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special edition

A LETTER TO MY GRAND DAUGHTERS

This year you will be making some important decisions as you approach your final years at school. You have had so much opportunity to learn new and exciting things that will give you a wealth of opportunities in your career choice of the future.

I wanted to share with you how much things have changed for women in the last 10 years since you were a little girl. Can you imagine that in 2012, although for 20 years over 50% of the law graduates were women only a little over 10% were partners in law firms? In the pharmaceutical industries there were many women in the organisations but few in the senior roles. In the banking sector there was still over 20% differential in salaries between men and women holding an equivalent position. This was despite equal pay for equal work being compulsory since 1963.

In 2012, companies registered in Australia were asked to comment on what they were doing in order to improve the percentage of women on their boards and in senior management. Can you believe that 49% of board in the top 200 companies in Australia had no women on their boards? Only two of the top companies in Australia had female CEOs and Australia had its first female prime minister.

There was a lot of discussion and research as to why this inequality was allowed to continue. There was discussion about why Australia was behind the US, UK, NZ and South America in women achieving leadership positions. There was discussion about the communication and collaboration skills that women were more likely to display in leadership positions. There was discussion for the need for a more collaborative approach to leadership in Australia and yet women were still not achieving senior management positions.

As you look at your career options in 2022 you will find that the respected characteristics of leaders have changed over the last 10 years. The more autocratic style of leaders, seen extensive early in the 21st century has changed with a new generation of leaders who bring a wisdom of seeking to ensure our community prospers both for men and women, mothers and fathers and our environment.

There have been massive changes in the last 10 years to provide opportunities for you to achieve so many things in your life. Your career will not be limited should you choose to have children. Our community will value your involvement in their care together with the care offered by their father. You will be able to work flexibly without losing career progression opportunities and you will be paid at equivalent levels.

I hope that as you choose your future, you find a career that provides you with the opportunities and challenges to thrive at work and in your life.

Much love,
Grannie Di
July 2022 [ top ]

WE WASTE SO MUCH TALENT IN AUSTRALIA!

As a country with a skills shortage we could augment our countries skilled workers by minimising this wastage.

Of course the natural responses are we are doing everthing we can; policies and procedures, ensuring we hire the best person for the job, ensuring women know they have opportunities. You name it, someone will say they have tried it and yet our current data shows we are a long way from gender diversity and not moving much at all, and of course gender diversity is only one area of diversity we need to tackle.

Take the time to pick up 20 annual reports from the top ASX200 and skim the board of directors and senior management teams. You will likely notice that there is a major shortfall of women and non-caucasians. Nearly 30% of our population was not born in Australia and these people, like women are not moving up the ladder as fast as their qualifications might suggest they should be. This is already a problem for Australia and reduces boards and senior management abilities to see different perspectives and better align with our population.

Why do I feel so strongly on this?

Australia is the country in which I was born and raised. I was fortunate to have a father who believed university education was important for me at a time when even from selective public schools less than 50% of girls continued on to university. He saw no limitations in the opportunities I should have to learn and grow as an individual. and no limitations were placed upon me.

My career encompassed mathematics and computer science teaching, computer programming and working for Apple for nearly 20 years. In the last four years I was the Managing Director of Apple in Australia and in 2000, Apple was awarded Best Employer. Stepping down at the end of 2001, I was quite shocked that very few women held senior management positions across almost all industry sectors and after researching the situation decided that my next career would be focussed on ensuing that talented females had opportunities to achieve to their career aspirations. In 2002, I founded Xplore for Success to build career resilience in talented women within organisations.

Over the last 10 years, I have developed the Xplore programs, now delivered to over 6,000 women, founded the Chief Executive Women's Leadership program, been a joint author of the CEO Kit, spoken at over 100 women's groups and personally mentored a number of women in the "C" Suite. I believe we can make our workplaces more diverse, however, we need to keep working to achieve these goals for the future of Australia. [ top ]

ACHIEVING CAREER ASPIRATIONS FOR WOMEN IS LIKE TAKING A LIFT!

We need to push women up from the lower and middle management pools and pull up from the top to ensure we get cultural change AND we need doors that open and close and allow messages and access to every level of the organisation.

Ensuring our most senior managers pull women up to achieve their potential

Over the last 10 years we have seen many initiatives in terms of policies, procedures, communication and training and yet the figures over the last 10 years have shown disappointing change. More recently we have seen the importance of the CEO and senior management teams acting as sponsors and supporters of the women coming through. This needs to be measured and be a part of personal performance of senior managers. Being the sole woman on a board or senior management team is still a lonely existence.

In the last few years there has been more discussion about "unconscious bias" and how that effects the decision making of leaders. Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Blink" expands on how quickly we make decisions based on our past experiences and belief systems. Professor Binna Kandola states "Unconscious bias is recognised as a key reason for organisations failing, despite sincere efforts, to reach diversity goals." He focuses on "resetting diversity strategies and overcoming prejudices and habits that prevent organisations reaching their diversity goals". Our senior managers must ensure they understand the biases they hold so that bringing them into the conscious mind they are able to mitigate their effect.

We also need CEO's, Chairmen and other senior men to be prepared to talk openly about the challenges, about their own biases and how they have sponsored women to take on career challenges that they know the women can achieve, even if the women are hesitant. Elizabeth Broderick, Sex Discrimination Commissioner, and her "Male Champions of Change" project has identified some of Australia's most senior men who are committed to ensuring women achieve their career aspirations. [ top ]

THE 'STUPID' CURVE IN AUSTRALIAN ORGANISATIONS 2007

GIVING WOMEN THE SKILLS AND CONFIDENCE TO PUSH UP!

At Xplore for Success, we have focussed most of our energy building programs to build skills and confidence in women within major organisations. Our programs, an integrated approach of soft and hard skills, are delivered by Senior Associates with extensive business experience. The programs take place over a 3 month period so that our participants can build new skills and confidence to unlock their potential.

Our participants spend time building confidence, self-awareness and reflect on how their strengths and behaviours affect their career progression. We take time to facilitate their considering their career and life aspirations and building pragmatic ways to achieve their goals. We ensure they take personal responsibility for their career development and putting actions into place to achieve their goals.

Our participants look at their personal presence within the organisation and how they operate with other more senior managers. They identify senior managers who can mentor or sponsor them as they move through their career. They seek to build flexibility in their communication so that they can achieve better outcomes with one-on-one and group interactions. They become confident and able to address bias that managers may hold and understand how they may differ from others in their leadership style.

Many of the women who have done our programs have been promoted in the short term, have taken on high profile projects within their organisation, are more able to articulate their successes, and they make more use of their strengths and skills in their current role.
We know that we make a difference for each of our participants and over the last few years we have offered many mixed programs and have made a difference to many men in their careers as well. [ top ]

UNLOCKING THE FULL POTENTIAL OF WOMEN AT WORK

2012 McKinsey Report
[ visit website ]

First, the starting position is tough for most companies. Women are entering in large numbers (more than 325,000 women have entry-level positions at these 60 companies), but in aggregate, the pipeline suffers just as many leaks and blockages as we found last year. Many women opt to take staff roles, get stuck in middle management, or leave their organization without giving the company a chance to address their concerns.

Second, it's even clearer that changing the game for middle managers is a crucial piece of the solution. Nearly 140,000 women have already made it to midlevel management at these companies-about one-third of the women professionals in these organizations. But only about 7,000 have become vice presidents, senior vice presidents, or members of the C-suite. Finding ways to help women in the middle stay in the game and advance to higher levels-particularly through their child-raising years-would reshape the pipeline at these companies and go a long way toward bringing more talent to the top.

Third, several participating companies demonstrate that success is within reach. These companies are more diverse than their peers, and they got there in different ways. Some attract a high percentage of women to entry-level roles. Some have been able to increase the odds of promotion for women to mirror those for men. Some have found ways to keep women in line roles. And some already have significant numbers of women at the top, positioning the company for continued success.

Fourth, through more than 160 interviews with senior business and HR executives, we identified an integrated approach to addressing the barriers that hold women back: top management must be hands-on and visibly committed to achieving the gender-diversity goal; leaders should crack the code on sponsorship, holding all senior leaders accountable for creating opportunities for talented women; they must make diversity an explicit focus of talent-management processes, supported by regular discussions, granular data, and follow-up; they need to measure progress against stretch goals at every level; and diversity staff must have the clout to keep a spotlight on the issues. [ top ]

What we know

• Women in Australia have good opportunities to gain higher education
• Women gain consistently higher grades at university
• Women are over 50% of finance and law graduates
• Women start their first year in work paid less than equivalently qualified men
• Women are not rising within organisations as quickly as similarly experienced men
• Womens salaries for equivalent work are on average 13% below those of men
• There has been little change in the percentage of women in senior leadership positions or directorships in the last 10 years.