Striking that balance

Gender equality in the workplace is a hot topic, and it’s not just the big companies making it a priority. Smaller business often have greater flexibility to address the gender imbalance.

The call for more gender equality in business is hardly new, it has been going on for many years. But is the SME sector doing its bit to even out the imbalance? And how would your staff react if you decided you would only employ women until you had a 50:50 gender split amongst your senior employees?

When digital marketing agency Yellow announced it intended to set right its gender imbalance in leadership roles by intentionally selecting females until equity was achieved, it attracted a fair amount of interest. Were they bringing in quotas, was one question being asked.

In a media release at the time, Yellow’s chief experience officer Tracey Taylor said the company, which employs about 200 people, was committed to intentionally selecting women for senior management roles until the balance was met and had set itself two years to do so. 

Currently, 20 percent of Yellow’s senior managers across its 15 to 16 divisional teams are women. 

“We’re intentional about making this a priority. It’s a brave move, and may be seen as controversial, but we believe we can make this change by 2021,” says Tracey. “The benefits to business of having an even split of women and men in leadership roles is proven – it is simply good business sense.”

The commitment was part of the launch of a broader gender diversity initiative called ‘The Parallel Project’, which aimed to “create a culture where women have a seat at the leadership table and are actively encouraged to fulfil their potential”.

“Importantly, being intentional is not about excluding a group, it’s about including a group that is presently in the minority,” says Tracey. “As long as we have an uneven split in leadership roles in our business, we see our approach as inclusive.”

Tracey told NZBusiness that the move is part of Yellow’s digital transformation and the staff are proud of the move. 

“Our people know it isn’t just about technology or product but about culture, and the move is a reflection of the business’s diverse customer base and its intentional culture.”

The company’s customer base are SMEs and Tracey says the intention when it set up the Parallel Project was that it would be something they could integrate with their customers’ businesses. 

Yellow would like to help SMEs with their own diversity and is considering how to take the ideas to its customers to “invite them in on what we are doing”.

So is it a quota system? Tracey prefers to call it intentional change. 

“We are setting ourselves a target to reach … If you don’t have a target [the change] will get lost.”

Her advice to smaller businesses is that your priorities might be different, but you still need to be intentional about what you do.

So are SMEs more flexible and able to bring this sort of change more easily?

“Any business can shape its culture to the way that works for them, it depends on the way they prioritise,” says Tracey.

Would men thinking of applying to work at Yellow be put off?

She sees it as being inclusive, not exclusive, and notes that male employees and potential employees all have daughters, partners, mothers and sisters. A lot of them are proud to be part of a movement around change.

Implementing gender equality

For Rachel Hopkins, the chief executive at Diversity Works New Zealand, it doesn’t matter what size your business, you need three things to implement a gender equality programme. 

“Firstly, an understanding of the benefit it will bring – there is so much research around this. And you need a deep understanding that societal expectation today forms part of the social licence around running a business.

“Secondly you need to have the will to do it, and that is usually in the form a leader who wants to make that happen. That does not have to be a woman, some of the best advocates for gender equality are men.”

Thirdly, she says you need goals, to have a target, to measure it, and a strategy around how you are going to do it.

“All the evidence around having good gender balance at board, executive and leadership levels is that it makes a difference to your products, productivity and financial results.”

Rachel says as well as understanding that it is true that gender equality is beneficial for business, you also need the will to make it happen. And the reasoning is not much different for SMEs and corporates.

Yellow is not the first company to set a target – NZX requires listed companies to report on gender balance at board and executive level and other corporations have a 40:40:20 split, meaning 40 percent men, 40 percent women and 20 percent flexible on their leadership teams. 

A lot of it is about how to expand your pipeline and your “sphere of consideration”, Rachel says. 

“Your pipeline is what brings people in the door and your sphere of consideration for promotion is looking at all your employees and understanding their skills. Look at them carefully and with the intent of making sure all people have equal opportunity.”

She questions how widely a business owner may have considered all staff. In a small business people may not go through a linear progression to new roles, instead they may just take on more responsibility.

So, as people develop and grow their skills, business owners need to be careful not to be always going to the same person to lead a project. Look at the opportunities for someone else to lead.

“This is why we spend so much time talking about unconscious bias; what happens in SMEs, where people have so much time pressure, is you tend to look to someone who has got things done for you lately. 

“This is ‘recency bias’ – you give the person who has undertaken other projects successfully, the new project.” 

Asked about recruitment and men being put off applying to a business, Rachel says it is not about taking something away, but about opening something up to young women and not excluding 51 percent of the pipeline.

She finds it interesting that there are people thinking about something being taken away from them, but “if you look at it as one particular group has always had privilege, I believe increasing diversity adds something incredible.” 

Equality in smaller businesses

Erica Crawford, the owner of Loveblock Wines, and a member of Global Women, sees Yellow’s gender equality move as still appointing the best person but making it clear to women they are wanted and should not think they are not good enough to apply.

In her own business, she is the major driver in the senior team with three men but is keen to bring on board another woman.

The wine industry is male-dominated but she is encouraged by the number of young women qualifying and taking roles as wine makers and viticulturists. 

So is it harder for an SME to have gender equality?

Erica says bigger companies can set policy in place but in SME companies it can be easier to be more flexible.

One of her staff is a young mother and Erica says flexibility is important to that employee and it’s important for the company to hold onto that woman’s skills. She also has another employee, who starts work at four a.m. each day in order to see her child in the afternoons.

“I never thought I would agree with a quota but nothing has changed.” She says if you look at measures, such as the number of women on boards and in CEO roles of listed companies, “nothing is changing, it is static and in New Zealand may be getting worse.”

Having a soft quota for gender diversity forces people to look at women more seriously, she says.