Causes of turnover among women of colour

1
Advancing women in business organizations Mattis

• Causes of turnover among women of colour
• Roles for Senior leaders
• Behaviours of Front-line managers

2
Organizational Initiatives Women of Colours
Turnover Intentions

• Those who intended to stay described their
  companies as
• Appreciative of cultural differences
• Requiring few adjustments to fit in
• Addressing subtle gender bias
• Addressing subtle racism
• Respectful of people of different cultural
  backgrounds
• Having targeted hiring practices to increase
  diversity
• Being a supportive environment for women of
  colour
• Having managers with adequate diversity training
• Promoting women of colour to senior leadership
  positions

Catalyst 98 98 studies
3
Key Barriers to Advancement for Women of Colour

• Not having an influential mentor/sponsor
• Lacking informal networks with influential
  colleagues
• Lacking company role models of the same ethnic
  group
• Lacking high visibility assignments

4
Managerial behaviours Women of Colours
Turnover Intentions

• Those who intended to stay described their
  managers are described as
• Providing opportunities for visibility
• Explaining/interpreting organizational politics
• Mapping out clear developmental goals for direct
  reports

5
Roles for Senior Leaders

• Develop communicate business case
• Provide resources for benchmarking
• Build commitment, ownership, sponsorship for
  action
• Establish accountability
• Provide strategic direction
• Sponsor women for leadership positions
• Initiate succession planning processes

6
How Senior leaders can Develop Communicate the
Business Case

• Explain how recruiting women fully uses external
  internal talent pool
• Identify the cost of the turnover of high
  potential or performing women
• Explain why company should reflect marketplace
  (e.g., bec it contains significant number of
  women buyers)
• Identify costs of not complying w/regulations
  of litigation

7
How Senior leaders can Develop Communicate the
Business Case

• Explain how company can increase its competitive
  edge via external benchmarking
• Explain and identify how company can improve its
  relations with stakeholders (e.g., shareholders,
  employees, communities, etc.)
• Develop company-specific business case
• Identify personal advantages of diversity for
  employees

8
How Senior Leaders can Conduct Internal
Benchmarking

• Identify current rates of recruitment, retention,
  advancement for men women
• Develop long and short-term goals for improvement
  of recruitment, retention advancement
• Measure progress toward goals

See also Cox ch 4
9
How Senior Leaders can Conduct External
Benchmarking

• Identify appropriate comparison companies
• Collect, analyze evaluate data from comparison
  company
• Determine fit between own and comparison company
  before replicating a best practice
• Tailor implement selected initiatives, assign
  accountability for monitoring results, evaluate
  modify based on outcomes needs
• BMO example is VD or MD?

See also Cox ch 4
10
How Senior Leaders can build Commitment for
action

• Define roles accountabilities for all senior
  leaders
• Link rewards to diversity performance
• Link successful recruitment training of women
  to key business priorities
• Make each company executive accountable for one
  key component of diversity initiative

11
How Senior Leaders can Establish Accountability

• Clarify diversity-related roles for each employee
• Appoint HR person in charge of diversity with
  direct reporting relationship to CEO (see also
  Cox)
• Establish diversity goals for business units
  individual managers

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How Senior Leaders can Establish Accountability

• Focus on diversity-related outcomes when
  conducting performance reviews (e.g., rates of
  turnover, promotion hiring)
• Link diversity-related performance to incentives
• Educate managers on business case, monitoring of
  results, goals they are held accountable for

13
Roles for Senior Level Leaders

• Develop communicate business case
• Provide resources for benchmarking
• Build commitment, ownership, sponsorship for
  action
• Establish accountability
• Provide strategic direction
• Sponsor women for leadership positions
• Initiate succession planning processes

14
How Senior Leaders can provide Strategic Direction

• Identify a systemic intervention that
• Most immediate visible change
• Impact other systems affecting womens
  advancement retention
• Possible systems to change
• Career practices
• Workplace practices culture
• Work-life practices (e.g., Baxter)
• Market practices
• Identify financial and staff resources for change

15
How Senior Leaders can Sponsor Women for
Leadership Positions

• Sponsors are leaders who enable movement of
  others through the ranks of the organization
  through leaders power influence
• Sponsors are needed for
• Powerful positions in organizations
• Membership/chairs of important committees

16
How Senior Leaders can initiate Succession
Planning Processes

• Move high potential candidates through different
  areas of the organization (via mentors/coaches)
  to
• Allow learning about the business
• Establish networks promoting their retention
• Provide support to enable risk-taking

17
How Senior Leaders can initiate Succession
Planning Processes

• Enable people to self-identify an interest in
  moving up/across organization
• Have performance monitoring systems that
  identify those with leadership, initiative,
  skills for developmental assignments promotions

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Advancing women in business organizations Mattis

• Causes of turnover among women
• Roles for Senior leaders
• Develop communicate business case
• Provide resources for benchmarking
• Build commitment, ownership, sponsorship for
  action
• Establish accountability
• Provide strategic direction
• Sponsor women for leadership positions
• Initiate succession planning processes
• Behaviours of Front-line managers

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Roles for Managers

• Communicate verbally non-verbally to reinforce
  diversity initiatives
• Managers influence access to
• Feedback
• Coaching
• Insider information on organizational politics
• Informal networks
• Developmental opportunities
• High visibility assignments on task
  forces/committees
• Behave in ways to reinforce diversity initiatives

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Behaviors for Managers

• Request at least 2 women to be on every list of
  potential candidates for a vacancy/promotion
• Intervene in meetings where others behaviors
  interrupt/stifle womens contributions
• Assign a proportional representation of women on
  projects/task forces/committees
• Include executive women in hiring/promotion
  interviews

21
Behaviors for Managers

• Organize two social events/ per year where women
  can participate comfortably
• Encourage additional training for 2/3rds of
  female direct reports who have plateaued
• Join a committee or professional org where
  manager is minority

22
Behaviors for Managers

• Become a diversity-thought leader
• Annual attendance on diversity workshops/events
• Find woman coach/mentor outside company to
  discuss gender-related issues
• Cover a diversity-related topic at every employee
  meeting
• Convene/participate in brainstorming sessions
  w/direct reports/peers to identify concrete
  things a person can do to bring equality to women

23
Behaviors for Managers

• Initiate an annual gender-issues meting w/female
  direct reports separate from performance review
  to discuss barriers to advancement
• Have zero tolerance for overt discrimination,
  inappropriate behavior or inappropriate
  entertainment venues
• Send clear frequent messages re personal
  commitment to corporate diversity initiative

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Behaviors for Managers

• When providing performance feedback to women
  direct reports, discuss career path in
  organization
• Shift focus from current performance to next
  position in organization,
• Identify needed to be done to move to that
  position
• Promote women on the bases of potential for that
  next position
• Instead of focusing on demonstrated performance
  of responsibilities of that position

25
To advance women in organizations

• Senior Leaders and Managers have unique and
  shared roles
• Managers have additional responsibility of
  displaying diversity-related behaviors to