Deloitte, Medtronic and Unilever have won the 2020 Catalyst Award for accelerating progress for women in leadership, confirms Catalyst. The three winning companies will receive the ‘prestigious’ award on 12th March at its 2020 conference and awards event in New York.
These companies won this year’s award for their ‘forward-thinking’ initiatives helping to accelerate women in leadership in their organisations, according to the non-profit working building workplaces that work for women. “We are thrilled to honour these initiatives for their excellence in actively building inclusive cultures for women and everyone in the workplace,” said Catalyst President and CEO Lorraine Hariton. “Their success illustrates that now is the moment to be accountable and set new standards to develop and empower talent, and to innovate in the future of work in this new decade.”
INSPIRING WOMEN
Deloitte Australia’s Inspiring Women initiative has been a decade-long sustained, strategic and scalable approach to drive the workplace culture to ensure gender equality becomes the norm. The firm’s CEO, Richard Deutsch, leads from the front and is transparent about the goal of reaching gender parity in the partnership by 2025. He holds his leadership team accountable for increasing the recruitment, retention, development and advancement of women.
In a bid to achieve equal representation of women and men at all levels across the firm globally, this initiative has identified and removed barriers to equality to create a level playing field and a more inclusive culture, according to Catalyst. From 2015 to 2019, the representation of women on Deloitte Australia’s executive team shot up from 15% to 38%, and the percentage of female partners has also increased from 22% to 30% over the same period.
IGNITING WOMEN TO LEAD
Medtronic won the 2020 Catalyst award for its Igniting Women to Lead Through the Medtronic Women’s Network programme because its commitment to diversity and inclusion is a fully integrated, authentic culture change grounded in data. Medtronic CEO Omar Ishrak refocused the Medtronic Women’s Network (MWN) based on his experience that diverse perspectives and people produce better decisions, better outcomes and better business performance. The initiative is successfully creating an inclusive workplace where employees thrive while fulfilling the company mission of alleviating pain, restoring health and extending life, says Catalyst.
Through measurable goals and strong top-down accountability, Medtronic is accelerating women’s leadership, closing the gender gap in women in STEM and making a sustainable global impact through MWN and its 15,000 members in 68 countries, notes the non-profit organisation.
The company set a goal of 40% or more women in global leadership by 2020 and put in place corresponding strategies to achieve results. This goal became part of Medtronic’s overall ’40-30-20′ target: 40% or more women in global leadership, 30% or more women at manager level and above in research and development (R&D) globally, and 20% or more ethnically diverse managers in the US by 2020. The company is currently at ’38-25-22′.
The results of the company’s global initiative are impressive, according to Catalyst. From 2015 to 2019, representation of women vice presidents increased from 25% to 30%; as did women at director level (from 30% to 36%) and women in R&D (from 24% to 29%). In addition, Medtronic achieved significant growth in its inclusion scores with women overall seeing a four-point increase to 75%, and women in R&D reaching near world-class levels at 79%, confirms Catalyst.
GAME-CHANGING RESULTS
Unilever’s Changing the Game, Unlocking the Future initiative forms a core element of the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan for growing the business and creating a positive social impact. This initiative ‘extends and enhances’ the company’s previous award-winning programme (Catalyst 2013 Award), for achieving gender balance across management levels by 2020, and developing a more thoughtful and sustainably inclusive culture, says Catalyst.
From 2016 to 2019, representation of women in executive leadership at Unilever has more than doubled – from 15% to 33%. The share of female supply chain VPs has also shot up from 17% to 30%. Overall, Unilever’s ‘award-winning’ progress reveals that women hold 49% of management-level positions in Africa, and 49% of management-level positions and above globally, confirms Catalyst.
CATALYST CONFERENCE
The theme for Catalyst’s conference this year is ‘Now Is the Moment – Be a Catalyst’. It highlights the urgency to act with intention and purpose in advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace. The event will feature a conversation between Catalyst’s Hariton and former PepsiCo Chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi.
More than 1,600 executives from top global corporations, professional firms, governments, NGOs and educational institutions are expected to attend the event at the New York Hilton Midtown. Click here for more details.
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