policy of X, Y and Z,” people can apply and they know what they’re letting themselves in for. That’s a good point. You can be open about those working patterns and what your expectations are. That would work. That would help people make a decision as to whether it’s something they could accommodate in their lifestyle.

CGP 10 | Job Vacancies
Job Vacancies: Firms that are open to a more hybrid way of working will ultimately attract the better talent.

I know certainly in the past that women I’ve worked with, if the job ad doesn’t specify flexible working and there’s no mention of it on the company website, they don’t even bother to apply. They have made the assumption that it’s going to be tricky to get flexible working.

If it’s not on the job ad, when do you bring that up in the process. Too early on and it puts people off and then too late and you don’t want to waste a time if you can’t come to an agreement of how that could work moving forward. That’s when sometimes having a recruiter to help with that process does make a difference. When we’re applying for a job directly, there are heaps of questions that you want to answers to and you don’t always get them until quite later on. Whereas if you are working with a recruiter, you can fire 100 questions at us and we should hopefully know the answers. You’re absolutely right. If it’s not on there, it would put people off.

I’ve enjoyed talking to you, Nicola, about what we can do to try and address that disconnect between the recruiters who say that they don’t get enough women applying for roles, therefore, they can’t get the diverse shortlist and the women who are saying, “There aren’t enough opportunities available.” It seems like the opportunities are there. It’s just that they’re not appealing to the female talent that is out there in the marketplace.

You’ve hit the nail on the head there. There are lots of opportunities out there and a little bit of time and thoughts about how you might make that more appealing across both genders would help businesses and applicants.

Thank you so much for joining us. If people want to get in touch with you or to connect with you, how can they do that?

On LinkedIn, just Nicola Spooner. If you want to take a look at our website, it’s NicolaSpoonerConsulting.com.

Thank you so much, Nicola, for joining us. I’ve enjoyed the conversation. For our readers, thank you for joining me. I enjoyed our conversation. For more episodes on Closing the Gender Pay Gap, go to SherryBevan.co.uk. If this conversation has sparked a thought in your mind then please do book a call with me to have an opportunity to ask any questions you have about the work that I do with technology companies on attracting, developing and retaining your female talents so you close the gender pay gap. Email me at Sherry@SherryBevan.co.uk.

Important Links:

About Nicola Spooner

CGP 10 | Job VacanciesNicola Spooner of Nicola Spooner Consulting is a recruitment expert specialising in recruiting in project professionals in the legal sector.

She helps law firms build their project teams, having built teams across the whole change and project management discipline, another male dominated sector.

CGP 9 | Imposter Syndrome
Oct 12 2021 0 Comment

The Impacts Of Imposter Syndrome On The Gender Pay Gap And What To Do About It With Clare Josa

Podetize HostingGender Pay Gap, Podcast

Imposter Syndrome is already an issue for leaders, but the stigma imposed by gender only amplifies it. This can manifest itself in your organization in many ways, one of which is through the gender pay gap. Today, joining your host Sherry Bevan is the leading authority on Imposter Syndrome in the UK, Clare Josa. She speaks on her landmark research study about Imposter Syndrome to clearly define the phenomena and its impacts on the gender pay gap. She also discusses concrete examples of how it affects employees and leaders in the workplace. Plus, Clare shares tips for companies on how to be more proactive in dealing with Imposter Syndrome to promote an equitable workplace and empower its workforce. Tune in to this insightful discussion to learn more!

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Listen to the podcast here

The Impacts Of Imposter Syndrome On The Gender Pay Gap And What To Do About It With Clare Josa

I’m excited, because in this episode we’re exploring how the imposter syndrome affects your gender pay gap. I’m delighted to be talking to Clare Josa. She is the UK‘s leading authority on imposter syndrome. She’s the author of eight books and an expert in the neuroscience and psychology of performance. Her original training as an engineer specializing in Six Sigma and Lean manufacturing means her inspirational approach is grounded in practical common sense, creating breakthroughs, not burnout. Naturally, we’re going to be talking about imposter syndrome and I hope you get something valuable from this to help you close your gender pay gap. Clare, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you so much for having me on the show, Sherry.

I’m delighted to have got you on because you’ve got so much experience but I’ve thought for those people reading, who maybe don’t know what we’re talking about when we refer to the imposter syndrome, perhaps you could start by giving us your definition of what it means.

Imposter syndrome is the secret fear that people are going to find out that we’re not good enough, that we’re faking it, that they made a mistake hiring us, that we don’t belong. It’s something that keeps us awake at 3:00 in the morning. I often define it with my clients, my students and my readers as the secret fear of others judging us, the way we’re judging ourselves. It’s different to self-doubt. What we found in the 2019 imposter syndrome research study is self-doubt is about what we can and can’t do. It’s about confidence, skills, and capabilities. Imposter syndrome is about who we think we are. It’s down there at the identity level, much deeper. Somebody running self-doubt might think, “I messed up that presentation.” If you’re running imposter syndrome as well, you’ll think, “What if they find out I’m not good enough?”

It’s that difference between who you are and what you think about yourself, your confidence in your skills and your experience.

I talk about the imposter syndrome gap as being the gap between who we see ourselves as being and who we think we need to be to do, achieve something or step up for a goal because sometimes we can run. That’s the self-sabotage of imposter syndrome kicking in. Sometimes we can’t. We build over that gap, what I call the bridge of coping strategies. How will I succeed despite imposter syndrome? It takes huge amounts of energy. It causes anxiety. It means that we’re hypervigilant, that’s fight-flight-freeze response is constantly engaged, looking for threats. We can cope most of the time but if something major comes up like pandemic, working remotely from home whilst juggling educating children or having to handle being the only one in the office when everybody else is remote. This thing can mean the previous dormant imposter syndrome comes out to play with gusto.

What led you to become an expert in this area?

I started out in Mechanical Engineering. My Master’s degree was in Mechanical Engineering. In Germany, you don’t get much more left-brain than that but I’d always been passionate about how people ticked. After fifteen years in engineering, I studied to become an NLP trainer. I moved to become the head of market research at one of the world’s most disruptive brands, which was great. That was the link between the engineers, the marketing team and the customers. It’s like a three-way translator. There came a point where I was studying more about how to help people change their lives, how to help them to help themselves. Looking at what I knew from Six Sigma about how to take the fluff out of those processes and make them more reliable and concrete. Back in 2003, I left, set up my own business. One of the things I was doing back then was executive mentoring.

Imposter syndrome is the secret fear of others judging us the way we’re judging ourselves.

My first client had this weird thing. They were confident. Everybody thought they had the act together and it was 3:00 the morning they were dying inside. My next client and then my next client and it got me researching what is going on. The coaching skills I’ve learned weren’t touching it. I needed something deeper. That was several years ago. The rest is they say is history. I have spent the last several years specializing in the imposter syndrome work that classic tools don’t touch.

We talked about what the imposter syndrome is but what we haven’t talked about is who experiences it. Who has it?

Everyone. There’s no it’s men, it’s women. There’s no you’re old, you’re young. We found in the 2019 research study that 52% of female respondents had struggled with it daily or regularly in 2020 alone, to an extent that it impacted their work and their home life. The figure for men was 49%. Pretty much the same. The difference was how they handled it. Women were twenty times more likely than men to go and talk to someone to ask for help. Men were five times more likely than women to turn to alcohol, drugs and medication to push on through. The other huge thing and this is relevant to the gender pay gap, the male respondents tended to do that feel the fear and do it anyway thing. Pushing it down, pushing on through, “I’m terrified. It’s causing me anxiety. I’m drinking too much but I’m going for that promotion anyway.”

They would get to that stage. When they got promoted, very often, the job title gave them the external validation they needed to mean that they could settle into it. What we found with the female respondents is they would hold back stepping up. They would even volunteer other people if they got the tap on the shoulder to go for the next role. Thirty-seven percent in 2020 alone had not asked for a pay raise they knew they deserved as a result of imposter syndrome.

Sixty percent we found were routinely not taking credit for what they’d achieved, even doing that classic, “I had but,” if they were praised volunteering self-criticism, meaning that they want not to top of mind for those promotions and opportunities. They were not letting their light shine because, for them, the emotional side of imposter syndrome was simply strong. It held them back. It caused them to subconsciously self-sabotage rather than step up to the next level and pushing on through it for them was much less of an option.

I was about to ask, what did your research tell us about how imposter syndrome affects the gender pay gap? You answered it succinctly there but what more does your research tell us about the imposter syndrome and the gender pay gap and how it has an impact?

We found that there were three hidden drivers of the gender pay gap, which most organizations aren’t aware of, they can’t address. One of them was the alpha male competitive culture at the most senior levels in too many organizations still. There comes to a point where if a woman gets promoted beyond that level, she either has to change how she behaves to become more of a man or she has to find ways to cope with being in a highly competitive alpha male environment.

Even some of the most heart-centered organizations I’ve worked with in those top couple of levels, it’s suddenly a complete culture change. Women don’t feel like they belong. They feel that fear of, “What if they realize they made a mistake hiring me or putting me in this role?” They also found at those senior levels that the spotlight that was on them for being a female in that role rather than a person in that role meant that their secret fears of, “What if they realize I’m not good enough?” It was like having a supernova shining on them. That was one aspect.

CGP 9 | Imposter Syndrome
Imposter Syndrome: Imposter syndrome is the secret fear that people are going to find out that we’re not good enough, that we’re faking it, that they made a mistake hiring us, that we don’t belong.

The second factor that was driving the gender pay gap that we found was the lack of flexible working. The expectation that at the more senior levels, you’re going to do the longer days, you’re going to do the overnight when we can travel, that you’ve got to wave goodbye to school concerts and all that thing. Many women felt they didn’t want to have to choose. Even if a company offered flexible working because you’ve got this internal dialogue where you’re judging yourself and you’re worried that others are doing it too. If you accepted the flexible working, you were worried that people were judging you and that somehow would see you as not pulling your weight not being good enough. That was factor two. Factor three was all of the self-sabotage that comes in there from imposter syndrome.

If you imagine, you’re going to step up to a leadership role, you’re going to take responsibility and you are going to be visible at that level. If it’s 3:00 in the morning, you’re lying awake and your inner critic is telling you all the reasons why you’re not good enough, it’s extremely hard to feel congruent and safe doing that. One of the other things we found is that at senior levels, women were likely to apply for a promotion externally to leave a company they love because they were scared of what they perceived as the shame of failure if it became public knowledge that they’d gone for a role that they then didn’t get.

I hear that with a lot of technology companies, where women have applied for promotion and not got it. They’ve then left the organization or they haven’t even applied internally because they’re worried about failing in their eyes. They decide to go for that promotion outside the company, which means you’re losing good female talent.

Somebody else is gaining from the hard work that you’ve put in working with that person and developing them over those years.

We’ve got these three hidden drivers that often companies aren’t particularly aware of. If they’re hidden and you don’t know you’ve got them then there’s not an awful lot that you can only manage what you can see, can’t you?

It’s one of the reasons why I’m passionate about this and my podcast that you are sharing is important because secretly, we know if we have an alpha male culture at the senior level. We will never admit it to the shareholders and we don’t have to wash our dirty linen in public but we know. Secretly, we know whether we’re expecting our leadership team to work hours. That means they’re choosing between career and children, loved ones, care, responsibilities or having a life. By raising the awareness and asking the question, if we were honest, we took our emotions and our biases out of this, are any of these three factors at play? With that third factor of imposter syndrome, there’s something that a lot of companies have been doing that is well-intentioned but it’s making it worse, which is giving women that helping hand. It will seem as quotas or positive discrimination and it’s not being phrased like that.

If you take somebody who secretly believes they don’t belong, that a mistake was made hiring them, who’s scared they’re going to be found out as not good enough and a fraud and you give them that pushups the next level then it amplifies those feelings. They can then look around. I remember when I had imposter syndrome in my engineering days, I was promoted extremely young to senior engineer. The rumor that went around the factories are, “She got the job because she’s a girl.” My imposter syndrome meant I believed it. It can undermine the integrity and respect of female leaders if you are in any way saying to have given them the advantage. I talk about equity instead of equality.

There was a fantastic meme on social media. The dad taking two children to a football match. One was older than the other they couldn’t see over the barrier. The dad got two equal boxes. One child could see over, the other one still couldn’t. Equity is giving that second child the box that they need so they can both see but this does not come in the form of quotes and positive discrimination. It comes in the form of, what does this person needs to be able to thrive? Do they need support in ditching imposter syndrome? Do they need us to put serious work into the flexibility of hours? Do they need us to create a senior-level environment and culture where anybody can thrive with God as if their gender, their ethnicity, their socioeconomic class? Looking at what you need to do to create equity so that it’s fair for everybody rather than giving people that helping hand creates this feeling of resentment.

Make asking for help with imposter syndrome as acceptable as asking for help with Microsoft Excel.

I’ve got clients where there were men who thought they were about to get the next promotion. A woman then got it out of the blue. Everybody knew it was because they’d been told they had to have a quote on the board. That woman had to leave because nobody would respect her authority, even though she might have been the best candidate. We have to be careful at how we handle this, how we communicate it and how we’re being seen to be fair.

What can companies do then in practical terms to stop that imposter syndrome affecting the gender pay gap?

One of the first things is that we need to be training leaders in imposter syndrome in being able to spot the signs. We’re good at hiding it when it’s running because we feel ashamed. It’s an identity level. It’s about who I am as a person. We put a lot of effort into hiding it. By the time we ask for help with it, it means it’s got to a stage where that bridge of coping strategies is no longer enough. It takes courage. Training managers to be able to spot the warning signs. For example, one of the things I do is I train imposter syndrome first status in an organization so they can be a point of contact because it’s removing the taboo. I’m on a mission to make asking for help with imposter syndrome as acceptable as asking for help with Microsoft Excel macros.

Nobody would think twice if they suddenly had to do something complex on Microsoft Office but saying, “I need training on that.” We need to get there with imposter syndrome because it can lead to mental health issues, anxiety, depression, stress, burnout. It can trigger all of these. Having that HR, in-house coaches, leaders, line managers, having the basic awareness, having key points of contact in the business who can help, you can do more than just offer tea and sympathy. Also, having programs that give people practical tools because not everybody needs a full-blown, “Let’s dive in and deal with imposter syndrome.” Sometimes it might be training in how to choose which thoughts to feed. How to be able to press pause on that inner dialogue? I have my Inner Critic Bootcamp program that they can study for that in six weeks, which helps to stop the cycle.

Sometimes they might want to dive in more deeply and work with somebody. You might want some in-house mentors who’ve trained in the deeper work to clear out imposter syndrome particularly if you have people who are stepping up from line management to leadership roles. What triggers imposter syndrome particularly is any shift in identity. For example, becoming a parent, returning from maternity leave. We see it a lot with university students when they graduate. Becoming a leader, a shift in identity opens up that imposter syndrome gap between who you see yourself as being and who you think you need to be. Actively putting imposter syndrome clearing programs into your leadership development strategy, meaning that anybody who is running it without shame, without taboo, without judgment can have a route they can follow that says, “I want to clear this out.” They get to fulfill their potential.

One of the things that happen if somebody gets promoted because part of them is saying, “I want to do this role.” Part of them is screaming, “What if they find me out?” They can turn into a micro-managing boss in as little as a few weeks. The symptoms, the stress, and the anxiety of imposter syndrome can be pushed on down through the team quickly. It can turn a rising star into someone that’s creating a toxic team without even realizing.

Which is another big issue for organizations because that will create other employee engagement issues and employee retention issues.

If anybody in that team was running imposter syndrome, they were at the coping stage and it was dormant then it can trigger it for them as well. In terms of the gender pay gap, having that clear strategy is yes, you would give your team members the development they need to get ready to be leaders. That is not just the practical external strategies. That also has to be the inside work so that they can let go of whatever might be holding them back from becoming a leader that inspires people to thrive and create successful, happy teams.

CGP 9 | Imposter Syndrome
Imposter Syndrome: It can undermine the integrity and respect of female leaders if you are in any way saying to have given them the advantage.

This is what we all want at the end of the day because it means that you improve productivity, profitability and your reputation as an employer in the workplace. I’ve enjoyed talking to you about this. I know I could talk all day on this topic because your knowledge and expertise are valuable. If people want to get in touch with you and find out more about what you do, how can they get hold of you?

The research study white paper that might be useful for readers is at DitchingImposterSyndrome.com/research. I’m on LinkedIn, @ClareJosa. There’s only one of me on normal days. My main website is ClareJosa.com. That’s where you can find all resources. I’ve got things like an advice guide that can be useful for someone who does have imposter syndrome. That’s completely free. That’s at ClareJosa.com/advice. That helps you to know what to say, to know which mistakes to avoid and to be able to start supporting that internal discussion to remove the imposter syndrome taboo and get people to support that they need.

Thank you so much to my guest, Clare. I’ve enjoyed talking to you about imposter syndrome and how this can impact the gender pay gap. I hope you, as readers, have enjoyed reading this episode, too. Thank you so much, Clare.

Thank you so much, Sherry.

If this has sparked a thought in your mind, I’d love you to come and book an exploratory chat with me to give you an opportunity to ask any questions you have about the work I do at technology companies on attracting, developing and retaining your female talents that you can close the gender pay gap. Email me at Sherry@SherryBevan.co.uk to book your call. Thank you for reading.

Important Links:

About Clare Josa

Clare Josa is the UK’s leading authority on Imposter Syndrome, the author of eight books, and an expert in the neuroscience and psychology of performance.

Her original training as an engineer, specialising in Six Sigma and Lean Manufacturing, means her inspirational approach is grounded in practical common sense, creating breakthroughs not burnout.

CGP 8 | Gender Pay Gap Initiatives
Sep 28 2021 0 Comment

Initiatives And Actions You Can Do To Close The Gender Pay Gap

Podetize HostingGender Pay Gap, Podcast

Some women still get paid less than men for the same work in a company. That’s the hard truth that’s still happening nowadays. In this episode, Sherry Bevan gives a broad overview of all the different approaches used by organizations that want to strengthen their female talent pipeline to close the gender pay gap. She dives deep into various initiatives and actions that you can take in your organization, based on whether the evidence tells us it works or not.

Also in this episode:

  • Your last chance to book a place on the Executive Round Table on Tuesday, 5 October!
  • A brief summary of the four main causes
  • A tour of the initiatives to close the gender pay gap based on the paper published by the Government Equalities Office

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Listen to the podcast here

Initiatives And Actions You Can Do To Close The Gender Pay Gap

Thank you so much for joining me. I would love you to come back next episode. To make that even easier for yourself, you need to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player. I don’t know about you but I’m noticing more and more people going back into the office. The trains and the roads are busier, and I’m hoping that means that the local businesses who rely on the commuters are starting to feel that pressure ease up too.

As to me, I’m super excited about what’s coming up in October 2021, and especially when I’m hosting an executive round table on the impact of hybrid working on the Gender Pay Gap in the technology sector. Visibility in the workplace has always been important, having that strong personal brand so that you develop a professional reputation has been an expert in your domain or your field.

Although, we do know that in some organizations or even in some teams, visibility in the past and now as well has also been about presenteeism. What we do know is that the hybrid work model is most here to stay. We also know that those more likely to want to work from home in that hybrid work model are people with disabilities, parents of young children, and women. I’m wondering, how will hybrid working affect the visibility of women, in particular, in your organization?

Does it mean they’ll be less likely to get noticed because they’re more likely to be working from home, to get promoted or to move up the career ladder? In turn, how will that affect your gender pay gap? These are some of the questions that I’m going to be discussing with a small group of HR leaders from other technology companies, including Sky, Microsoft, Sage, so that together we will have the opportunity to learn from each other about what’s working and what’s not in the hybrid work model and discuss the potential impact on the gender pay gap. There is still about time to get involved.

If you’d love to join us on the 5th of October 2021 at the executive round table, reach out to me. For now, let’s get into the show. In this episode, I wanted to give you a broad overview of all the different approaches and initiatives that are used by a whole range of organizations that want to strengthen their female talent pipeline so that they close the gender pay gap. Before we look at the different initiatives that you could implement, first, let’s take a couple of moments to think about the main causes of the gender pay gap.

Four Main Causes Of Gender Pay Gap

If we look at papers published by The Fawcett Society, they suggest that there are four main causes and these are discrimination, unequal caring responsibilities, a divided labor market, and men in the most senior roles. If we start by looking at discrimination, it’s illegal but some women still get paid less than men for the same work. There’s a lot of discrimination, particularly around pregnancy maternity leave. Pregnant Then Screwed estimates at 54,000 women lose or are forced to leave their jobs every year, simply for getting pregnant.

CGP 8 | Gender Pay Gap Initiatives
Gender Pay Gap Initiatives: When you put together a short list of qualified candidates, whether you’re recruiting for a new hire or working on your promotions round, make sure that more than one woman is included.

There’s research from the Equality and Human Rights Commission in partnership with the Department for Business in 2016. That showed that more than 3/4 of pregnant women and new mothers, that’s the equivalent of 390,000 women, experience negative and potentially discriminatory treatment at work each year. That is 1 of the 4 main causes of the gender pay gap.

The next one to think about then is unequal caring responsibilities. Women play a greater role in caring for children, as well as for sick or elderly relatives. As a result, more women work part-time. We know that part-time jobs are typically lower paid with fewer opportunities to make progress in your career. In the divided labor market, women are still more likely to be in low-paid and low-skilled jobs affecting labor market segregation. Eighty percent of those working in the low-paid care and leisure sector, for example, are women.

You might think that this divided labor market doesn’t affect the technology sector but I encourage you to go back to the interview of Jo Stansfield in episode four when we talked about the hierarchy that exists in the technology sector with women more likely to be in the lowest status roles. The final cause is men in the most senior roles. Men make up the majority of those in the highest-paid and most senior roles. For example, only 5% of FTSE 100 CEO are women.

What You Can Do

That’s a brief overview of the four main causes of the gender pay gap, but what can you do about it to close the gender pay gap in your organization? First and foremost, you don’t close the gender pay gap by simply focusing on pay. It’s more complicated than that. In my experience, there are three key areas to look at, how you attract staff, how you develop those staff, and retention, so how you keep and engage those staff. The thing is you can’t do everything at once. It’s important to prioritize where you’re going to spend your time, energy and budget.

Perhaps one of the most important things in order for any initiative to be successful is to get the support and the buy-in at the most senior levels of the organization. You can do that by demonstrating the business benefits. How does it affect profitability, productivity and reputation? There are lots of business benefits to increasing gender diversity and inclusion but we’re not going to be looking at those. We will look at those in a future episode.

While I could break this down into how you attract, develop, and retain your female talent, I’ve wanted this episode to be much more action-focused. What I’m going to do is I’m going to share the learnings from a fabulous resource that I highly recommend on the government website published by the Government Equalities Office. If you’ve got time to read it, I encourage you to start with the paper called Reducing the gender pay gap and improving gender equality in organisations: Evidence-based actions for employers.

In order for any initiative to be successful, it has to get the support and the buy-in at the most senior levels of the organization.

Initiatives That Work

First, I’m going to talk through the actions and initiatives where there are published quality evidence that these initiatives work, which means that you start to close your gender pay gap when you start to implement these initiatives. This is from the published research, the actions that are known to have had a positive impact in the real world.

The first thing then is to include multiple women in the shortlist for recruitment and promotions. This initiative then is about ensuring that when you put together a shortlist of qualified candidates, whether you’re recruiting for a new hire or you’re working on your promotions round, you need to make sure that more than one woman is included. What we do know from the published research is that a shortlist with only one woman doesn’t increase the chance of a woman being selected. It’s about having multiple women on those shortlists.

Number two, then is about looking at using skills-based assessment tasks in recruitment. Rather than relying only on interviews when you’re recruiting, what you can do is to ask candidates to perform tasks that they will be expected to perform in the role that they are applying for. You then use their performance on those tasks to assess their suitability for the role. What’s important is that you standardize those tasks and how they are scored to ensure fairness across candidates. That one is about using skills-based assessment tasks in recruitment.

Sticking with the recruitment and promotion idea then, the next idea for you is to use structured interviews for recruitment and promotions. As an HR professional, you know that structured and unstructured interviews both have their own strengths and weaknesses. However, it’s much more likely that unfair bias will creep in and influence decisions in an unstructured interview.

Whereas if you go down the structured interview route, this will ask exactly the same questions of all the candidates in a predetermined order and format. It means that you can grade the responses using a pre-specified, standardized criterion. That means that the responses are comparable and you reduce the impact of that unconscious bias. Staying with the attraction theme then, the next one is to encourage you to encourage salary negotiation by showing salary ranges on your job ads.

We know that women are less likely to negotiate their pay. As a leadership consultant, when I work with women on a one-to-one basis, salary negotiation, the when, the how, and the if always comes up. There are lots of reasons why women are less likely to negotiate on salary. It’s partly because women are put off because if they’re not sure what a reasonable offer is, they don’t negotiate.

CGP 8 | Gender Pay Gap Initiatives
Gender Pay Gap Initiatives: Women are less likely to negotiate their pay. It’s partly because if they’re not sure what a reasonable offer is, they don’t negotiate.

Therefore, you can make a difference by clearly communicating the salary range on offer for a particular role to encourage women to negotiate their salary. This helps your applicant know what they can reasonably expect. In addition, if the salary for a role is negotiable, you need to state that clearly because that can also encourage women to negotiate. When women don’t negotiate and they end up with a lower salary, it means that longer-term, they’re going to end up with smaller bonuses and pay rises, which are typically done as a percentage of that start salary.

If women negotiate their salaries more often, they’ll end up with salaries that more closely match the salaries of men. That means that you’re going to have an impact on your gender pay gap. The next one then is to think about introducing transparency to the processes for promotion, pay and reward. Transparency means being open about those processes, your policies, and the criteria for decision-making, which means that employees are clear about what’s involved and that managers understand that their decisions need to be objective and evidence-based because those decisions can be reviewed by others.

When you introduce transparency to promotion, pay, and reward processes, it can reduce pay inequalities, which means that in turn, you’ll start to close your gender pay gap. The final one in this section on what we know has a positive impact, it’s about appointing diversity managers and/or appointing or creating a diversity task force. Diversity managers and task forces monitor the talent management processes, such as recruitment or promotions, and also diversity within the organization.

Having a diversity manager or a task force can reduce bias decisions in recruitment and promotion because people who make those decisions know that their decisions may be reviewed. It’s that accountability that can improve the representation of women in your organization. When you’re thinking about your diversity managers, there should be somebody who has a senior or executive role within the organization. They need to have visibility of your internal data, and they need to be in the position and have your authority to ask for more information on why decisions were made so that they feel empowered to develop and implement diversity strategies and policies.

Initiatives That Show Promise

Let’s move on to think about the actions that from the research, they have promise but they need further research to get more evidence on their effectiveness and implementation. The first one is to think about improving workplace flexibility for men and women. Advertise and offer all jobs as having flexible working options, such as part-time work or remote working, or hybrid working, job sharing, or compressed hours. The more that you talk about your flexible working policies, the more likely that women will fly in the first place. Often, when I work with women on a one-to-one basis, if flexible working doesn’t get mentioned anywhere on the company’s website or anywhere on the job description, they will often talk themselves out of even applying.

Allow people to work flexibly where it’s possible so it’s not just a policy but it’s happening on the ground, so to speak. Encourage your senior-level leaders to role model working flexibly, and to champion flexible working. If they work themselves flexibly, encourage them to talk about it so that others see that this is a normal way of working, even if you’re in a senior position. Finally, workplace flexibility is about encouraging men to work flexibly that it’s not seen as a female-only benefit. It’s not just something that women want.

The gender pay gap widens dramatically after women have children. This could be reduced if men and women share childcare more equally.

The next one in this section then is to encourage the uptake of shared parental leave. We see that the gender pay gap widens dramatically after women have children. However, this could be reduced if men and women were able to share childcare more equally. Shared parental leave and pay enable working parents to share up to 50 weeks of leave and up to 37 weeks of pay in their child’s first year. The actions that show promise here are when organizations offer enhanced, shared parental pay at the same level as enhanced maternity pay or when they encourage the take-up of shared parental leave.

For example, when you inform future fathers that it’s their legal right to request shared parental leave. When you provide future parents with guidance and personal support, to understand the scheme, and when you share and promote examples of senior leaders who’ve taken shared parental leave in your organization. That one was all about encouraging the uptake of shared parental leave. Following on from that, it’s about recruiting returners. Returners are people who’ve either taken an extended career break for caring or for other reasons and are either not currently employed, or maybe they’re in roles for which they’re overqualified.

When you recruit returners, things that you can do, for example, is to target places where returners are likely to be looking, ensure that your recruitment processes are returner friendly, and offer support before and during the assessment. Remember, these people who’ve taken an extended career break may have lost a bit of confidence but they certainly haven’t lost the skills and the knowledge.

The next one then is to think about offering mentoring and sponsorship. They’re quite similar. Mentors provide guidance and advice to their mentees, while sponsors support the advancement and visibility of the person that they’re sponsoring.

There is some evidence to suggest that mentoring programs work very well for some women but not for others. At the moment, it’s not clear based on the existing evidence whether sponsorships are more effective than mentoring, or whether it’s the other way around, or how best to run mentoring and sponsorship programs so that they’re effective and they make a difference. There’s not enough evidence right now to make a recommendation one way or the other.

The other thing that you could do and offer some promise is to offer networking programs.

There was some evidence that suggests that formal networking programs where members meet and share information and careers advice can be helpful for some women but not every woman. There’s more work needed here to understand the effects of networking programs or other diversity programs, and whether they need to have particular features in order to be successful in helping you to close your gender pay gap.

Finally, set internal targets on the basis that you can only manage what you measure. You need to set internal targets, so equality goals and these goals need to be clear and realistic.

You need to be able to track your progress. You could have a generic, overarching goal such as improve gender quality at my organization or reduce my organization’s gender pay gap but those aren’t specific. Therefore, they’re more likely to be unsuccessful. One way of increasing the likelihood that you reach your goals and that you will do something to improve gender equality and close that gender pay gap is to set very specific time-bound targets. What change will you achieve? By when will you achieve it?

CGP 8 | Gender Pay Gap Initiatives
Gender Pay Gap Initiatives: One way of increasing the likelihood of reaching your goals and doing something to improve gender equality and close that gender pay gap is to set very specific time-bound targets.

Initiatives With Mixed Results

In this final section then, I’m going to share those actions or initiatives that have some mixed results. The jury is still out because sometimes the result is positive but sometimes it has a negative impact. As yet, there’s not enough evidence to say for sure, whether that’s down to the way it’s been implemented or whether there’s something else at work here.

The first thing that we’re going to look at are unconscious bias training or diversity training. Unconscious bias training is often where a new organization starts. It’s easy, practical and tangible but it can sometimes be seen as a bit of a tick-box exercise. “We’ve done unconscious bias training. We’ve done our bit.”

The thing with unconscious bias is it can influence a person’s judgment without them even being aware of it. Unconscious bias training in the workplace aims to make people aware of those potentially harmful unconscious biases and to reduce the impact of those biases. While some types of unconscious bias training may have some limited positive effects, there is no evidence that this training changes behavior or improves workplace equality. Certainly, there’s no evidence that it does this on an ongoing or a permanent basis. It’s like everything. We learned skills, but then we need to practice those skills so we’d learn about unconscious bias, but then we need to practice listening and becoming aware of our unconscious bias.

Again, when we look at diversity training, that can help raise awareness but it’s unlikely to change behavior. It’s only through changing behavior that you’re going to start to close your gender pay gap. There’s been some research in the US that has found that mandatory diversity training either doesn’t change the number of women in management positions or reduces it. In other words, it’s backfiring.

This might be for a whole number of reasons. Is it that people resent being made to do something and so don’t take the training seriously? The training might also bring to mind some unhelpful stereotypes, which people then act upon but it might be that the training makes people think that the organization has now solved its diversity problems. “We’ve ticked the box, now we’re good.”

Another aspect of training that organizations will often embark on is leadership development training. Leadership development programs aim to teach qualities, including management skills, self-confidence. Certainly, in the leadership development training that I do, we look at networking and how to articulate your ambitions. There are some very small-scale studies of the effects of leadership training programs, women, particularly in medicine and academia.

However, there’s no high-quality evidence that such programs definitely help women progress. Sometimes people feel that these programs imply that the women themselves are the problem. It’s not about fixing the women. It’s about fixing the culture and the work landscape. While leadership development training can be a fantastic initiative to introduce, it doesn’t necessarily, based on the evidence, translate itself into hard results in terms of closing your gender pay gap.

Performance self-assessments. In terms of performance in the workplace, there is some evidence that women underestimate their abilities or that they’re more conservative in their assessment of their abilities than men are.

Unconscious bias can influence a person’s judgment without them even being aware of it.

The size of this gender difference can vary depending on the type of performance that people are asked to self-assess. There’s not enough evidence to know how differences in self-assessment affect women’s progression at work. However, if this is something that you’re interested in, I do encourage you to read episode five, in which I interview Shirin Nikaein about how performance feedback affects women’s career progression. Again, in episode six, when I explore how performance self-assessment has an impact.

The final initiative that I’m going to talk about, diverse selection panels. Again, not enough evidence yet to say definitively, whether this will have a positive impact but it does seem that having a selection panel with a mix of men and women seems to help women’s prospects sometimes but, and here’s the kicker, sometimes a mix selection panel or a diverse selection panel hums women’s prospector other times. Some studies show that the more women there are on a panel, the more likely women are to be selected for a role, while unfortunately, some studies find the complete opposite. The effect can also depend on the role being recruited for or the role of the women who are on that panel, who are on that selection committee.

There’s not enough research at the moment to understand the conditions under which a diverse selection panel is or isn’t effective for improving gender equality and, in the long run, closing the gender pay gap. That’s it for this episode, a broad overview of the many different actions and initiatives that you could choose to prioritize in your companies that you start to close the gender pay gap. This overview is based on the Government Equalities Office paper, Reducing the Gender Pay Gap and Improving Gender Quality in Organisations, Evidence-based actions for employers.

I encourage you to go back to that government website for the links to specific research and evidence on these different initiatives.

I hope you found this episode useful and that it sparks some ideas for discussion in your organization.

Please, do reach out and book a call with me if you’d like to explore any of these initiatives and actions with an objective leadership consultant. I offer exploratory calls that you can ask any questions you have about the work that I do with technology companies on attracting, developing, and retaining your female talent so that you can close the gender pay gap.

Simply email me at Sherry@SherryBevan.co.uk to book your call. One final shout-out, don’t forget, if you want a place at my executive round table on the 5th of October 2021, please do get in touch. I’d hate for you to miss out on this opportunity to discuss the impact of hybrid working on the gender pay gap with your peers from other technology companies. Thank you so much for reading. To find out more about me and my work, pop over to SherryBevan.co.uk.

Important Links:

GCP 7 | Emotional Intelligence
Sep 14 2021 0 Comment

Emotional Intelligence: Does It Affect The Gender Pay Gap?

Podetize HostingGender Pay Gap, Podcast

We often hear that women have higher emotional intelligence. How does this affect their ability to take on leadership roles? Sherry Bevan delves into five elements that make up emotional intelligence and the various studies of how men and women score in this area. She explains how this affects women’s professional advantage and expertise, their effort to climb the career ladder, and their levels of success in their chosen fields.

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Listen to the podcast here

Emotional Intelligence: Does It Affect The Gender Pay Gap?

In this episode, I’m going to be exploring the role of emotional intelligence in the gender pay gap. I work as a leadership consultant partner with technology companies to help them develop and retain their female talent so they close the gender pay gap. Thank you so much for joining me. I’d love you to come back next episode and to make that easier, you just need to subscribe to the show.

As we’re all starting to make our way back into the office after the summer, I’m hearing companies every day making big announcements about their future work model and announcing how much remote or working from home will be allowed going forward. It’s very much introducing this concept of the hybrid work model. Some companies seem to be very flexibly flexible, whereas others are definitely not. That’s exactly what I predicted back in June 2021, when I started to organize my executive round table on the impact of big high working on the gender pay gap in the technology sector.

GCP 7 | Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence: Employees with high levels of emotional intelligence can build strong working relationships and manage difficult situations more effectively.

With more of us now working from home and continuing to work from home in the future, it’s going to be even more challenging to maintain visibility at work. Indeed, I was working with a one-to-one client before this episode, talking about how she can start to maintain and build on the visibility because in her organization, they’re going to carry on working from home for the foreseeable future. Maybe challenging to maintain visibility isn’t quite the right word, but as individuals, we need to be more proactive at how we manage our presence in the office so that we do stay visible and that we do stay front of mind when it comes to interesting projects and promotions.

That is exactly why I’m going to bring together a small group of HR leaders from other technology companies. So far, I’ve had confirmations from organizations such as Sky, Microsoft and Sage. I’m bringing these people together to share their insights, experiences and learnings on how the hybrid work model will affect the gender pay gap. If you’d like to get involved in the executive round table on Tuesday, the 5th of October 2021, please do reach out to me and let’s get you booked on because I’ve only got a couple of spaces left.

The higher up the career ladder you are, the more emotional intelligence makes a difference in how you succeed at work.

Let’s get into the show. In this episode, I would like to explore the role emotional intelligence plays in the gender pay gap. It’s widely believed that developing high emotional intelligence, sometimes you might see this referred to as EI or EQ, that it’s incredibly important to have a long and successful career. What we know is that those employees with high levels of emotional intelligence, they’re able to build strong working relationships and manage difficult situations more effectively.

It’s also said that developing your emotional intelligence will improve your ability to cope with pressure, your ability to build trust, to negotiate, to influence without authority, to navigate those workplace politics, and we all have those. To take risks, but to take small risks while avoiding reckless ones and to handle the myriad of curveballs that get thrown at us and to handle those curve balls with resilience. When we talk about emotional intelligence, what exactly do we mean?

I go back to the psychologist, Daniel Goleman. He identified five elements that make up emotional intelligence and these are self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. Let’s take a bit more of a look at each of those five elements. The first three, self-awareness, self-regulation, and motivation, are often described as personal competencies because they determine how we manage ourselves. Whereas the last two, empathy and social skills, are often referred to as social competencies. In other words, they determine how we handle relationships and the social structure around us.

GCP 7 | Emotional Intelligence

Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships

Let’s start with self-awareness then. That means being honest with yourself about your own strengths and weaknesses, and being aware of your own feelings. Having that accurate self-assessment of those feelings, your strengths and having self-confidence. When we look at self-regulation, that means you’re not ruled by your feelings. You’re still able to make considered decisions despite your emotions, despite how you might be feeling at the time, but you’re still able to make decisions effectively.

Self-regulation includes things such as self-control, trustworthiness, conscientiousness and adaptability. When we look at the third personal competency, that’s motivation. Motivation refers to being up for a challenge, happy to work for that long-term success, so you’re able to set those long-term goals and then work towards them by demonstrating commitment, taking initiative and being optimistic. Moving on to the two social competencies then, let’s start with empathy.

Empathy is being able to understand situations from another person’s perspective and then being aware of that individual’s feelings, needs, and concerns, but at the same time, empathy is also about leveraging diversity and political awareness. First and foremost, it’s about being able to see things from somebody else’s point of view, even if you don’t necessarily agree with the feelings that they have or the needs and concerns they have. It’s being able to see it from that person’s point of view. Finally, social skills.

When we talk about somebody who’s got high social skills, it’s somebody who’s easy to talk to, somebody who works well as part of a team. They’re able to diffuse disputes, influence and they communicate well. They’re very comfortable with collaboration. They can manage conflict, and they have good leadership skills generally as well. People who understand and work well with their own emotions, but also other’s emotions and feelings, are the people we describe as having high emotional intelligence. Because of those skills, they tend to be successful at work because they get the best out of every situation.

Women are more effectively using the emotional and social competencies correlated with effective leadership and management.

They’re good people to have around. Daniel Goleman is the author of Social Intelligence and also the best-seller, Emotional Intelligence. I highly recommend those two books if you want to find out more about emotional Intelligence. Daniel Goleman believes that the more senior a person is, the more emotional intelligence matters. In other words, the higher up the career ladder you are, then the more that this emotional intelligence and those skills make a difference in how you succeed at work.

He also believes that organizations that learn to operate in emotionally intelligent ways are the companies that will remain dynamic and competitive even in a challenging market. It’s high emotional intelligence rather than technical or cognitive skills. That is what makes the best leaders stand out from the mediocre leaders. From what we know of the differences between how men and women tend to behave and communicate, I started out exploring this episode and doing some research because I wondered if that meant that women who often are seen as better at having a more collaborative style of leadership, of having empathy and great communication skills, do women have more emotional intelligence?

GCP 7 | Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ

If the answer is yes, why aren’t more women higher up the leadership ladder? That was my starting point. I want you to understand, generally, recognize that women tend to have more emotional intelligence. If that’s the case and emotional intelligence is an indicator of the best leaders, why aren’t there more women higher up the career ladder? It seems the answer is yes and no. Often, people equate emotional intelligence with empathy.

As we’ve seen, empathy is being able to see and understand another person’s feelings, needs, and concerns. Being able to put yourself in that person’s shoes, but empathy is not the only thing that matters when it comes to emotional intelligence. We also know that women often have more complex social relationships. Women tend to be more relationship-focused than men, which plays into the social skills of emotional intelligence.

What’s interesting is there was some research conducted back in 2016 specifically on emotional intelligence by the Korn Ferry Hay Group. They use data from 55,000 professionals across 90 countries using the Emotional and Social Competency Inventory, sometimes written down as ESCI. It’s developed and co-owned by Richard Boyatzis, Daniel Goleman, and Korn Ferry themselves.

In this research, what was noticed is that women scored higher on all of the competencies except emotional self-control, where there was no gender difference found between men and women. In all of the other competencies that are important for success at work and all of the other emotional intelligence competencies I’m specifically talking about, women scored higher. This means that women are more effectively using the emotional and social competencies correlated with effective leadership and management.

One interesting comment that I noticed from the research is, “Leaders with strong emotional intelligence create conditions that inspire team members to stay and contribute to the organization long-term. Conversely, leaders with low emotional intelligence have greater potential to drive team members away from the organization.” We’ve all seen that. People leave leaders, not jobs. If you’ve got a leader with strong emotional intelligence who inspires loyalty, you’re more likely to stay. Whereas if it’s somebody who doesn’t have those social skills, who doesn’t have that empathy, you’re more likely to leave more quickly.

GCP 7 | Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence: Empathy is seeing and understanding another person’s feelings, needs, and concerns.

A study by the global management consultancy Hay Group, analyzed leadership styles around the world and their impact on organizational performance. Ruth Malloy, who was the firm’s head of leadership and talent at the time, examined the results. This showed that leadership style has a big impact on commercial success. What she found is that when you only look at the best leaders in the top 10% of business performance, there are no gender differences in emotional intelligence.

The men are as good as the women, and the women are as good as the man across the board. That’s when you’re looking at the best leaders in the top 10% of business performance, with no gender differences. This research also showed that high levels of emotional intelligence are even more critical in matrix work environments, where individuals are required to lead by influence rather than lead through direct authority. That’s something worth noting in our ever-global world where we often have teams based in 2 or 3 different countries or where we’re managing a matrix team. It’s those levels of emotional intelligence are even more critical in those types of environments.

In conclusion, does emotional intelligence have a role to play in changing the gender pay gap? From what I’ve read, it seems that not, although women tend to score higher in emotional intelligence. When you look at the top leaders and the top companies, they don’t appear to be any differences in emotional intelligence. There was that research that showed that the men are as good as the women and the women are as good as the men across the board when it comes to the top leaders.

Women are more relationship-focused than men, which plays into the social skills of emotional intelligence.

There’s no doubt that developing and building your emotional intelligence, is a sensible strategy. It’s a valuable strategy in order for you as an individual to make progress in your career and as HR leaders for you to provide the tools and the training and the workshops and the awareness to allow your talent to make progress in their careers. From the research and the studies that I’ve looked at to research for this episode, emotional intelligence on its own is not the deciding factor in determining your female talent pipeline and it’s not the deciding factor in whether you’re any nearer to closing the gender pay gap.

GCP 7 | Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence: High levels of emotional intelligence are more critical in matrix work environments. Here, individuals are required to lead by influence rather than lead through direct authority.

I wonder, women tend to have high emotional intelligence, and yet that gender pay gap still exists. What if women didn’t have higher emotional intelligence? Does that mean that the gender pay gap would be even wider? That’s a question I can’t answer, but I’ve enjoyed exploring the role of emotional intelligence in the gender pay gap in this episode. I hope this has stimulated your thoughts, too and I’d love to hear your ideas.

If you’d like to explore any of the ideas discussed, please do reach out and book a call with me. I offer exploratory calls and that you can ask any questions you have about the work that I do with technology companies on attracting, developing and retaining your female talent so that you start to close that gender pay gap. Email me at Sherry@SherryBevan.co.uk to book your call.

If you do want to book one of those last two spaces on the executive round table on Tuesday, the 5th of October 2021, reach out quickly because I’d hate for you to miss out on your opportunity to discuss the impact of hybrid working on the gender pay gap with your peers from other technology companies. Thank you so much for reading. I’ve enjoyed exploring and researching, and talking about the role of emotional intelligence in changing the gender pay gap. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading and gained some valuable insights, and don’t forget if you want to find out more about me and my work, visit SherryBevan.co.uk. Thanks for reading.

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