What are the benefits to individuals, teams, and organisations of reducing unconscious gender bias and increasing gender diversity at work?

Benefits to men from reducing gender bias

Research from The 100% Project indicates that Australian men are satisfied with what they are achieving in their careers, but not with the contribution they are making to their families, communities, or other life pursuits. In addition, men who are satisfied with their contribution to their family as a partner and/or parent are more likely to feel satisfied with their life as a whole. In the work context, employee engagement is higher in men who work for an organisation that encourages work-life balance, even if they don’t make use of these benefits (Page & Feenstra, 2011).

Despite the desire for work-life balance and family time, there is a strong perception that asking for greater work-life balance as a male negatively affects one’s career prospects, particularly as they have seen the negative impacts on women’s careers. Currently, Australian women are much more likely to shoulder the responsibility for raising families, bearing the mental load of managing the household, and caring for older relatives (ABS, 2017). Page, Korlevska and Feenstra (2011) asked over 400 Australian men and women to complete a survey and a test of implicit bias. The results revealed that both men and women more strongly associate work-life balance with women than with men and that, even if men want greater work-life balance, they are less inclined to ask for it than women. Thus the cycle: if men don’t feel that they can request greater work-life balance, women will continue to shoulder the weight of family and household responsibilities and will continue to ask for flexible working arrangements to enable this. This may, in turn, perpetuate the stereotype that women are less committed to their careers and are less likely to put in the time required to reach more senior roles.

Challenging and addressing the reasons that men don’t ask for flexible working arrangements, and encouraging and normalising work-life balance for men, such as PwC has recently done with their flexible parental leave policy (Patty, 2017) will:

• Enrich men’s work and family life
• Improve job satisfaction and engagement at work in men
• Enhance overall sense of wellbeing, and
• Help open up opportunities for women

ROI of diversity

In the ‘war for talent’, organisations cannot afford to limit their talent pool by not seeking out qualified women alongside men for management. If we let our unconscious biases continue, we may be reducing the pool of talent we are willing to consider for a role. This may in turn reduce diversity in our organisation.

The evidence:

• Gender diverse companies are 15% more likely to outperform non-gender diverse organisations (McKinsey, 2015)
• Organisations with more female board directors have been found to have a 16% greater return on sales and 26% greater return on invested capital than those with fewer women on their board. Boards need to be at least 30% female in order to outperform all-male boards.
• Organisations with more women in senior leadership teams have been found to have a 10% higher return on equity, 48% higher EBIT, and 1.7 times the stock price growth of those companies who have no women in their senior leadership teams.
• Companies with gender diverse boards and management teams have greater organisational innovation (Catalyst, 2013).
• Teams with an equal mix of men and women outperform male-dominated teams in sales and profit, and in their problem-solving ability as a group. In fact, BHP have found that across administration, operations and field teams, teams with greater gender diversity had lower injury rates, greater adherence to work plans, and were more effective at meeting production targets (McPherson, 2017)

Ways to reduce bias

As humans, we all have different unconscious biases that can impact others in the workplace, often without us realising it. Below are some ways to reduce the impact of bias:

• Try to break down the myth of meritocracy. Help people to understand that, while we all have biases, they can negatively impact others at work, even to the extent of biasing who is promoted in the workplace.
• Have open and honest conversations about biases at work, and try to encourage all opinions
• Be aware of the language you use – is it inclusive?
• Ask yourself questions:  “Does my assumption seem fair?”
• When making new hires, define which qualifications are important, and consider using psychometric assessment and structured behavioural interviewing to understand your candidates better.
• Provide quality managerial training for all line managers – evidence suggests that women are more likely to leave roles because of a difficult manager than their male colleagues are (Catalyst, 2010). Having effective managers may mean that female staff are more inclined to stay in the business.
• Consider setting targets for the numbers of women in management and leadership roles in your organisation.
• Identify high performers based on competencies, not on stereotypes or their confidence in their ability.
• Identify critical roles with P&L responsibility and prioritise women and minorities for these key developmental roles (Thomas Falk Chairman & CEO, Kimberley-Clark Corporation.  Catalyst, 2010)
• Examine flexible work policies and the take up rates for both women and men. Take a leaf out of PwC’s book and work on ways to encourage and normalise flexible working arrangements for both men and women.
• Collect and review salary metrics – and take the WGEA pay equity pledge to recognise the impact of gender bias, review talent management data, and to set the expectation among managers that gender bias needs to be addressed in order to attract and retain the best talent.

It’s a lot to think about, but the first step is always starting the conversation and keeping the conversation going when it comes up against barriers. But, given the ROI of gender equity, its clearly worth it.

References

Carter, N.M. & Silva, C. (2010). Pipelines’ broken promise. Catalyst.

Hunt, D., Layton, D., & Prince, S. (2015). Diversity Matters. McKinsey & Company. 

McPherson, S. (2017, September 21). BHP has Added 1000 Women to its Workforce [LinkedIn Post]. 

Page, F. & Feenstra, F. (2011). What men want and why it matters for women. The 100% Project.

Page, F., Korlevska, K., & Feenstra, F. (2011). Men at work: What they want & how unconscious bias stops them getting it. The 100% Project.

Patty, A. (2017, September 18). PwC makes parental leave more flexible for dads, mums and foster carers. The Sydney Morning Herald.