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The perception of women at work needs to change. Could the pandemic be the key to progress?

Adaptive working (remote, hybrid) Corporate culture Diversity Equity and Inclusion Video Article Research and insights

Vicky Austin (Senior HR Manager UK and UAE at Robert Half) hosted a roundtable discussion on 15th October 2020 as part of our roundtable breakfast series. This discussion featured

  • Sharon Kindleysides (CEO/Dioscean Secretary at Diocese of Bath and Wells) 
  • Zara Nanu (Global Future Council on Equity and Social Justice at World Economic Forum, CEO at Gapsquare)
  • Emma Pearson (CEO at Achieve Together)
  • Holly Rossetti (Director of Communications, EMEA at Adobe)
  • Anne Godfrey (CEO at GS1)

They sat down to share their thoughts on workplace equality and leadership styles in a post-pandemic workplace. What has changed so far and what does the future hold?

Reinforced stereotypes are inhibiting progress

The majority of women polled by Robert Half said they hadn’t experienced a difference in perception since the beginning of the pandemic. Other studies corroborate this sentiment.

A recent report by Sky News revealed that 34% of women have experienced sexist demands since the start of the pandemic. The rise of Zoom calls prompted requests for female workers to wear more makeup, style their hair, and dress more provocatively.

Sharon points out other studies which focus on gender roles in the home in relation to paid and unpaid labour. According to the UCL and Institute of Fiscal Studies report on heterosexual couples, for every hour of uninterrupted work the mother of the family was able to do, the father did three.

The only situation in which both male and female family members had an equal share of unpaid labour (childcare, housework etc.) was if the woman was still in paid employment and the man on furlough. This is despite the woman still working full time. “Stereotypical roles still seem to be reinforced at home,” Sharon says.

The impact of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter on company culture

In her role with Gapsquare, Zara has some key observations regarding equality and diversity in the workplace. At the start of the year, businesses were having conversations about workplace equality. Government was passing legislation around equal pay reporting and things were off to a strong start.

After mid-March, the story was quite different. Businesses began to side-line the agenda in favour of establishing digital workspaces and pivoting the business offering. Government put legislation on hold, signalling to businesses that it was low priority amid the crisis.

“Progressive businesses continued to publish their numbers because they knew that diversity, inclusion, supporting women through career progression and recruiting women is actually building more resilience within their business. It's going to make them more prepared for crisis and more adaptable and more agile,” says Zara. This summer's Black Lives Matter movement helped trigger renewed conversations around diversity. “Throughout March to May the diversity and inclusion agenda was taken out — even from official roles. From June onwards, you can see a lot of those roles reinstated as the Black Lives Matter movement was picking up,” says Zara. She’s happy to report that the trend towards building better, more resilient businesses is picking up.

Holly pointed out that Adobe have used the pandemic as an opportunity to promote staff wellbeing. “Our research with employees indicated that the most valuable thing we could give them at this time was time back to connect and engage,” she said. The company now takes every third Friday of the month off as annual leave to focus on personal priorities.

Leadership with a human touch

The human element has become a big part of leadership during COVID. To be able to mitigate uncertainty by turning it into impactful change and bring your team along with you.

Anne says: “Three leaders who've come out of the pandemic well — if anybody can come out of COVID-19 ‘well’ — would be Australia, Scotland and Germany. So, Nicola Sturgeon, Jacinda Ardern and Angela Merkel.

“If I was to look at them and say, ‘what is it that made them more effective during this time’, I'd say it's an ability to be humble. It’s an ability to see that we don't know everything, and an ability to listen to technical medical expertise and admit that they're not experts. And then to say ‘we're going to follow that expertise’ and the ability to take people with them.” Emma also believes in supporting teams through human leadership techniques. Operational resilience and business risks are easier to take when people feel empowered: “Giving your teams permission to take risks and make mistakes is a seismic shift for many organisations. But if you can do that, and you can harness the power and put people in a safe environment where they take risks within a framework that is acceptable to the organisation, you get so much back.”

Looking to the future

Fears surrounding the pandemic’s impact on women at work are not entirely baseless, but they can also serve as a platform for future discussions. In the U.S, 80% of the professionals who dropped out of the labour force in September were women. Many speculate that the pandemic could undo at least half a century’s worth of progress. “I see it as a real opportunity for us to take things in our hands,” Zara says.

Business practices have trended towards experimentation because standard practices no longer work. Unilever and other large companies have begun to move away from the conversation of shareholder capitalism and towards stakeholder capitalism. They’re becoming more involved with stakeholders and beneficiaries of the business. The green agenda has picked up alongside the Black Lives Matter movement, presenting businesses with the opportunity to resolve longstanding issues.

The remote working environment opens a wealth of opportunities for those who might not have been able to enjoy them otherwise, “From the perspective of people who have a disability, this changed way of working for some has been absolutely transformational,” says Emma. The complete change in working environment hasn’t just opened up job opportunities, it also provides bonding opportunities, “I'm optimistic about the ability for people to connect more deeply and on an emotional level and in the virtual environment,” says Holly.

The final outlook is cautiously optimistic. Although there’s a lot of work to do, the UK’s businesses are open to the potential for change.

Webinar: The Great Leveller

great thank you thanks matt and um good morning everyone um hello uh i'm matt wesson i'm the managing director of robert half in the uk welcome to our third and final forum celebrating women in business tuesday was um career reflections uh wednesday was the great leveler and the third and final one is the future of work so we're really really excited to have everyone this morning 2020 has been a year of cover 19 but it's also marked the 50th anniversary of the equal pay act and says robert half sponsoring the women in business expo for its second year that was yesterday and today as a business that is founded on the principle of putting ethics first it is important that we recognize this pivotal time and champion a great event that does so much to support women in the workplace today we're delighted to be hosting a fantastic inspiring panel of women to discuss the future of work um i want to say a big thank you to all of them for giving their time to join us and we're really excited and looking forward to hearing the their thoughts this morning so without further ado i'm delighted to introduce vicki austin who is our senior hr manager for robert half uk and middle east um and she's going to be hosting the event so i'll pass over to you vicki thanks matt and um welcome everybody to this uh great session um really excited to be talking about this topic today the future of work after what has been a game-changing year this looks like it's going to be a great discussion so thank you for joining the call today we have five great panelists who are going to share their thoughts and insights to our questions and provide some really inspiring stories as mata said today is our third and final great women in business breakfast meeting and again today's session will be recorded alongside the previous two sessions which will then be available to listen to on our website um i've personally listened into both of those previous sessions and the conversations have been extremely engaging and inspirational we're ably supported today by matt robinson who will be our producer for the session and matt will help us to run our poll and insist and we'll assist with our audience q and a's so you'll see at the bottom of your screen a q a button um so if you pop your questions in there and we will have time at the end of the of the discussion today to answer your questions um so first of all i wanted to hand over to our panelists for today's session to introduce themselves as i think they will introduce themselves much better than i could ever do so can i ask our first panelist sharon if you could introduce yourself tell us a little bit about yourself and your background yeah good morning everybody it's fantastic to be here this morning um thank you for your introduction vicki my name's sean kindly sides and i'm currently the ceo of the diocese of bath and wells but during covid i actually made a massive career change previously i've been in the tech sector for probably 30 years and so one of the advantages of having a lot of time to think over the kobe lockdown was really resulted in this change of direction um i would also say i'm a single mom and i had a 13 year old boy at home through lockdown so i have some quite nice memories but some very painful ones as well and as i said looking forward to the discussion today thank you emma if we can hand over to you yeah hi thanks vicky um hello everybody uh really pleased to be here i'm emma pearson and i'm currently the chief executive of a really wonderful organization called achieve together and for those of you who don't know us i'd really encourage you to go and have a look at our website to get a handle on what we do but we support people with learning disabilities and autism across england and wales we support around 2100 vulnerable people and i joined a chief together in january approximately four weeks before we started talking about going down into lockdown and it was my first role in social care so quite an introduction and i guess my career has has built up through um always being at the interface of being a of public and private sector i really enjoy that challenge of how do we really deliver public services brilliantly from within the private sector um so yeah also had a pretty challenging covered period and happy to talk about that a little bit more later on if it's of interest absolutely emma uh zara can i hand over to you please yeah thank you vicky thank you for having me here today my name is zara i'm ceo and co-founder of a company called gap square and we use tech and data to help businesses create a fairer future work we've set up the company about five years ago when the world economic forum said it will be 217 years for the gender pickup to close and we thought surely there's a better way to do things at the same time the world economic forum was saying by 2030 we will all be in self-driving cars we'll be waving people off to mars we'll be having all of this amazing technology that will be facilitating our lives at home and at work but somehow we'll still be 200 years away from achieving pay equity so what we do is we use tech and data to help businesses close the pay gap faster and i'm really excited about the conversation this morning thank you uh ann can i pass to you morning hopefully you can hear me because my new laptop now is showing me complete snow which is what happens when you're in your kitchen thank you very much for inviting me um i'm ann godfrey i'm chief executive officer of gs1 uk which is a membership organization which helps the supply chain and that could be retailers marketplaces or the nhs and i was interviewed for that role just as we shut down for covid and i've been in post now for eight weeks so i am living the new normal which is i'm being inducted and becoming the leader of an organization none of whom have actually met me and i think that might be the new normal for quite some time for everybody so how you actually manage that is one of the things i'd really be interested in hearing from everybody else today wow that's amazing thank you and the two of you have sort of gone into jobs so so close to the start of this this lockdown period and last uh definitely not least um holly could i pass to you please hi good morning everyone it's great to be here so my name is holly rosetti i'm currently the director of emea communications for adobe so a large software company and my background is communications i'm kind of from the outset of my career and i've moved over um from the u.s to london about 16 years ago so i'm london-based and um i'm happy that we're able to take advantage of some of london right now so um hopefully we can continue to have a um a good environment to get out and and uh and enjoy the city and the urban lifestyle but um yeah very happy to be here thank you so um to get us warmed up this morning um and to get the audience involved a little bit we would like to start off um with a poll um so the poll today and the question is has the perception of women in the workplace changed since covid19 and uh four possible answers uh one yes women are sought after leaders now two it's starting to but there's more hope for women in business now uh not really covid19 will pass and gender equality will need more attention and no there's been no impact on the perception of women in the workplace so if you could uh cast your votes and we'll give it a couple of minutes yeah vicky we've nearly got all votes in so i'll just leave it running for about another 10-12 seconds okay great okay okay so i think we've got most votes in i'm going to end the poll now and you should be able to see the results now vicky there they are wow so clear winner there um clear highest score is that the perception of women um hasn't really changed that covid19 will go we hope sooner than later but gender equality sadly will need more attention and in fact you know the second highest score there no impact on the perception of women in the workplace at all um i'd like to just ask the panelist is is anyone um surprised by those results or is that what you were expecting to see i think sadly it's what i was expecting to see um i've got a bit of a head up so i get to answer this question later but i think that is how people feel at the moment i was pretty surprised actually um i think maybe i'm an eternal optimist but it feels to me that the female leadership is really sought after um and maybe it depends on the sector that you come from and and the place in which you work so imagine if you're in technology or construction or some of the more you know male dominated industries that might might well be the case yes perception will be different well actually um that does lead us perfectly um into our first question so question one and sharon yes i would love you to continue that thought um with do you think the perception of women in the workplace has changed since covid19 yeah thanks vicky um i think as i alluded to and bearing in mind emma's point as well i have come from a background of technology and i've moved to the church of england which although it is a charity is still quite male dominated um i think one of the things i've noticed is that stereotypes still seem to be in place and seem to be reinforced i would say the notable exception to that um and sadly i've forgotten the lady's name the prime minister of new zealand who without a doubt has come out of this head and shoulders above all other world leaders um she's really shown amazing leadership and pragmatism and passion um so she can only be lauded but i feel um in a normal day-to-day workplace if anything things have got slightly worse so i did a little bit of research and um okay you can't believe everything you read on the internet but according to sky news 35 of women have received some sort of sexist workplace demand when they're on zoom calls either suggesting they wear metal makeup that they address their hair or even that they dress more provocatively um and this is just insane i mean yes nobody likes staring at their pictures every day and the bags under my eyes have certainly got bigger during lockdown but if a gentleman said to me go and put some makeup on i'm sorry i would have to virtually slap him but apparently 35 of women have experienced that um that's really not acceptable there were also some studies done about what actually happens at home and according to a ucl and institute of fiscal studies report in heterosexual couples for every hour of our interrupted work mother in the family received or was able to do the father in the family manages to do three hours um so the the um stereotypical world still seemed to be reinforced at home and apparently the only situation where um again heterosexual couples the man and the lady did the same amount of chores was if the lady was still in paid employment and the man had been furloughed at that point they did the same number of hours even though the lady was still doing a full-time job um so i think yes that's not everybody and certainly i've got gentlemen colleagues who have more than taken on their fair share of work you know they've said i can't do the morning because i i do morning child care my wife does afternoon child care but i think um there's been a lot of assumptions that women will just get on with it and carry on doing it hopefully um some of the gentlemen when they're working from home may be a bit more aware of what the female colleagues have put up with and some of the um the problems they have but i would also say especially when this strange situation at the moment of if you can't i think it's a very genuine reason to go into work to have adult company as i alluded to i spent lockdown with a 13 year old boy who only wanted to play fortnite um conversation topics are severely limited i really don't know enough about gaming um and i was desperate to have you know just a proper talk even about the weather um so in my new role i have encouraged people if they want to actually have our adult company and get away from the family that coming into work is a legitimate reason for doing that for mental well-being i think what i've also noticed and this has got positives and negatives um in large meetings it's obviously often difficult for people who are shy and expanding that ladies to get heard and it's very difficult to interrupt and what i've seen on zoom is yes there are conversations where people get talked over but a good chairman or a good moderator is very good at pulling people into conversation and making sure everyone gets heard and i was on a board meeting yesterday the chairman can get through very quickly by muting everybody and then just unmuting you in turn and that worked brilliantly but it's not the same as being able to interject um i think there's some sort of a feeling oh i don't want to put it in chat i don't want to raise my hand so if you're not an outgoing and a loud person it's very very difficult on a zoom course especially the big ones to get yourself heard so i think we need more awareness of that and it's the same for sort of the more shy gentlemen or people whose english isn't the first language there will be people who really struggle on zoom and the chairman can't make eye contact with everybody i mean we've got uh eight uh people on the screen at the moment if you're in some of these zoom calls where it's on six pages even waging your hand physically is very difficult to get seen um and then another another really area i want to look into is there seems to be an assumption that everyone's got a lovely working study at home and they can work from home physically women on average get paid less how many people actually have two to their rooms in their house if they're a couple or for younger people who are in shared houses so there seems to be a lot of a perception um from people of a certain income bracket that you've got this lovely study and stable broadband but again it's women who might be struggling um in this end um so i think there's an awful lot of things that zoo that the pandemic has probably brought into focus and that's a good thing i think a lot of organizations are keen to change or have realized they have to change um i think the challenge is going to be how do we make sure that that is in a way that is very inclusive that addresses the needs of women that better the needs of all groups um and really i think for us as leaders what we have to be very aware of and i try to do this myself but i know i fail is when you're on a zoom call make sure everyone feels involved and also for the people that really don't like video calling um you know pick up a normal traditional phone to them there's nothing more terrifying if you're sitting at the desk and the video thing goes off and you're just really not ready for it so sometimes be a bit aware that not everybody wants to have a video call and rely on the old-fashioned methods so i think pandemic has slightly not really changed the perception of women in the workplace but i think it's made us more aware that there's things we can do thanks vicky that's great some great insights sharon um emma you were a little surprised perhaps by the the score of the polls so i'm just gonna ask you for your comments from from your perception um yeah i mean i suppose it's not coveted related actually to me it's been coming for for a long while and it probably links into one of the questions that's later on around what leadership traits count today so so i'll kind of pick up some comments on that um in what i say but i do think when i look at uh the workforce today compared to when i started my career 20 25 years ago and people are much more likely to feel empowered around shifting their careers moving organizations um telling leadership that they're not getting it right and social media has really helped with that and created some transparency so i think this was coming anyway and what i think has happened potentially ramped up a little bit faster during covid is that you see organizations in particular i look around the sector that i'm in see organizations needing to really listen to the workforce listen hard to the workforce and to find ways of cutting through in my case to the front line um to understand what's really going on there and you can't do that unless you have humility and um you know kind of engagement employee engagement at the heart of what you do um and i look back to maybe a slightly more traditional organizations that i've worked in previously and whether it's to do with the male leadership or whether it's to do with just a more traditional patriarchal style of leadership whether that happens to be a man or a woman at the top those behaviors weren't really there it was much more top-down command and control type of organization and i think we're just starting in some organizations to see a more middle-up at least maybe not front maybe not bottom up quite yet but but certainly middle up engaged uh workforce and um and that has to come from a listening and kind of humble style of leadership um and i do think that potentially you know that's why women can be sought after at this time just generates a slightly different dynamic and and encourages more women into the workplace as well we've definitely seen i've seen that throughout my career as i've as i've moved roles fantastic thank you emma um if we move then to our second question uh has coveted 19 or the black lives matter protests prompted you to think differently about your business culture talent retention or leadership and zara could i hand over to you to kick off this question please yeah absolutely vicky um i think what i'm going to do is i'm going to bring in kind of two perspectives on this the perspective of gap square and me as a leader of gap square but then also we work with businesses around the world to look at their dni agenda so i can bring in some insights from that site too um so in january 2020 we were not excelling on progress but we were on track for gender equality in terms of the agenda was picking up it was becoming mainstream conversations more and more businesses were taking it on board we had in the uk legislation that was making it mandatory for businesses with 250 people or more to return to report on their gender pickup on an annual basis and this would have been the third year of reporting so it was kind of becoming mainstream and embedded there was already conversation on ethnicity pay reporting which meant businesses were starting to prepare for collecting more data around their ethnic diversity within the business and and analyzing that data um and uh of course the unexpectedness of covid and the risks associated with that meant that we had to go into lockdown and then a lot of businesses have um unfortunately sidelined this agenda and the the uk government hasn't really helped by putting legislation on gender pay gap reporting on hold and therefore signaling to a lot of businesses that this is not an important agenda when you are in a in crisis so this agenda can be sidelined let's put it on hold you have other things to deal with more progressive businesses didn't really do that they continued to publish their numbers because they knew that diversity and inclusion and making sure they support women through career progression and recruit for women within their business is actually building more resilience within their business and it's going to make them more prepared for crisis and more adaptable and more agile so they continue to do that but a large majority of businesses we've seen have sidelined this agenda black lives matter movement has put a different spin on this and over the summer we've seen an increasing number of businesses looking into the ethnicity pay reporting and looking into how they can support people of color within their organization um so actually this movement has has been good both in terms of gender and ethnicity because it has prompted a lot of companies to think more about this regardless of legislation so um it it kind of it's played out both ways and regulation hasn't really helped in that it has sidelined the agenda somewhat we did a research over the month of august and we interviewed a lot of businesses in the uk but also in the us around how they are doing with the diversity and inclusion agenda in light of kobe 19 and black lives matter and it was interesting to see that at the beginning of kovitz a lot of people a lot of companies have furloughed their staff that were responsible for diversity and inclusion agenda or have assigned them new responsibilities related to other issues within the company that they saw as more important so throughout march to kind of may early june that was happening and the diversity inclusion agenda was kind of taken out even in from official roles and then from june onwards you can see a lot of those rules reinstated and more as the black lives matter movement was picking up so um from our point of view we see how a lot of companies that actually work on embedding diversity inclusion within their business within their core practices and policies and procedures have been more resilient through this crisis they have followed less people they have been able to have open conversations around how they move the business forward they have prioritized women they have um we did an interesting study with a lot of the businesses and we asked them how many of them knew if their employees have caring responsibilities so do you know if your employees have children at home because obviously as we were in lockdown and schools were closed that was a big issue having child care responsibilities and only 30 percent of the businesses knew if the employees have caring responsibilities and who those employees are so they can support them through this time or understand their flexible working needs so but but those were the more progressive businesses that were ready for this and they were already collecting this kind of data before um i think this is a time of the crossroads where really picking this agenda up more is going to help a lot of businesses advance into this space at gap square we've always been aware of this agenda obviously this is our business we work on supporting large companies to create more diversity and inclusion through data so we use data internally to help us achieve the same thing so we have gender diversity um less ethnic diversity but it's something we're working on and we're actively aware of so yes i guess that's the kind of that not a clear-cut answer it was the the agenda was impacted at the beginning in a negative way but it's beginning to pick up as a means of resilience and as a means of building a better business fit for the 21st century thank you sarah and actually i'm proud to be part of an organization that is more progressive and did continue to report our gender pay gap because we did feel that it was massively important and personally i was pretty surprised when that was was put on hold because it did feel like it pushed it much further down the the agenda in importance um holly would you like to add anything to zara's thoughts sure um so to reinforce what zara was talking about about companies being very committed to the dni agenda during covet adobe is certainly one of those companies and we have some interesting initiatives um around sort of we've achieved global pay parity but another initiative that looks at opportunity parity so our our employees and um and multiple you know multiple employee um segments are they given the opportunity are they being considered for promotion do they have mobility within the organization so that's that goes alongside the global pay parity which is um i think something interesting and quite different that adobe has pioneered uh and then maybe to talk a little bit about the wellness aspect so um emma i think you talked about it and sharon you did too and this is where we have seen a real acceleration and um looking after employees and making sure that um the well-being is is addressed and and taking action in areas so for example we have every third friday off for the remainder of the year so that's to enable employees to kind of reconnect and and take time out our research indicated with employees that what we could give them the most valuable thing we could give them at this time was time back to connect and engage um so that that is um something that that is is having a great impact on people and a positive impact and then maybe just to talk a little bit about black lives matter um we have a black employee network at adobe which is is quite young so it's a year old and um during the black um black lives matter uh the social injustice and and um everything this this network really came to the forefront and had a very very strong voice across the organization and um was out doing an education campaign to a 22 000 person organization and it really um i think it prompted a lot of the um of our teams and our staff to think more about um what it means to be a black employee at adobe um and it was quite powerful to um to have this network um have a voice and and be out there quite actively um and be at the forefront of this um this societal movement that was taking place that's great thank you i love the idea of every third friday off i can attest i'm a fan of that thank you very much that's really interesting um matt can we switch to question number three please um and i would like you and please to um lead us on this one with what are the leadership traits that count today which is if i was to name three leaders who come out of the pandemic well if anybody can come out of copenhagen 19 well they would be australia scotland and germany so nicholas sturgeon jacinda arden and angela merkel and if i was to look at them and say what is it that's made them more effective leaders during this time i'd say it's an ability to be humble again referring back to what we've heard an ability to say that they don't know everything um an apparent ability to listen to technical medical expertise and admit that they're not experts and then to say we're going to follow that expertise and ability to take people with them so transparency inclusion all of the things i think anytime make a man or a woman a good leader regardless of gender but actually have really come to their own as we were in these unprecedented times and i was thinking we've all done it and get people to put hands in the air how many times have you done a leadership style assessment hands on the air panel there you go and we always use these words about influential and directional and you name it i've done all of them um what i was called two years ago i got really upset at the time was i had a tendency to be a disruptive leader and i was hugely offended and it's a bit like that assertive aggressive thing that as a female leader you get it's like how very dare you say i'm this i'm actually not but i actually went and looked it up and for those who want to google it later i'll give you a kind of clue it's a bill gates so what a disruptive leader does is handle uncertainty so in these uncertain times a disruptive leader isn't scared of uncertainty but more importantly they can work with their staff and their peers to minimize that uncertainty in that fear which we're all going through at the moment which is to say i don't know everything but here's what we're going to do to try and mitigate the impact of cocaine 19 on you as an employee as you as a human being as you as a mother and i don't have a 13 year old the lord mine are long gone i do have a cat so you may or may not see jake he's a media star but weirdly that human element has become a big part of being a leader during covet it's far more intimate for me to be sitting in my kitchen as a leader than it is for me to be actually standing in front of 78 of my staff saying hello i'm you and i'm your chief executive they're actually seeing me as a human first and the leader second and the chief executive third and be honest and the other thing that disruptive leaders do is they actually turn that uncertainty into change so all of us have impacts on our businesses at the moment whether it's not-for-profit which i am whether you're a footsie whether you're a charity or care organization we're all having to look at how we use our staff how we use media where our money's coming from how we invest it how we use it and that kind of ability to handle disruption and to turn it into a positive thing and to take your staff with you i think it's what we're all really coming to terms with and if actually needling microsoft teams or zoom or whatever we're doing in a human setting helps us do that then i think it's a good thing on the downside of that however how do we turn what makes us effective leaders men or women into virtual leaders because my office is shut i'm sure many of you are i'm meeting a team that i've never met me how do i take the bits of me that are ineffective leader in person which is you can come and talk to me in the kitchen you can talk to me in the way up the stairs how do i make sure my introverts get to know me the extroverts have invited me i've done five meetings and custard coffee and said albans i've had all my directors at my kitchen table we've had a picnic in the field but that's the extroverts that's the ones who've got the courage to come up to a new chief executive and say i want you to know me what do we do as leadership as leaders in these times to make sure that when you're actually sitting behind a screen you still have the ability for introverts to reach out and i couldn't agree more about the telephone the telephone is underrated as a form of communication i got mascara on today that's the first in about three months people i'm not always going to be looking quite like this and i really don't want to be sitting after a bad night's sleep not at my best so we should be very comfortable using the phone using zoom using teams finding a way to reach out to everybody not just the extroverts and actually turning what makes us effective female leaders into something that i think during the pandemic even more powerful thank you anne and i thought it was interesting your comments about the the female um political leaders um i read also that the female leaders still only govern about seven percent of the world's population so and clearly there have been some great stories of of female leaders in places like germany new zealand taiwan so clearly we need more more of those women leading our leading our countries and uh just to note i'm also wearing mascara today for the first time i think this week so uh yes um emma would you would you agree with anne's comments would you like to add anything to that i'll keep it brief because i spoke a little bit on this earlier on but i would absolutely endorse anne's comments and i particularly liked the comment about um you know human leadership and um really giving people an insight into who you are as a person i think that's incredibly powerful and of course um being human means showing that you don't get it right all the time and that you make mistakes and actually that's okay so um i think one of the real strengths and and will you know continue to be something that i hope grows over time will be leadership's ability to to show where they have have made mistakes and what they've learned from it and what the organization can do to make sure that mistake never ever happens again and giving your teams permission to take risks and make mistakes is it is a really um it's a it's a seismic shift actually for many organizations but if you can do that and you can harness the power and put people in a safe environment where they they take risks within a within a framework that is acceptable to the organization um you get so much back and uh yeah so i really like that comment then that's great and so if i can just quickly jump in because i had a thought just coming to my mind it's also important in applying the same things to co-founders and partners and and the board if you have because i i actually made this mistake as we went into covid and i really look after the employees and i really put a lot of effort in thinking about partners and customers and employees and i have assumed my co-founder will be responding to crisis in the same way and it wasn't so and they needed a similar level of support as everybody else so it's about being inclusive and holistic in that approach and thinking about everybody who is part of the organization and all of the stakeholders that are involved in this that's great thank you i think we've all made some mistakes this year through through some very unprecedented times um we'll have lots of learnings for sure um okay so if we go to uh question four matt and i love this question we're at the end of three days of um of great business breakfast and we're at the fourth question and what i love about this question is you know it's it's sort of looking to the positive so following a year of tumultuous change in 2020 what are you most optimistic about as we look ahead to the future of work and zara if i could ask you to continue with your thoughts to this question please but would welcome input from from all the panelists yeah i mean it's a really great question considering the pool at the beginning with everybody thinking that this is actually going to have quite a negative impact on women going forward and it's really easy to start thinking that when you hear all the stats about impact on women if you look at for instance the states in september alone of all of the people who have dropped out of the labor force 80 were women 80 percent of all of the people dropped out of the of the labor force in the states in september so it's it really kind of starts like that can reinforce a lot of fear and a lot of preconceptions about what's going to happen to gender equality you have articles talking about how this is going to knock over half a century of progress that we've made in in the space of equality but at the same time i see it as a as a real opportunity for us to take things in our hands and as ann was saying earlier the leaders that come to mind who have weathered this crisis with dignity and grace and better than anyone else have been the female leaders and they've done that by being themselves by being true by being honest and by staying true to their feelings of care and inclusivity and making sure that everybody's okay so all of these qualities actually can ensure a lot of resilience and a lot of um kind of alleviating other people's fears and and making sure that everybody uh kind of feels more optimistic about things one of the things that i've noticed in working with businesses over the past six months is that everybody's becoming a bit more open to experimenting and trying new things because what they have known forever doesn't work anymore so they're more open to trying new things they're more open to new ideas you have a lot of businesses like unilever and other large companies starting to move away from the conversation of shareholder capitalism to stakeholder capitalism which means you get more involved with all of the stakeholders and all of the beneficiaries of the business we have the green agenda really picking up we have the black lives matter movement really pushing into issues that we have should have sorted years ago so it's a real opportunity and when looking back at that pool i think the thing that i think about is that it's really up to us it's up to everybody in this session today to think about how can i make things happen that will be better for me as a woman and it's important to think selfishly sometimes because men do and also for everybody else because that actually is what makes us different from men is we think about everybody else and if from my point of view i'm optimistic i mean we all have to be optimistic we're in business we're entrepreneurs if you're not optimistic we shouldn't really be doing this but it is an opportunity because everybody is more open to experimenting and this is a time to step up and and really put this agenda forward that's great would anybody else like to comment who would like to take that sharon yeah um i think building on what zara was saying about being able to experiment uh especially in the charity sector obviously incomes are down catastrophically but it gives us the opportunity a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity really to revisit what we're doing why we're doing it and concentrate on what we should be doing it may not apply to all businesses but i think just actually having that feeling in an organization that you can ask these questions why are we doing that why don't we stop this have we thought of doing that and assessing where we fit in society and what we should be doing and what our impacts are obviously i've got i represent the church of england which has a certain demographic or is perceived to have a certain demographic how can we you know all the digital services and digital mission that's been going on how can we reinvent ourselves to make ourselves a lot more relevant so i think it's probably the kick some businesses need slightly negatively it may also be where people have got really good ideas but they're not going to fly commercially it may put some people off but i think i think the opportunity for change is a one of the lifetime opportunity we're not going to have again that's great thank you just um a short add-on to that um a bit of a plug as well i suppose um if you think about it from the perspective of people who have a disability this changed way of working for some has been absolutely transformational so part of what we do um is to support people to get back into work or into work for the first time whether that's on a volunteering basis or paid employment and being able to do that virtually um has opened up so many opportunities for the people that we support um there's lots that i could say about the opportunities also for for our um our central teams who are experiencing you know flexible working moving to yorkshire moving to the south coast they're off everywhere because we said they never need to come back into the office ever again um so yeah there's lots i could say there but but actually i think there's a there's a whole segment of society that potentially has huge amount to gain from from the future of work and the changes that we're experiencing now that's great thank you holly sorry yeah the really great comments um proceeding mine i think one thing that i'm optimistic about is just the um the ability for people to connect on a more uh more deeply and on an emotional level and in a virtual environment right so i think you know in some instances in an office environment it is difficult to drive a personal connection because things are moving quickly there's a if there's a hierarchy it's prevalent in the office and i think that the virtual environment has really established a sense of egalitarianism so we talked about it here you know there's there's nowhere to hide virtually you know the background is there the children are there the dog is there the doorbell's ringing so it does bring a much more human uh aspect to how you're interacting with your employees and and staff and what about what i have experienced is that it is i've become even closer to my my peers and and um and my teams in a way that i probably wouldn't have broken through um in a more traditional environment so i'm optimistic that maybe that will continue across organizations and hopefully people will they will feel connected even though there is a screen as a as a barrier so to speak that's great thank you and did you have anything you wanted to add one and a completely selfish one as a membership organization so we've seen between a thousand and twelve hundred new members a month in the last four months and that's people stuck at home thinking i had this mad idea and i've never had the time and now i'm going to try it so they are literally starting up their own businesses from their home and they need to sell it uh through a retailer on a marketplace and they come to us to kind of set themselves up and off they go and it's the range of ideas from apparel to goat's shoes to you know different ways in which people are using products that they've got so it kind of follows on from that green agenda it follows on from that entrepreneurial thing and some of those businesses will say oh we know that you know probably more than 50 will fail but if we can take that on a macro level across not just the uk but globally that's an awful lot of budding entrepreneurs and that's one of the things that kind of makes me optimistic about when we come out the other side some of these people would never have taken the time to do that if we weren't in the middle of a pandemic absolutely that's great thank you so that's the end of our um our four questions but uh matt can i turn over to you for our q a session please absolutely vicky yes so we've got a couple of questions that have come in um the first one is i think this might refer to something and mentioned earlier what advice would you suggest to ensure that new employees are included and feel included when they are hired virtually um not just doing it virtually this sounds ridiculous when we're in the middle of covert 19 but if i hadn't actually been able to see some of my staff my chair my peers i would have gone slowly insane so there's lots you can do so pragmatically i would set a care pack before i joined so literally welcome to the company pack with a mug some tea we're about to do a winter pack it's not just new stuff but existing stuff which is here's some mulled wine here's an alcoholic version the induction actually works quite well very practically dissemination of information to a new employee works really well what doesn't work is when you get into doing the day job doesn't matter how much your culture club does or four o'clock drinks or let's do a quiz as a new employee you've got to find that blend of teams and face to face in a covered friendly environment otherwise i think it could be very very isolating stuck at home permanently and that's only partly optimistic i'm sorry to ever ask that question no that's great yeah it's a really difficult one we've employed a few people over the summer um and i met one of them a couple of weeks ago for the first time face to face and sometimes it can't work out that you see them often because it is also a time when we can employ people who are anywhere and this one person who i met recently he has finished his studies at bristol uni but has moved back to devon to live with his parents so it's not really easy to organize face-to-face meetings when everybody has dispersed around and is not necessarily um in the same space as you and i don't know if you've seen but but barbados is giving out visas for people who want to make that their home working so it can become increasingly difficult to meet people face to face but i agree with ann that it's important to establish and set that report with employees and actually meet them and get to know them and really go out of your way to make sure that they feel included it's it's a challenging time also for what is now becoming known as blended working when some employees are at home working from home and others are coming into the office and that we see can sometimes lead to gaps as well depending on who's in the office can become in charge of a project can become over in charge of a pnl um and so making sure that all those things are thought through is is really paramount yeah that's definitely a challenge isn't there sometimes that people that continue to work remotely and those in the office can sometimes feel slightly separated or um you know perhaps experience uh you know different things i think it would be interesting if if companies retrospectively if they're assessing the retention rate during covet you know for for new employees who who ramped how many of them have retained and have they made it through this this hump i mean we we're experiencing it too it's it's really really um a challenge to to onboard um in this environment uh and and even you know for very senior leaders who are trying to bond with the team um and then to you know people who are trying to execute and and um you know things have shifted so dramatically and how we previously executed in marketing and communications and to try to on on-ramp and change a a delivery style of an event or a program or a campaign it's a challenge yeah and i think i just come in as well especially for new people in the organization to make them aware of what support is available to them so you know if there's no employee helpline or something because they may not have that connection that they can talk to somebody in the business but it i find it really useful to be able to offer um just you know there's a listening service um and we're actually looking at taking on a new chaplain as well so we've got somebody that people can actually turn to who is not part of the organization but is there just just as a listening ear great um interesting vicky a question that probably follows on from this theme is how do you look for issues with well-being when you're virtual i don't know if anybody wants to pick that one up i think the one of the key things is to create places and spaces for people to be able to talk about their issues so it's it's about encouraging teams to have coffee mornings around certain topics to have conversations but also i've seen a lot of companies kind of provide specifically space and uh buy-in memberships for people to do yoga for people to do meditation or things like that they can do to keep in with well-being and another thing that we find is important is just learning more and more about your employees like i said before the question about do your employees have caring responsibilities uh are they okay managing those caring responsibilities do they need additional support what does flexible working mean for you as an organization and really embodying a lot of those issues yourself as a leader i think is important because sometimes you see organizations where this becomes a tick box exercise and there's some policies somewhere talking about well-being and talking about different kind of benefits for employees that just sit on a shelf but unless they're actually actively communicated and actively brought out in the open and actively lived by the leadership team that's always going to be kind of not the right uptake for for them i mean i think as an said you you tend to find out um noisy ones first and it's really a case of how do you find the quiet ones and it's working with your team leaders or your managers um through you know find the best approach to make sure everybody's spoken to somebody and obviously everyone's there's a range of how people like to interact and sort of very aware of having come from a software background people on the spectrum do not necessarily want to be interacted with in a group they might actually be happy with this little chat message so i think some of it is understanding each individual and knowing it's not one size fits all but the other side is being very systematic to make sure that everybody has been contacted you know once a week once a fortnight just to make sure they're okay and i think it was i was saying about co-founders you know the people are on the same level as you or even the one-ups make sure you check in on them too um i've got a guy that reports into me who is lovely and he always checks in on me on a friday and i really really appreciate it because otherwise being at the top is quite lonely so i think just be sensitive to how people like to be interacted with and don't assume just because they're not only staff coffee morning that they're okay just find a better way to get in touch with them yeah one of the most effective things i think that we did through the summer period was um get a whole bank of volunteers to do welfare calls um so we have 360 services um around england and wales and you know you can't really get a feel for what's going on there in terms of morale you can watch all the quality indicators and so on but the welfare calls were really appreciated and we just did them on a fortnightly basis but the unexpected benefit of them was that it massively increased the network networking of the organization so we had a lot of people from our central functions you know in finance or i.t or or whatever who were part of that team and it made them really really connected with what we do as an organization and and they've made some friendships i think which will sustain for a really long time it's that secret power of that telephone again just just picking up picking up the phone matt do we have any other questions certainly yeah there's one more here um if there's one defining moment in your career what is it and why i don't it's not aimed at anybody in particular does anybody want to take that one first i'll have a go i mean i think coming from a technology background technology's always been changing and when i do careers talks i always say you know the job like well that my previous job wasn't invented when i graduated um and when i graduated the job i went into then which involved printing the phone book doesn't exist now um so i feel like i've been through a number of technology technologically driven changes but without doubt my my move to the third section to the church of england is has been one of the biggest changes i've ever made and i think had i not had a bit of time to think about what it was i wanted to do with my career i'd probably still be in the tech sector and consulting so it's it's been a change asked me next year if it was the right one um but i'm really enjoying it now but i think just be brave and i've always said why not it's a bit like why do you climb everest because it's there um take the risk once in a while brilliant anyone else i can um i think for me um it i i will dig back through the years but when i first graduated from university i had my very first job and i this was you know decades ago unfortunately but um i worked for a vice president of a bank um as her pa and joined as a pa and and she you know in retrospect she had such a huge influence on my career and i think you know it was career defining at the sort of embryonic stages for me uh and i think that just it sends the message to the women you know no matter what level that you are within the organization you can influence and you can um you can really uh evolve and shape somebody's perspective on their career um at a very young age so this this woman was was very instrumental but it isn't even until i had you know a few years later to look back and and my mother pointed it out to me to tell me how influential this woman was in shaping um how i approached my career and and i think you know again just the more um counsel and and connection that you can offer to to other females in the workplace is is something that really is so helpful and and empowering for for women thank you holly matt do we have time for for one more uh panelist to respond yes yes sir absolutely foreign yeah i think um so following on what holly was saying i think what i found is i had a like a female boss in my early career who really trusted me just the second day she met me she just blindingly trusted me to lead on a project and just put it in my hands and just said go with it and that whole trust that she had in me just made me work above and beyond because i felt like i have to meet that trust so i think one key thing for me was that someone trusted me so that's what i try to do in turn with a lot of our employees and just trust them that they will do things right and if they need me they will come back and i think you had one you wanted to say something too a quick one actually and it's it's the importance of remembering that the other half of the population can also be mentors which is my first kick my first defining moment was a male boss told me i was lazy and he wasn't wrong that i just was doing as little as possible to get as big a bonus as possible and he wasn't wrong and to either start working or refire me um and he then promoted me and what i discovered at 25 was that career was what i wanted whereas i'd been treating it as if it was a job and if it wasn't for um this particular individual i would probably still be doing a succession of jobs because i had no ambition whatsoever i didn't realize that um as kind of working-class glasgow female you could actually have ambitions beyond the next job and it took a very stroppy welshman to give me that kick and i've been forever grateful and i also believe in giving it back so i have also not just done the mentoring but i have occasionally given a female that i've been mentoring the kick which is you've got to believe in yourself because if you don't who will great what uh what a positive note to to end the discussion on so thank you very much so um i wanted to take the chance to thank you um ladies for your wonderful stories your great insights um i've personally found it uh really fascinating and i'm sure um that our audience has as well so really really appreciate you being available and giving up your valuable time today um thank you again as well to our audience for for dialing in um early this morning we really hope that you've also enjoyed it once again that will be um you know it's been recorded and will be available on our website later today so we really hope that you have found it useful um and i will walk away with that the the words just said about staying true to ourselves so um i wish you success particularly in those roles that have been very new this year and obviously in in all your all your other positions um but thank you once again panelists for for your time and uh your inspiration thank you thank you thank you thank you

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