Enbridge, Boston Scientific and Parexel have scooped this year’s Catalyst Award.
They have been honoured for accelerating opportunities for women and increasing women’s representation and inclusion across intersections of identity within their organisation. For example, between 2017 and 2020, women in executive leadership roles at Boston Scientific increased from 12.5% to 26.7%. Representation of women in senior leadership at Parexel also increased across each job band level globally between 2014 and 2021. Enbridge has already exceeded its 2022 goal of 30% women in manager-and-above positions.
“The initiatives from Boston Scientific, Enbridge, and Parexel are stellar examples of using data and transparency to build a more inclusive organisational culture for women and everyone,” stated Lorraine Hariton, President & CEO of Catalyst. “Their leadership and employees understand that increasing representation in their leadership ranks and building a culture of inclusion within their organisations is the true measure of success.”
The specific initiatives receiving this year’s Catalyst Awards are:
- Boston Scientific’s initiative for Accelerating Progress for Women by Creating Equal Opportunities for Growth
- Enbridge’s Informed Insights and Inclusion programme.
- Parexel’s Leveraging Gender Partnership to Advance Women in Leadership initiative.
ACCELERATING PROGRESS FOR WOMEN
In 2017, Boston Scientific asked employees globally, “Do men and women with equal ability, education, and experience also have equal opportunities for promotion at our company?” The results were telling: Women answered 14 percentage points less favourably than men. Similarly, Black women and men in the US and Puerto Rico responded with lower ratings toward career opportunities compared to their peers of other racial and ethnic identities.
At Boston Scientific, advancing science to bring meaningful innovations to patients around the world requires the diversity of thought, skill, and experiences of every employee. The company’s Creating Equal Opportunities for Growth initiative was a global effort to support the acceleration of career advancement and address barriers that women and multicultural talent faced at the start of the initiative. The multifaceted initiative ignited a cultural shift that continues to this day.
Core elements include making progress over time to increase workplace diversity, improve diversity awareness and inclusion competency skills for all employees, and expand opportunities for sponsorship and mentoring. The company also increased transparency, accountability, and communication about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programmes and progress.
All employees are responsible for promoting DEI across the organisation; regardless of role or level, they contribute to the betterment of their workplace and communities through ERGs. Between 2017 and 2020, women in executive leadership roles increased from 12.5% to 26.7% (14.2-point increase). Women at director and vice president levels increased from 27.6% to 33.4% (5.8-point increase). Women of colour (US/Puerto Rico) in manager and supervisory roles increased from 7.5% to 9.3% (1.8-point increase). The Board of Directors has had three women (30% of the Board), two of whom are women of colour, since 2017.
INFORMED INSIGHTS & INCLUSION
Enbridge’s initiative can be summed up in one word: transparency. In 2016, Enbridge acknowledged employee demand for greater transparency about gender representation. This resulted in the creation of the Gender Dashboard – an interactive online tool showing gender representation across all levels. In 2019, Enbridge expanded transparency to include additional dimensions of diversity, such as people with disabilities, veterans, and people from underrepresented ethnic and racial groups.
The company shares its Diversity Dashboard with all employees, with the ability to segment the data by job level, functional area and geography, including trending information on hiring, promotion, and turnover rates. It also shares its representation goals publicly and reports on progress against them. Within the energy industry, this level of transparency is groundbreaking. While there is a strong support structure in place, embedding inclusion as the fourth pillar to their organisation-wide values (along with Safety, Respect, and Integrity) has codified the organisation’s dedication to DEI. The initiative was driven by an executive-level Enterprise Diversity and Inclusion Steering Committee, with the Human Resources specialists in diversity, talent and analytics enabling its implementation.
ERGs make it possible for many employees to lead, engage in, and benefit from the initiative, with the support of committed executive sponsors. Since launching the initiative, Enbridge has already exceeded its 2022 goal of 30% women in manager-and-above positions. Its representation of women in Canada increased between 2017 and 2021: 25% to 33% at the vice-president and senior vice-president levels, 24% to 31% at the director level, and 27% to 35% at the manager level. Enbridge’s representation of women of colour in Canada increased between 2017 and 2021 from 2% to 8% at the manager level and from 2% to 5% at the vice-president and senior vice-president levels. At present, the company’s board is comprised of four women (36%), three of whom are chairs of board committees and one of whom is a woman of colour.
LEVERAGING PARTNERSHIPS TO ADVANCE WOMEN
In 2014, Parexel leadership realised that despite having healthy representation of women at the manager-and-below level, women were not progressing from the senior-director to vice-president level at the pace they would like. In response, one of the actions the company took was to hire its first Global Head of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Aida Sabo. Under Sabo’s leadership, the company launched an initiative aimed at increasing its representation of women leaders at the highest levels by building a culture of inclusion from the top down.
Oversight of Parexel’s Women in Leadership initiative sits with the company’s Diversity Executive Committee (DEC), which includes several members of the Parexel Executive Leadership Team and the DEI department. This group meets quarterly to review goals, activities, and leadership representation data. Information from the DEC is funnelled down to companywide committees, which prioritise activities based on the organisation’s strategic goals. These companywide committees are sponsored by designated leaders and cover a range of subject matters, functions, and regions to address the unique needs of each.
CEO Jamie Macdonald and Parexel’s executive committee continue to lead a profound change in senior leadership culture by bringing in high-profile external speakers and providing unconscious bias training for the senior leadership team. These efforts have enabled leadership to recognise their own biases in a safe and supportive environment. The culture change at the senior-leadership level has permeated throughout Parexel across regions, functions and levels.
The representation of women globally among senior leadership ranks has increased across each job-band level between 2014 and 2021. Particularly noteworthy are the increases at the senior vice-president level from 13.3% to 38.8% and from 32.3% to 50.3% at the vice-president level during this timeframe. In addition, in the United States, representation of women of colour in Parexel’s workforce increased across several job levels; including an increase from 0% to 10% (10 percentage points) at the SVP level and 3.3% to 14.8% (11.5 percentage points) at the VP level. Parexel’s new board is comprised of 57% women and 29% women of colour.
MAKING WORK WORK FOR WOMEN
Al three companies will be honoured at the Catalyst Awards Conference and Dinner on 17 March 17, 2022. It will be the first hybrid in-person and virtual event with the main conference and Awards celebration taking place in New York City at the Hilton Midtown. There will also be a separate virtual event for European attendees. The theme for this year’s Catalyst Awards is: The Great Reimagining: Making Work Work for Women.
Hundreds are expected to attend the in-person event, with thousands joining virtually, including the Catalyst Board of Directors and Catalyst CEO Champions For Change. Executives from top global corporations, professional firms, governments, NGOs, and educational institutions will convene at the 2022 Catalyst Awards Conference, as well as the Dinner chaired by Dow CEO Jim Fitterling and Supporting Dinner Chair and Flex CEO Revathi Advaithi.
Catalyst will also commemorate its sixtieth anniversary at the annual awards and signature fundraiser. WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert and former United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka are among this year’s confirmed keynote speakers; and Target Corporation is the Awards’ presenting sponsor. Click here for more information about the event.
Last year, Barilla and the Royal Bank of Canada scooped 2021’s Catalyst Award for accelerating progress and inclusion for women in the workplace. Click here to read more.
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