With International Women’s Day (IWD) just a few weeks away, Inspired Human’s Perrine Farque outlines how employers can better support female talent not only on the day, but throughout the year, which will ultimately inspire them to stay.
Now if you are like most leaders, you’re always looking for ways to better support women in the workplace. Hiring and retaining female talent will help your company be more innovative, more productive and enjoy a better employer reputation. Here are three simple ways you can support women in the workplace on International Women’s Day, and beyond, to build a better organisation.
Firstly, it’s vital to set goals related to hiring, promoting or retaining female talent. According to research carried out by venture firm First Round Capital, around 78% of startup founders have no formal plans or policies in place to promote diversity and inclusion. Less than half (43%) of startups have some company-wide promotion and hiring goals for diversity, while fewer than one-in-five had these goals for executive positions in the C-suite.
GENDER EQUALITY REWARDS
By setting personal goals to hire, promote and retain a specific percentage of female talent, you will demonstrate your commitment to supporting women beyond just International Women’s Day.
Image credit: Unsplash
Secondly, reward team members who hire and promote female talent. Recent research revealed that only 78 of 3,000 companies say a portion of their CEO’s pay is linked to diversity objectives. Companies, such as Facebook, are factoring diversity and inclusion goals to performance reviews for some executives at the vice president level and higher.
By rewarding team members with bonuses and financial incentives for hiring and promoting female talent, you will again, demonstrate your commitment to supporting women, beyond just International Women’s Day.
INVESTING IN SUPPLIER DIVERSITY
Finally, invest in supplier diversity and hire female speakers whose work supports gender equality. UPS, for example, spends $2.6 billion annually doing business with small and diverse suppliers. Its goal is to increase that spend amount year over year. Supplier diversity programmes are a part of a company’s efforts to boost diversity and inclusion. By hiring female speakers to give a talk on International Women’s Day, you will support female-led businesses, which again demonstrates your commitment to women’s rights.
In short, set goals for hiring, promoting, retaining female talent; reward team members who hire and promote female talent; and finally hire inspiring female speakers to celebrate International Women’s Day. Check out the video below for some tips on how to celebrate International Women’s Day, without hipocracy.
For more information on how to support women in the workplace, download the free ebook: 7 deadly mistakes to avoid with diversity programmes here.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Perrine Farque is an award-winning diversity, inclusion and equity advocate in tech. She drove the strategy at tech firms including Facebook, PagerDuty, Pivotal, Nlyte Software and AvePoint for over a decade; before setting up her own D&I consultancy, Inspired-Human. During her career, Farque has spoken at many industry events. They include Dublin Tech Summit, WomenTech Global Conference, Women 2.0, Vault Platform conference and PagerDuty Leadership Summit. She has an extensive track-record of motivating and inspiring teams and creating a diverse company culture within tech companies. She was also nominated in the Top 50 Most Influential Women in UK Tech.
Check out Perrine Farque’s previous guest columns:
- How startups can implement an effective diversity and inclusion strategy.
- The benefits of hiring neurodiverse talent in tech: How to embrace and nurture neurodiversity to gain a competitive advantage.
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