Gender balance in the workplace

Monumental shifts in workforce demographics are being spurred by multiple parallel forces. Advancements in AI, automation, and the disruption of the global COVID-19 pandemic are combining with dramatically ageing populations around the world. The resulting disruptions present risks and opportunities for age and gender balance in the workplace. The ‘next normal’ is a unique opportunity to rewrite the rules of the who, what, where and when of the workplace.

Gender balance as a KPI

This is what 20-first has been doing with leading edge innovators for the past 15 years – preparing companies for 21st century demographics and market realities. We start by working with CEOs and their teams to reframe - and own - the issue of nationality, age and/ or gender balance as a business imperative. 20-first was created to respond to the rise of women and the pressures of globalisation on labour forces, talent pools and customer and stakeholder bases.

Companies were missing a huge opportunity if they failed to harness the global and female talent pools or address the expectations of emerging market and female consumer bases. That problem persists today as the first-mover companies have adapted but the majority of companies have not. There is much work yet to be done. Our company name, 20-first, reflects our aim to help companies move from the 20th to the 21st century – while staying ahead of the shifting trends of population demographics, market opportunities and stakeholder expectations.

Gender balance as a business strategy

Our main challenge is the way companies frame the issue of gender balance. Most often, it is framed as a women’s issue rather than a business issue and is bundled in with diversity and minority support initiatives. This does not allow companies to successfully measure the changes required to adapt to a more gender balanced century – nor implement them. Women are 60% of university graduates globally, and an ever-growing share of consumer bases and customer pools, and a growing focus of attention among investors. They should be an integral part of companies’ business strategies, they often are seen more as one minority among many to be managed fairly. Connecting with the female customers who increasingly make the majority of purchasing decisions in the household, and learning how best to engage with today’s female-heavy talent pool, remains a non-obvious challenge for the vast majority of companies at the start of the 21st century’s third decade.

The pandemic has only highlighted this need to address gender balance in both companies’ talent pools and customer bases; on the one hand, women have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, as they have been the dominant gender in all the front-line sectors significantly impacted throughout the recent financial recession. In health, education and services, women have been stretched to breaking point and negatively impacted by the demands made on these sectors. But have also been widely acknowledged for the work they do and are renamed ‘essential workers.’ We have been reminded of how many female-dominated sectors are essential to the broader well-being of our societies, and this has accompanied the pandemic’s push towards more flexibility in the workplace.

Embracing technology to power flexibility, finally allows a shift away from focusing on the ‘input’ towards focusing on the ‘output’, allowing us to move away (at last) from the once sacrosanct 9-5 presenteeism in the office. This flexibility is something that women have long been asking and lobbying for, and in the last year we have seen significant accelerations in flexible working as the Berlin Wall erected between the professional and personal sides of life has crumbled - for both men and women.

Gender balance and leadership

The pandemic has also provided a platform for female leaders to emerge on the global stage. Many remain sceptical about female leaders, and I am routinely asked whether the push for gender balance affects quality of leadership, or whether women are willing to provide the same levels of commitment as male leaders. However, as highlighted in one of my recent Forbes articles that went viral, female leaders significantly outperformed their male counterparts in the pandemic’s ultimate report card KPI: life and death. With female-led countries (at the time of writing) suffering six times fewer COVID-related deaths than male-led countries, this result is startling. And it is probably only the tip of the iceberg, as a growing amount of data is beginning to show that women are outperforming men in an ever expanding range of leadership competencies. If we want high performing teams, companies or countries, we will want to start gender balancing.

These examples, brought to the forefront by the pandemic, are reminders of the importance of gender balance at the business and economic level. Instead of gender balance being presented as a “nice to have” or an ethical obligation for companies, it should be reframed as a business imperative. Gender balance is becoming a “do or die”, as the millennial shift in gender roles is balancing labour forces, talent pools and customer bases for companies. By failing to connect across genders, companies are missing out on business opportunities, revenues and profits. By failing to connect skillfully with women, companies are setting themselves up for future failure.

With this, it's important that gender balance traverses all business functions and areas; we need to move away from a small subsection of the company talking about gender balance through their women’s network, and instead we need gender balance to be at the top of the CEO’s agenda. If it's not being led from the top, it's inevitable that old, obsolete views that are both biased and imbalanced are still seeping through the company (often originating from the very top itself), meaning that the company just won't be future-ready. Instead of gender balance being down in the diversity department’s to-do list, it has to be up on the CEO’s and ExCo’s list of priorities. When members of the top team are measured on the gender balance of their divisions and teams, real change is achieved. Forget ‘empowering women.’ Start empowering leaders. Help them become both ‘gender bilingual’ and cross-culturally and generationally ‘multilingual’ with skills to leverage the potential of talent across cultures, genders and generations, and connect with potential customer and stakeholder bases around the globe.

The 4 W’s of gender balance

I summarise the transformations most of our clients are currently addressing as the 4 W’s: Web, Weather, World and Women. Technological change, sustainability and climate change, globalization, and the rise of women. All have been accelerated by the pandemic. The companies that will re-emerge stronger from this crisis are those that will have used it to recognize the inter-dependence of the 4W’s and have aimed to build back better across all dimensions simultaneously. Gender balance, digitalization, globalization and sustainability are the hallmarks of a successful 21st century business. Where are you on the journey?

This article was written by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, CEO of 20-first, one of the world's leading global consultancies focussed on gender balance.

To hear Avivah in conversation with Lucy Lewis on all things gender balance, please visit our podcast series.