The Key To Unlocking Business Growth

Female empowerment in the workplace should not be considered an obligation, but an opportunity

Diversity and gender equality have been no stranger to headlines over the last couple of years. However, while the world was caught up in these global, and rather sensitive conversations revolving largely around responses to the #metoo movement, a focus towards female empowerment in the workplace has become one of obligation or compliance, rather than an opportunity.
 

What companies fail to recognize is that achieving greater diversity is more than just an HR or PR issue. According to a McKinsey & Company report, an extra $12 trillion could be added to global GDP by 2025 by simply creating gender-diverse workforces.
 
In fact, companies that are representative of and inclusive to females generate new ideas, broader views, higher employee engagement, and better revenue streams. And, those that make the effort to promote and encourage females into C-suite positions are rewarded with even higher financial performances.
 
CEOs must recognize that not only will they benefit from unlocking this entire other half of the global talent, but they can leverage a gender-balanced workforce as a competitive advantage. So, how can all companies champion gender diversity as a strategy for business growth?

In order to commit to gender diversity, companies need to make an active effort, starting in the early recruiting and onboarding stages. Unconscious bias may lead to favoring one group over another in recruiting. To counter this, companies need to prioritize and invest in inclusive hiring practices and screening tools to help build diverse teams. Beanworks has a 50% female executive team and ensures that an equal number of female and male candidates are considered for new employment opportunities. Its overall goal is to have a gender-equal work environment.
 
Deloitte has also made an incredible effort to level the gender playing field. The company has spoken out about how women “may well be the dominant source of economic growth in the near future” and have encouraged other companies to follow in its footsteps and hire more women. Hiring more women and a focus on bringing women back to work is always part of its talent acquisition strategy.
 
In the IT and tech space, where women do not exactly have the strongest presence, recruiting processes that actively encourage women are crucial. Whether that involves targeting women through softer, and less dominating language, or putting an emphasis on flexible work hours to accommodate working mothers, these little efforts during the hiring process will automatically help find a diverse team.

Developing a reputation as a female-friendly workplace is important. Research from PWC found that while companies talk about diversity and say they make a conscious effort in hiring women, 71 percent of millennial women feel that opportunities are not equal for all. Companies need to onboard women with purpose, to retain a varied workforce that promotes equality.
 
Numerous studies have now uncovered a positive correlation between diversity and financial performance, including that organizations which are gender diverse are 15 percent more likely to be profitable. It’s pretty obvious when you think about it: Having women in a meeting adds a different side of view, brings something new to the table and spurs a healthy conflict of discussion needed for business innovation. Moreover, women influence up to 80 percent of buying decisions and control roughly $20 trillion of total consumer spending globally. Therefore having women in companies facilitating the development of business strategies will undoubtedly help tap into this growing market.
 
Ensuring women feel prepared and confident in the workplace is therefore essential for maintaining this balanced team. Rather than shying away from delicate topics of women in the workplace and how they should be treated, focus on the value women give. These values include better decision making within a diverse team and increased employee engagement.
 
Make it part of the company message to push other women into wanting to work for you. Developing this reputation as a female-friendly company will improve recruitment and help find that talent to drive business success. Thanks to Deloitte’s public diversity efforts, it has become a popular place of work for women. It was also recently named one of Fortune 100’s best workplaces for women, indicating that their efforts stretch beyond just recruitment.

Companies with women on their boards outperform companies with all-male boards. In a Credit Suisse study of 27,000 senior managers at more than 3,000 companies globally, results showed that companies. where women hold 25% of decision-making roles, generate 4% higher cash flow returns on investment. Companies even produced 10% higher cash flow returns on investment when women make up half of the senior managers.
 
If a CEO was presented with a software that would improve their company’s cash flow on investment, they would not hesitate. And yet, even when facts of having a female on the board are now known to most companies, across all industries, change is slow. Currently, the US will not see equal men and women on boards until 2025.
 
Closing the “confidence” gap in female professional development will hopefully speed up the number of women in C-suite positions. Unbounce has a famous gender diversity program from which it is reaping in benefits. Rick Perreault, CEO, works hard across the board to maintain a 50:50 female to male employee ratio, including in leadership roles.
 
Therefore, hiring women into C-suite positions, or leading women into these roles within the company should be a top priority for all companies. Ideal female candidates will not be found in the usual candidate pool. Companies need to shift their search to bring in new perspectives. And, they do not necessarily need to have had previous board experience: 36 percent of new board appointees in 2017 in the US had no previous board experience.
 
In an ideal world, we shouldn't have to build a business case as to why a company should hire more women. However, as benefits of gender diversity and inclusion become ever more apparent, companies are slowly making improvements. To fuel this momentum, more industries will need to overcome society’s unconscious or unspoken bias, to champion gender diversity, not for altruistic purposes, but as a strategy for business success.

Catherine Dahl is CEO of Beanworks, a solution dedicated to designing and deploying Software as a Service Solutions that solve Organizations Financial Workflow problems, using workflow automation to change how small-medium sized businesses manage their financial systems. Connect Catherine Dahl Visit www.beanworks.com Follow @BeanworksAP