Helena Morrissey - A Good Time to be a Girl

A lack of consistency between what is said and what is done is a common but significant problem. It breeds disillusionment and distrust. Leadership teams are often very keen, almost desperate to see a better gender mix and frustrated by a lack of progress but completely oblivious to situations like my gym companion’s. If we don’t speak up – not belligerently or militantly, but to point out the inconsistencies – the gap in their understanding will persist. Of course, some jobs necessitate travel and episodes of working round-the-clock, but constant pressure should not be a role requirement: it certainly does not bring out the best in anyone, man or woman, and is unsustainable.

This example highlights a widespread problem: diversity and inclusion are usually treated as enhancements, not as core to business success . There are still many challenges to the idea that diversity does enhance results, and we will examine the evidence later, but for now let’s explore why there is such a prevalent gap between what is said by CEOs and what happens in practice.

Dame Fiona Woolf hosted a diversity conference at the Mansion House when she was Lord Mayor of the City of London in 2015 (only the second female Lord Mayor in 800 years). I was keen to speak at this particular conference because the target audience was middle managers, often thought to be the sticking point when it comes to making progress towards more inclusive workplace cultures. After my presentation one gentleman raised his hand. How, he wanted to know, did we fit diversity and inclusion into our already busy work schedules? He wondered if I recommended allocating specific time to the issue, say, an hour a week? He couldn’t see that this was like suggesting we allocate a time to say, being nice.

That may sound like an outlier but this lack of understanding is not uncommon. One of the reasons why we have made relatively slow progress is our tendency to separate ‘diversity and inclusion’ efforts into a distinct area. Instead, they should be inseparable aspects of culture. Attitudes and behaviours are hard to change, but we can shake them up by making the issue central, as part of the everyday.

If you run a business, you may think you are already approaching diversity in this integrated, seamless way. One idea to test that out: are jobs at your company flexible by default or do staff need to request permission to work in a flexible or agile way? In 2015, PriceWaterhouseCoopers in Australia took what might seem a radical step, to make all its 6,000 roles flexible, giving employees the freedom to choose their own working hours. Staff might work part-time, job-share, vary their work hours or work remotely. They didn’t need to make their case: instead, their manager was responsible for piecing together different working practices to ensure that the team was effective. For most people, it wasn’t a question of working either more or fewer hours, just differently. Significantly, the motivation behind PwC’s move was to attract high calibre talent to the firm.

At Newton, in something of an experiment soon after becoming CEO, I introduced a four-day-week option for any member of staff who wished to take it. The option was for an initial six months, and then employees could decide to stay on the four-day week or revert to full time. As many men as women took up the offer, including some of the most senior male fund managers, who then stayed with this arrangement for a decade or more. There was no stigma attached to the decision and it was not a diversity initiative but part of overall talent motivation efforts and management of the company’s resources. At the same time, the scheme certainly helped maternity returners feel confident that they would still be valued if they wanted to work a shorter week – and that they wouldn’t be perceived as getting ‘special treatment’.

In 2012, I helped devise a national survey of women’s experiences in the workplace, led by Business in the Community, one of the Prince of Wales’ charities. We wanted to hear particularly from women in the 28–40 age group since that is when women’s career paths tend to fall behind those of their male colleagues (and no, it’s not just because that’s when women have children – the data shows that women with no children also tend to be promoted less than men). A total of 25,000 people took part in Project 28–40, including women older and younger than our target group, and 2,000 men, giving useful reference points. The feedback showed that only half the women felt supported by their employer in their career aspirations. Flexible working was seen as helping with work–life balance but there was a stigma attached, undermining chances of career progression. Only 40% of respondents said that their organisation valued flexible working as a way of working efficiently .

Overwhelmingly, women said they did not want special programmes, they just wanted to be managed better.

Increasingly, in our knowledge-based economy, performance will be measurable in terms of results, rather than hours at the desk. Some jobs lend themselves more easily to this and, given that flexible working was not even a concept in the late 1980s, I made a fortunate choice of career. At the end of each quarter or year, the performance of the funds I managed stood as an objective record for anyone to see. It would have been much tougher to combine a large family with being, say, a corporate finance lawyer, where the work is transaction-based and individual contributions are often measured in billable hours. In 2016, PwC’s 25th annual Law Firms Survey revealed that newly qualified lawyers at the UK’s top ten law firms are set an average annual billing target of nearly 1,600 hours. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most lawyers fall short.

The meritocracy that I benefited from at Newton can be the corporate cultural norm, not the exception. Beyond a small number of organisations, we haven’t yet really shaken up our working structures to attract more diverse talent – or taken full advantage of technology to make work more of an activity than a place. Instead, we’ve tended to add in programmes around the edges designed to encourage those who are outside the ‘norm’, but often this draws attention to the problem and may have the counterproductive effect of making difference appear troublesome. We’ll explore approaches that work better in Chapter 6.

There’s also a tendency to leave those in the diverse or under-represented groups in charge of solving the problem of their own under-representation. This is, I promise, an impossible task (even if an executive sponsor is drafted in to cheerlead). ‘Affinity groups’ or special interest networks can encourage people to feel less alone, but won’t do much for their chances of promotion and obviously do not foster inclusion. Talking to ourselves is never going to get us very far.

One evening, I arrived to give a speech at a diversity event hosted by one of the big four accountancy firms. The first problem was that I could see from a quick glance that the audience comprised only women, ethnic minorities, and one or two disabled people – where were all the white men? I was told they hadn’t been invited, which immediately seemed to limit the event’s potential impact. The few members of the leadership team who were there in a supportive role appeared downcast. I asked what the problem was: earlier that same day, the firm had the chance to pitch to an important prospect but the presentation team had been asked to leave as soon as they entered the room. Apparently the potential client had specifically asked for a diverse team but the group that had arrived to present was all-white, male and middle-aged. My hosts explained that of course they had read the brief, and a young woman had been due to go along but she was off sick and no one had remembered the diversity point until it was too late. The issue just wasn’t front and centre of anyone’s mind. In contrast, Stewart Newton had created an investment philosophy where difference was integral to the thought-process, where multiple perspectives were valued. That was great not just for me, but for anyone who enjoyed thinking laterally, being challenged and challenging others.