EVEN Insights
Closing gender gaps and future capability gaps at the same time
The divide in the women in leadership pipeline, the widening skills gaps, economic growth - they’re all connected. These are large, difficult problems that can feel insurmountable at times in the HR profession. Typically, they’re tackled in isolation, e.g. a leadership program for women or a hiring burst for new projects or teams. It’s time to think differently, and more creatively, about how we tackle these persistent gaps.
We believe there are options for organisations to close the gender gap and the skills gap, together, which accelerates change and maximises usually limited resources.
Key takeaways
Focus action where “the divide” occurs
Focus support, career development and mentorship at high potential women, aspiring and first-time managers and those in emerging leader roles. “The broken rung” remains a significant barrier to women’s progress. There are many women in these important roles but they’re not making it to the top or becoming part of the executive pipeline. Women need to be supported when life and work gets tough, before they leave, opt-out or go part-time at work in order to create an even leadership pipeline.
Assess talent surplus for career mobility into right roles
What are the viable job transitions that may be possible within your organisation? What capabilities do women already have that could be used in more valuable roles of the future? What skills could they realistically acquire for a transition to a new role? Recent work by the World Economic forum shows that by mapping your organisation into job zones, you can find skills overlaps between a job that is declining and those jobs of the future. Assist women to move into those jobs.
Ensure women have access to high-profile assignments which support promotion and career mobility
Women are more likely to take on and be asked to complete non-promotable tasks. If women hold tasks that are less promotable than those held by men, then women will progress more slowly in organisations.
Create opportunities throughout the organisation for even allocation of high-profile and stretch assignments, the best kind of on-the-job learning. In the short term this could include embedding assignment conversations in a manager’s toolkit for development conversations. In the medium term it could be developing a broad view of the assignments landscape in your organisation and in the long term ensure you’re measuring high profile assignment allocation in employee engagement surveys with a question such as “To what extent do you have sufficient opportunity to work on assignments that are important to your career development?”
Amplify role models
It’s hard to be what you can’t see. Role models expand what is possible in women’s minds, they inspire and encourage ambition and they demonstrate the mindsets and behaviours required to succeed. Spotlight women succeeding on their own terms within your organisation or industry. Interview them, unpack their success and
and share their story across the business. To create a shift, communicating and amplifying the trends your organisation needs, such as more women with digital capability, will encourage others to follow the early adopters. Role modelling also helps to demystify and make accessible those jobs of the future that are hard to understand from the outside.
Reduce friction points for women to learn
Women have less time to learn outside work and receive fewer opportunities for development in skills of the future – skills that could help the sustainability of their career in the long term. Take for example only 7% of women have received training on AI in the past year, compared to 17% of men. Remove the access friction to learning by creating tangible learning-at-work incentives, such as explicit allowances of time to learn each week or month. Nudge managers to reward learning at work by reporting the upskilling achievements of their team each quarter. Favour online first delivery to ensure as many women can attend development opportunities as possible. Online doesn’t have to be passive and self-paced. It can be live, delivered in 45min or 90min bursts to fit into working day. The important thing is to recognise that you’re designing learning for time-poor, but no less ambitious, cohorts.