While more than 75 percent of CEOs say gender equality is part of their top 10 business priorities, women remain underrepresented across every level of the corporate pipeline—comprising just 37 percent of management positions and 19 percent of C-Suite positions, according to a recent study from McKinsey and LeanIn.org.

This gender disparity doesn’t stem from the inability of women to perform at top levels. Catalyst found that Fortune 500 companies with women on their boards had significantly higher returns on equity (53 percent), better sales (42 percent), and a two-thirds greater ROI than companies with all-male boards. Instead, a recent Bersin by Deloitte brief suggests that the problem comes down to culture: It turns out that most organizations simply do not provide an environment that supports diverse leaders or encourages everyone to strive for senior positions.

The lack of cultural support for minorities leads to decreased confidence, ultimately making it much more difficult for women to pursue leadership roles. Rather than addressing the existing problem as solely a gender balance issue, companies should work to create a culture of inclusion that fosters diversity and encourages everyone to strive towards leadership opportunities. Bersin by Deloitte research showed that organisations with strong cultures of leadership growth also happened to have the highest degree of gender diversity.

Here are five key practices your organisation can adopt to help foster a culture that supports female employees throughout their career journeys.

1) Teach Employees About Diversity, Conflict and Bias

A strong organisational culture begins with education. Provide training and resources that teach employees how to handle topics such as diversity, conflict and cultural bias. Creating an internal dialogue around these often controversial topics can help make employees aware of unconscious bias and discrimination in the workplace. By providing them with the skills to change behaviour you encourage a positive shift in organisational attitude.

At Prime Institute, one of our focus areas is cross-cultural diversity. We provide consulting and training to organisations on supporting women in the workplace and we have witnessed the impact that learning and development opportunities can provide in workplaces. On that note, we have strongly cautioned leaders to avoid making presumptions about the influence of someone’s personal life on their professional ambitions.

“Work intensely with your hiring and promoting managers to negate the internal dialogues that may prohibit women from advancing such as, ‘she just got married,’ or ‘she’s a mother of two so she can’t travel,’ or ‘she’s going to have a baby soon,’ so let’s invest in someone else,”.

2) Listen to Career Concerns and Desires

After education, listening is the next step in building a strong organisational culture. Create a two-way dialogue where female employees feel comfortable discussing their career concerns and desires, then use this information when designing and shaping pathways to leadership.

Katerina Trajchevska, CEO of Adeva, a tech startup that helps businesses hire and retain top talent, says women are treated equally when everyone’s voice feels heard. “Rather than creating a culture centred on supporting female leadership, create a culture that supports leadership in general and encourages people to speak up and take initiative. That is an environment where women are actually treated equally, where they get to face their challenges and thrive,” she explains.

3) Proactively Create an Inclusive Culture

Inclusive cultures emphasise integrity and collaboration and encourage everyone to achieve their potential while supporting others along the way. One way to do this is through a mentorship program, as such relationships can lead to guidance, opportunity and advice that HR can’t always provide.

At Prime Institute we encouraging company veterans with 10 or more years of experience in the workplace to identify and sponsor younger rising stars. If your staff skews young, you can also look to outside mentorship resources, which connects mentors and mentees across organisations.

4) Set and Measure Diversity and Inclusion Goals

Create measurable diversity and inclusion goals. While most companies track the representation of women, only 44 percent set pipeline targets for gender diversity and even fewer set targets for external hiring and promotions, the McKinsey and LeanIn.org study found. Examples of tracking metrics your organisation can use include: gender representation of external candidates for hire, salary differences in comparable positions by gender and assignment of high-visibility projects by gender.

By creating clear goals, you can easily track progress and tangibly see how your efforts are paying off. It’s also important to be transparent about the results you see and to hold leaders accountable for creating plans to reach their goals. Remember, there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to diversity goal setting; it will take trial and error to find what works best.

5) Women Leaders Supporting Other Women to Rise

It is proven that when a woman helps another woman rise, they both shine. However, evidently this type of support rarely exist within the workplaces.

There has been a scarcity of women in top leadership positions in the corporate world because many women traditionally been taught to be competitive with one another although development can only be achieved once we grow a theme of collaboration over competition. 

Sepideh shared a personal experience, “In one of the multinational corporations that I used to work, out of almost 10 senior leaders in the company at the time, there was one female leader. I kept asking this only woman senior to me to go to lunch or have a coffee with me, until finally, she told me, “Look, you and I are at a different hierarchical position and we are not going to be friends.” Unfortunately, she was acting rationally. Senior-level women who champion junior women even today are more likely to get negative performance reviews, according to a 2016 study in The Academy of Management Journal.

My senior colleague’s behaviour has a (misogynistic) academic name: the “Queen Bee” phenomenon. Some senior-level women distance themselves from junior women, perhaps to be more accepted by their male peers. As a study published in The Leadership Quarterly concludes, this is a response to inequality at the top, not the cause. Trying to separate oneself from a marginalised group is, sadly, a strategy that’s frequently employed.

So, what are women in the workplace to do, when research shows that we’re penalised for trying to lift each other up? The antidote to being penalised for sponsoring women may just be to do it more — and to do it vocally, loudly, and proudly — until we’re able to change perceptions. There are massive benefits for the individual and the organisation when women support each other. The advantages of sponsorship for protégés may be clear, such as access to opportunities and having their achievements brought to the attention of senior management, but sponsors gain as well, by becoming known as cultivators of talent and as leaders. Importantly, organizations that welcome such sponsorship benefit too — creating a culture of support, and where talent is recognised and rewarded for all employees. Sponsorship (which involves connecting a protégé with opportunities and contacts and advocating on their behalf, as opposed to the more advice-focused role of mentorship) is also an excellent way for men to be allies at work.

These are wonderful supplements, but they can’t replace the benefits of and the necessity for connections among women inside a company — at and across all levels. It reduces the feeling of competition for an imaginary quota at the top. It helps other women realise, “Oh, it’s not just me” — a revelation that can change the course of a women’s career. It’s also an indispensable way of identifying bad actors and systemic problems within the company. It need not be a massive program, and you don’t need to overthink it.

So whether you are a junior-level employee or a senior-manager, looking to enhance the way you engage in the workplace and planning to promote women’s development and advancement to create a more diverse workplace, just reach out to us for a complimentary consultation on info@prime-inst.com.