ALM Intelligence Provider Showcase: How to Close the Gender Gap? Design Programs and Process to Drive Accountability

Unfortunately, this commitment and passion for change is not enough—especially when it comes to closing the gender gap. For all our collective efforts, good intentions and attention to detail, we have made some progress, yet we still have a long way to go to advance women's representation in the global workforce. So how do we increase momentum? 

Many CEOs have made pledges to diversity and shown a desire for change. Tone from the top is critical, but it takes more than CEO commitment. In our research and experience with clients, we see that CEO commitments work, but only when formal programs and processes are specifically designed and coordinated around those commitments to keep the organization accountable. 

As with any other business goal, holding leaders accountable is key to driving progress. During my time as regional president for Mercer EuroPac, serving the European and Pacific regions, I worked closely with our talent and inclusion team to add diversity to every manager's goals. 

For example, we introduced a goal to include early-career female employees in sales pitches. It had a dual payoff—it gave women better exposure to client opportunities and gave Mercer higher win rates. When there was at least one woman on a sales team, the overall win rate increased by 28 percent.

To ensure commitment and accountability such as this, organizations should consider asking: do our leaders and managers share the CEO's vision for D&I? And are they ready to drive change? This requires purposeful development of inclusive behavior in leadership and in succession pipelines. It also means being willing to make tough decisions when leaders don't act according to the company's core values.

When companies use data and analytics, they are better positioned to assess which programs and processes are the leading causes of too homogeneous a workforce and solve for it. Data-driven insights as to why women (and other underrepresented populations) are failing to progress within organizations were cited as highly valuable to half of the C-suite and HR leaders (combined) we surveyed in our 2019 Global Talent Trends study.  

Workforce analytics can provide those key insights. But consider, too, advancing technology. We have seen a rapid rise in the amount and types of technology available to support the creation of unbiased cultures, recruitment, succession planning, and performance assessment.

In addition, our Healthy, Wealthy and Work-Wise research found that women face a gender gap in career continuity, opportunity, and access to employer-sponsored benefit plans—and are significantly more stressed than men. 

This stress can manifest in interesting ways. For example, willingness to go for a promotion or a new job is correlated to financial courage; with women continuing to be less financially secure and more stressed about their current and future prospects than men, we will continue to see a reluctance to take risks within their career. 

The gender gap issue suggests a counter-intuitive approach: achieving gender representation comes by acknowledging and valuing differences, not minimizing them. Women and men are physically different, face different types of career and work-life balance challenges, societal expectations, and approach financial security in different ways. We must adapt our benefits, education, management and training programs to meet them where they are. 

Again, data analytics and advancing technology can play a vital role. It can help organizations identify areas of pay inequality and life stages that warrant targeted conversations. Meanwhile, personalized resources and tools, along with coaching, mentorship and executive sponsorship of gender-specific programs can help men and women focus on their overall well-being in a more targeted way.  

As a global leader of 25,000 employees, I don't see profitability and D&I as zero-sum games. I see D&I more broadly. I see it as leadership and employee wellness and productivity issues, since a commitment to D&I calls for benefits and programs more tailored to the individual needs of a diverse workforce. It is not enough, however, that the CEO believes in D&I. We need to surround ourselves with leaders who share the same beliefs so that it flows throughout the organization. Not as a mandate but as an essential component of the culture.

It's important to take hard, unbiased looks at ourselves, our own leaders, our processes and our programs —starting with the Executive Leadership—to institute innovative changes to bring all employees along, not just on the company's journey, but on the entire journey toward a brighter future of work. 

And so, to re-energize the conversation on D&I and the effort to close the gender gap, we've launched the next generation of our "When Women Thrive, Businesses Thrive" research project and consulting practice, which is entering its sixth year. With a planned release of global findings in March 2020, the new research will dive deeper to explore how organizations: 

—Benchmark their programs, policies and practices;

—Consider operational context, such as industry, region and organization size; 

—See the outlook on their talent pipelines, based on talent flows and future workforce needs;

Like everyone else, at Mercer we're still on the road to gender parity. Only by actively listening, challenging the status quo and being willing to confront our own data honestly, will we be able to meet our employees where they are and build a culture where individuals and our leadership teams can come together for change and drive forward—into a brighter future for all.