What can you do to narrow the gender divide - Viewpoint - careers advice blog Viewpoint careers advice blog

What can you do to narrow the gender divide - Viewpoint - careers advice blog As Managing Director of Asia for the world’s leading specialist recruitment firm, I feel I have a responsibility to make an impact on improving the world of work in our region. More needs to be done to address issues prevalent in our labour markets and gender diversity is one such issue I’m surprised by the lack of advancement on. In Asia, there is a lot to be proud of, such as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ‘Abenomics’ growth strategy in Japan, which has a goal of having women in 30 per cent of leadership positions by 2020. And in Malaysia, Prime Minister Najib Razak launched the 30% Club to help the country achieve its target of tripling the percentage of women on companies’ boards to 30 per cent this year. But there really is a long way to go. According to the Hays Gender Diversity Report published this International Women’s Day, most people in senior leadership roles are still men and fewer women aspire to a top leadership position in their career than men. These are disheartening findings and show that more progress needs to be made to truly achieve gender equality in the workforce. The role of your employer I guess I struggle to understand why it’s still a pipedream. Throughout my career I have been given equal opportunity, but then again maybe I’ve just been fortunate to have worked for a company and with people where gender was never an issue. I started working at Hays in 1994 as an Associate Recruitment Consultant, and over the course of 22 years, have embraced every opportunity and moved around the world, from the UK to Australia to Japan and now China. With every move, Hays allowed me to develop and learn new skills, which enabled me to progress to my current role. Career paths at Hays are determined by our individual performance so I never questioned my ability to progress as I was able to control that through the results I achieved. Being named in the ‘2015 International 50’ as well as ‘Global Power 100 Women in Staffing’ lists are accolades I’m very proud of and want to be able to put to good use to inspire women in the workplace and improve gender diversity. I believe more workplaces need to highlight female roles models, change organisational policy and give better board backing for diversity issues. But one of the most practical measures that every organisation can do to alleviate the imbalance is to establish performance-related policies. As I and others at Hays have experienced, this ensures that people progress based on their performance alone. It helps remove bias and build a culture of meritocracy. The business benefits The business case for diversity is strong, and is well-articulated by my colleague Yvonne Smyth in her blog ‘4 business benefits of diversity’. Not only does a pipeline of female talent broaden the talent pool, it strengthens the problem solving abilities of an organisation, with a greater range of knowledge and experience to be shared. That’s something I’ve learnt in my role managing 20 different nationalities of our 600 staff across Asia. Diversity of gender, or age or nationality for that matter, breeds diversity of thought and the most innovative solutions. Breaking down barriers Everyone, presented with the opportunity and access to the right development, training, systems and tools they need to excel, can take control of their own success and destiny, as I have done in my career. It’s also up to you as an individual how high you set your sights and how far you are willing to go. To the women reading this, don’t sell yourself short and think of your gender as a barrier to success, I along with many other successful female leaders are living proof that it is not.