Katie Mehnert* says that to make gender equality a reality through all levels of organisations, employers need to shift their thinking around values.
Image: Gerd Altmann
Organisations within any industry can take constructive steps to make gender equality a strategic value.
Inside our organisations, what’s the difference between a “priority” and a “value”?
It may seem like a semantic question.
It isn’t.
The difference is critical and key to making big changes happen.
To make gender equality a reality — from the boardroom and C-suite to frontline employees — organisations need to shift their thinking around values.
Priorities can change at any time.
Values do not.
Values and beliefs drive culture and behaviours.
I’ve seen this cultural shift happen with another crucial workplace issue: safety.
For 10 years, I worked as a safety executive in oil and gas companies.
After years of devastating accidents and injuries, rapid improvements followed.
An analyst said the industry was becoming one of the safest.
Annual accident records show the turnaround continuing.
This happened over time because the industry changed its approach, making safety a value and not a priority.
Total, a multinational energy conglomerate, puts it this way: “Safety is more than just a priority. It’s a core value and the basis of our strategy.”
The American Petroleum Institute similarly described safety as a core value for the natural gas and oil industry.
In making this shift, the industry began to ensure that safety was baked into every decision, at every level.
It’s time to do the same for gender equality across all industries.
I left my former work in energy safety culture to focus full time on rectifying this problem.
The business incentives are clear.
As McKinsey notes: “Research supports that diverse and inclusive teams tend to be more creative and innovative than homogenous groups.”
Gender equality leads to greater psychological safety.
Here are some of the steps organisations within any industry can take to make gender equality a strategic value.
Executive commitment
Leaders must demonstrate commitment to achieving gender equality in their organisations.
If they genuinely make it a value, they’ll not only talk about it but show it through their behaviours.
This includes surrounding themselves with gender-balanced and diverse teams; having equal numbers of women speak at meetings; giving credit to men and women equally for their ideas.
The C-suite must set the example, and managers must mirror those efforts, making clear to employees in all departments that inclusion is a part of daily operations.
Measure, with leading indicators
To ensure change is happening, set specific goals and measure them, making the results visible to the rest of the organisation.
They can be aspirational but should start with realistic benchmarks.
For example, an organisation with only 5 per cent women in managerial positions should not be expected to reach 50 per cent within one year.
When setting these goals, it’s crucial to include leading indicators, not just lagging ones.
As research done at Bentley University explains, lagging indicators measure what has happened; leading indicators predict what will happen.
For tracking gender equity, insights from the World Economic Forum suggest three key leading indicators: recruiting, retention, and advancement rates.
Begin by ensuring measurements around these indicators are already taking place, and set new goals that align with gender equality as an organisational value.
Build the talent pipeline
Employers should invest in making sure children — both boys and girls — are taught skills that will build the jobs of the future.
And learning opportunities should carry all the way through people’s careers as well, through workplace training, mentoring, and coaching programs.
To instil gender equality as a value throughout an organisation, it’s important for employers to tell the stories of women who have achieved leadership roles.
Through acknowledging and discussing the barriers they had to overcome as well as the solutions to making those barriers disappear, new leaders can gain insights for creating better pathways for women.
It doesn’t happen overnight.
But as the energy sector’s record with safety shows, big change can happen.
* Katie Mehnert is CEO of Pink Petro and Experience Energy. She tweets at @katiemehnert.
This article first appeared at sloanreview.mit.edu.
