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Mobilizing Leadership at All Levels
I think the first thing for HR departments is for them to know that if they’re being asked to do it alone, they’re being set up for failure. Companies and public sector workplaces that are successful in the advancement of women, in building more family-friendly work environments, in ending sexual harassment, these are companies and workplaces where leadership has come from the top, where HR has played an important role in the development and execution of policies. But if there is not buy-in and leadership and express leadership from the very top, change is very slow or doesn’t happen at all. So I think the first message to HR is just make sure that the top leadership is heavily invested, invested in this in terms of speaking out, invested in terms of their own training on the importance of different issues, invested in terms of company resources and policies. Leadership from the top is key.
The second thing is leadership at all levels is key. So we often think of leadership in the corporate world as the C-suite or the top managers or whatever. We also have to think about leadership on the shop floor level, the office floor level. And so, we have to work with those who are opinion leaders. We have to work with union leaders and shop stewards, if it’s a union environment, particularly when we’re talking about the perpetuation of traditional macho culture. It’s a lot of the informal comings and goings that really influence how people behave in the workplace. So it’s important that HR engages at different levels and understands that there’s real leadership skills at different levels, and we have to mobilize that.
Measuring Change
We need to be measuring the change. We can’t just say, “Yeah, do it.” But we need the metrics. We need good metrics, and not metrics just to prove how great we are, but metrics that are going to help us understand where we are weak. Maybe we’ve been hiring more women. Are we retaining more women? Are we promoting more women? What’s happening when women take parental leave? Are they coming back? When they come back, are they advancing? Are they stalled at that point?
I was recently speaking to managers and supervisors at different levels at a big diversity conference for Baltimore Gas and Electric, and their CEO was giving an opening speech. He talked about a woman who had decided not to go for a promotion and it didn’t make sense. She was a great worker, it was a great promotion, and they sort of let it go until they found out a bit later that she didn’t go for it because the man she would be working under was notorious as a sexual harasser. He said something very interesting, this CEO. He said, “I’ve always felt I had an open door policy, that people can come to me with issues and problems.”
Then he said, “She didn’t. And I blame myself.” He didn’t say, oh, she should have felt comfortable, which would’ve blamed her. He said, I must have been doing something wrong that she couldn’t come to me. If we want equality in our workplaces, we need really sort of systematic and ongoing reviews. But the trick is to find ways you’re going to get the most honest answers. Bringing people together, bringing women together, creating safe environments to talk about some of the challenges, some of the issues.
Supporting Parental Leave
Within a company, companies that have introduced decent parental leave, managers may say to someone, “Are you going to take parental leave?” Wrong question to ask. The question is how many months, or how many weeks are you taking off? Because as soon as you say are you going to, you’ve just indicated this really is not a good career move. So really working with managers on understanding the impact of different language, working to make sure that there are exit strategies, but also reentry strategies.
Yes, we need to be monitoring, measuring, [and] creating safety for people to talk about issues. But really leading by example is so important. And then we should celebrate. Let’s celebrate where we’ve had successes. Let’s celebrate those milestones because when we celebrate those things, it’s not just good PR. What it’s doing is setting an example to other companies in our community or in our industry.