Rina Lynch

That was the month that was… July 2018

Rebecca Dalton

She was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar – that much is true. But Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez didn’t need anyone else to pick her up and turn her around, make her into someone new. This sister was doing it for herself. The 28-year-old native New Yorker beat veteran Democrat, and predicted future party leader, Joe Crowley in the primary ballot for November’s important mid-term elections. It caused a major shock to the Washington establishment, and a minor outbreak of unfortunate ‘dad music’: Crowley marked his defeat by picking up his guitar and dedicating a rendition of ‘Born to Run’ to Ocasio-Cortez.

It certainly looks like nothing’s gonna stop her now; if she wins her place in the House of Fun (aka Congress) she’ll be the youngest woman ever elected.

And that really is enough dreadful puns on terrible 80’s pop songs.

Meanwhile, you may remember a year ago the BBC was forced to reveal the pay packets of its highest earners. Cue much astonishment that so many men were paid so much more than so many women.

Auntie promised to do better. Several high-profile white, middle-aged men were given very public pay cuts. But, learning a trick or two from governments past and present, this year the Beeb altered the way it presents the figures. The production arm has been hived off and is called BBC Studios; as a commercial entity it doesn’t publish how much it pays its stars. This means many top presenters have conveniently fallen off the best paid list, and others such as John Humphrys only have the part of their salary paid by the licence fee in the public domain.

It was a cunning plan and should have highlighted the increasing proportion of women edging into the top salary brackets, while fudging the issue of the stark pay differential with men.

The new figures were revealed, and (drumroll…) ta da! Now there are no women at all in the top 10 highest earners. Claudia Winkleman is still head girl: but now down at number 13 on the list.

Good Job!

“Where are all the guys?” Why men avoid entering the gender parity debate.

Guest blog by David Levenson*

This article has been a long time in gestation – novels have been written quicker. But its development, alongside the evolution of my views, has given me the confidence (yes, men need confidence too) to write for Voice At The Table. It is also the story of why the men who should be publicly leading on gender equality mostly stay silent.

The inescapable conclusion is that men are too scared to engage on a subject that is so often regarded by them as a hot potato. Alternatively, we just don’t get it – we don’t see it as a problem, certainly not in a business or work context. It ends up that women’s issues are for women alone to comment on.

However, what is needed here is less gender politics and more honest conversation.

To the women who I hope are reading this, my message is simple – get the men in the room, onto the social media feeds and get them talking. It’s time to engage the guys in the gender parity debate and stop them from finding reasons to opt out.

So, here is the tale of my journey through diversity politics and how it relates to the wider issue of male engagement.

Fifteen months ago, I stumbled upon an article by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox of the consultancy 20-first in the Harvard Business Review. Her argument that gender equality is more than a “women’s issue” rang a bell for me and made me think about my position and indeed my role in helping to achieve parity for women on pay and in the boardroom.

Moreover, it convinced me that successful gender balancing requires convincing the majority of your employees that it’s a good idea. And that cultural change needs to be led from the top. Now, the majority of CEOs are male, so it follows that the equality agenda needs to be pushed… by men.

Having absorbed the article, I ran my eye down the list of comments on the LinkedIn posting that had accompanied the article. Dozens of comments, all from women. So, plaintively, I added a thought of my own – C’mon on guys, where are you?

As it turned out, my plea didn’t disappear into the ether. Other men started to appear and contribute views in the discussion thread. For me, this first tiny venture into the discussion was the start of a process which has culminated in this article.

Now, I may not be typical; I spent the best part of twenty-five years as a finance director in social housing during which time I worked for women CEO’s, and with many female executive colleagues and board members. It is fair to say that the experience of diverse groups generally, and women in particular, has been better than in most industries. However, it is instructive to listen to the words of Terrie Alafet, Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Housing and one of the sector’s most high profile women executives, in 2016:

“We know from our own research that as a sector, housing is actually more diverse than average…But at the top of our organisations, in our boards and senior teams, it’s a different story.”

It requires more from CEO’s than just a commitment to balance their executive teams, as Ms Wittenberg-Cox suggests. It needs recognition that there is a duality of interest in gender equality. Men have a stake in the decisions that women make about their roles as partners, parents and providers. Economies and societies work best where there is openness and accountability for the contributions made by women and men in the workplace.

I like to think, notwithstanding all that the #MeToo movement necessarily represents and has had to undertake during the past year, that we have moved on from the battle of the sexes that characterised 20^th century feminism and its machoistic counterpart. Today’s workplace is less divisive and more co-operative.

But we are not there yet as all the statistics show and there is still a cultural battle, if not all-out war, to be fought and won. And pivotal to this are the men who continue to occupy most top seats at board tables and in executive teams and who should constantly send out the message that striving for gender equality at the apex of companies, financial institutions, professions and public services is in the interests of all of us.

* David Levenson is an accredited executive coach and career strategy coach. He founded Coaching Futures in 2016 with the aim of transforming people’s lives, careers and goals.

David is one of the co-creators of Raising Roofs. He is passionate about the workplace of the future and fascinated by how technology is rapidly changing the way we work.

In Praise of Show-Offs

You may have come across the twitter hashtag #ImmodestWomen and wondered what it’s all about. It caught my eye because it seems another excellent example of the ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ behaviour asked of women: on the one hand, we are expected to be humble, compliant and supportive of others; on the other hand we’re told to promote ourselves – particularly in the context of our careers – showcase our strengths and talk more about our own achievements.

To give you some context, #ImmodestWomen is a hashtag introduced by Dr. Fern Riddell who dared to insist that her hard-earned PhD title form part of her twitter handle. A backlash of comments from men berated her for being immodest, lacking humility, even being vulgar. By simply showcasing her expertise, Dr. Riddell was publicly shamed for not conforming to society’s expectations of women to be modest, well-behaved, not showing off.

How do we strike the balance between society’s – and frankly, our own – expectations of humility with the need to self-promote at work so as not to lose out to those (mostly men) who do it so well?

At Voice At The Table, we have a talk entitled ‘The Art of Female ‘Blagging’ with Integrity.’ Here’s how it works:

My good friend and associate Cara Moore and I recognised a while ago the double-edged sword society had dealt us. To generalise, men seem to be at ease ‘blagging’ their way into promotions and pay rises by exaggerating their achievements and abilities, while (again in general) employing those tactics made women feel uncomfortable.

After much discussion we came up with a way of ‘showing off’ which we think feels more natural to women. In other words, turning blagging into bragging – but doing so based on actual achievements and confidence in our potential. Hopefully it negotiates the fine line between what feels right, and what we as women need to do to be seen and heard.

We came up with our own acronym BLAG which captures the elements that make the term ‘blagging’ more palatable to women:

B stands for Bright: Being visible by speaking up, contributing without hesitation or self-doubt, confidently applying for stretching tasks, and asking for that title, promotion or pay rise. We should aim to be bright like a beacon and be known for our strengths and unique talents.

L stands for Learned: Many of us are experts in our fields, and this is important. Whatever we say or do, we need to be comfortable that we can back it up with substance. For many women, this is the reason the term ‘blagging’ feels unnatural – we think of it as a cover-up for actual knowledge. Not so for most of us, who know much more than we give ourselves credit for. Learned means not only knowing our ‘stuff’ but remembering that we do!

A stands for Audacious: This is where we must ask ourselves to ‘just give it a go.’ Often, before we try something new or more daring, we talk ourselves out of it before we even begin: ‘I’m not good enough. I don’t have the experience. They would never agree to it,’ pipes up our unhelpful inner voice. We have dozens of reasons for not doing something instead of just going for it. So being audacious is about silencing that inner critic and ‘JFDI’*.

G stands for Gutsy: Gutsy is about being brave enough to tie these three elements together and take action to BLAG by being visible, known for our expertise and knowledge, and unafraid to step up.

So, while shouting from the roof tops about how good we are is something we prefer to leave to others, there is no shame in adding those well-earned initials that follow your name. Thank you, Dr. Fern Riddell for standing up for yourself and for BLAGging with integrity.

* For those of you who are wondering, JFDI stands for Just Flippin’ Do It!

3 Reasons Diversity Initiatives Fail to Shift the Dial on Gender Balance

Advances in achieving gender balance in the corporate space are slow, at best. Despite the deafening cries for progress towards gender parity, progress is, indeed, evading us. The latest gender pay gap statistics in the UK prove the point, with the largest pay gap reported in the construction sector at 25%, followed by finance and insurance sector at 22% and education at 20%. The World Economic Forum predicts it will take the world another 217 years to reach parity, and many other reports show that, while we appear to be inching closer to a more diverse and inclusive world, progress is, well, patchy and sometimes questionable.

I have to ask myself the question why? After all, in my conversations with clients and other companies, it seems diversity and inclusion is an important part of the business agenda, and gender balance even more so. Most have already spent copious resources on various initiatives that intend to support and advance women – and, more broadly, diversity – within the organisation. And yet, few would claim genuine parity at all levels.

If you ask me, part of the problem is the belief that we’re doing all the right things whereas the truth is that most of the current initiatives fail to shift the dial on diversity.

Here are my 3 reasons for it:

All female leadership and other initiatives

The intentions behind programmes that support the advancement of women in the organisation are great, but there are a number of problems with this approach: (i) when programmes cater to women only, the overarching message the company is sending to its women is that there is something wrong with them and that it is trying to ‘fix’ them. This is particularly true of leadership programmes which intimate that women need more development than men to become leaders; (ii) even successful female-only initiatives tend to backfire because, to the extent they succeed to motivate and engage women, by the time women go back to their unchanged work environment, frustration starts to set in as they continue to perform in an environment that fails to recognise the value of their authentic contribution; and (iii) initiatives that are aimed at a specific segment of the population tend to be divisive and fail to attract the requisite amount of support and inclusion to harness lasting progress.

Appointing a female head to ‘tackle the problem’

In many cases, executive teams are genuine about their desire to advance women. But they don’t recognise it as a central business priority and look at it as a project to be managed. Having identified it as an issue, they tend to look for the right person to address it which, in many cases, happens to be the one woman on the executive team. I have heard this story so many times.

These women, or other senior women in the organisation, are anointed as Head of People, or Gender Diversity Sponsor or similar, and are expected to single-handedly ‘solve the issue’. If they’re lucky, the board will agree to authorise resources to support the position in the form of additional help and/or budget. Yet in most cases, all the resources are going to be insufficient because the ‘problem’ cannot be solved by one or few individuals, and certainly not this particular ‘problem’ (because it’s not so much a problem but an unexplored opportunity).

Parachuting women into senior roles

In many cases, gender imbalance exists primarily at the very top. Many companies tackle the issue by bringing in lateral hires as they don’t appear to have their own senior female pipeline to address the disparity. Sadly, this is one of the worst solutions to this issue. Having spoken to a number of corporates who have taken such measures it becomes clear very quickly that there is no substitute for ‘growing your own’. Attracting senior women from elsewhere is, at best, a temporary solution. These freshly-hired women – like the the women who have been at the company for years – will be exposed to the very same culture that failed to produce the senior pipeline in the first instance. As a result, the new senior female leaders are likely to become disenchanted with their roles as they come to realise that they are not hired for their expertise and contribution but, instead (to put it bluntly), to tick a box. Even if they do succeed in making a contribution to the company that is genuinely valued, companies have to carefully guard these women from being hired away by others with a similar agenda. The reality is that there are not that many senior women out there who seem to satisfy the existing requirements for board or senior level hires (although, of course, many more women can indeed to the job) so, unless companies develop their own female leadership pipeline, they stand to lose those recent hires to others that have a similar approach to gender balance.

These are but a few reasons current initiatives fail to advance gender balance at work, and there are a number of others. If you would like to explore this topic further, email us for a longer version of this post.

Comeback after kids: how to survive a career break

by Rebecca Dalton

Heat, hay fever, and wan-faced teenagers: it must be exam time. If you have a child going through this particular torture, you’ll appreciate the fine line between stressing the vital importance of it all, and not completely stressing everyone out about the vital importance of it all.

We can probably all remember writing as if our lives depended on it in that sweaty school hall. And yet, a few years – perhaps two jobs – down the line, those qualifications start to lose their significance, start to gain a little dust down at the bottom of our c.v.

But what if everything on your c.v. looks a little dusty, feels like ancient history? It’s problem for anyone who’s taken an extended career break, and that, disproportionately, means women.

Julie Coates, Head of Human Resources at Lockton Companies LPP, says life experience shouldn’t be underestimated. Her key tips for returners putting together a c.v. are: try to show you’ve kept up to date with the industry – read the trade publications for instance; highlight any new qualifications and any voluntary roles; and absolutely don’t be apologetic about taking a career break. She adds: “You gain skills and knowledge from every experience you have in life but it’s about working out how they are relevant to the working environment.”

One mother of two, who returned to her career in procurement after nearly a decade away, applied for nearly 30 jobs before securing an interview. Two years on, she’s been promoted twice in her new job. She says: “My advice would be to keep a spreadsheet of all jobs you apply for: company name, role etc. and a folder for the job specs. So that in a month’s time when they offer you an interview you have some chance of remembering what you applied for!”

She admits it’s easy to lose confidence: “A number of things go through your head: am I too old, how junior will I have to go to get a foothold, how much have things moved on. And how do I make those years ‘disappear’ or appear useful.

“You start to feel absolutely useless: the longer you are out of work, the further away any likelihood of returning appears.”

A senior marketing executive, who sees dozens of c.v.’s, says: “A career break doesn’t put me off. If they’ve done it once, they can do it again. However, I do normally go straight to look at the references. If they’ve managed to keep in touch with at least a couple of people in the industry – and hopefully senior people, that’s a huge advantage.”

He added: “Selfishly, if someone’s children are older, they’re less likely to want time off for every cough and sniffle.”

Voice At The Table’s CEO Rina Goldenberg Lynch says: “That might not be the most right-on way of putting it, but businesses certainly stand to gain much more than they realise from returners. Our role at Voice At The Table is to help companies adapt their practices to get the most out of this hidden workforce.”

The new regulations on gender pay gap reporting are forcing this issue up the agenda. However, the problem is not that organisations have been deliberately trying to make things difficult. It’s more that a lack of imagination, combined with long held perceptions about people who’ve been “out of it” for too long, are creating obstacles. Times are changing – but it’s taking time.

That was the month that was… June 2018

by Rebecca Dalton

The government-backed Hampton-Alexander Review issued its interim report on gender balance with a list of some of the reasons given for not appointing women to FTSE company boards.

Here are some of them:

“all the ‘good’ women have already been snapped up”
“our annual report runs to 165 pages. Most women are too weak to carry it to the boardroom”
“we have one woman already on the board, so we are done – it is someone else’s turn”
“most women don’t want the hassle or pressure of sitting on a board”
“this is a dynamic 24/7 company. When the Harvey Nics shoe sale is on, we lose our female workforce for days on end. We can’t risk share prices collapsing just because it’s 30% off on the Jimmy Choo’s.”

* two of these are not real excuses

Meanwhile, improving diversity at airlines was a big theme at the International Air Transport Associations’ annual conference in Sydney. Just the right forum for Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker to treat us to his view that an airline has to be led by a man ‘because it’s a very challenging position.’ Cue a slightly stunned pause and audible gasps. After which his audience at the press conference – and social media worldwide – decided laughter was the best medicine. Allowing Mr Baker to claim it was a joke all along.

Yes, of course it was dear.

Mr Baker has form in this area, once describing female air stewards on other airlines as ‘grandmothers’ and boasting that the average age at Qatar was 26.

Furiously rowing back on his cracking ‘joke’ he issued a statement that ‘Qatar Airways firmly believes in gender equality and… it would be my pleasure if I could help develop a female candidate to be the next CEO of Qatar Airways.’

Hopefully, that position may become available quicker than you think, grandad.

What’s a network to do? Do’s and Don’ts for running a successful in-house network

The rise of the in-house women’s network over the last few years has been remarkable. I watched them grow from informal gathering of a few colleagues to being influential partners to the organisation. Having chaired a number of networks myself, I understand their challenges and often work with network committees to help them identify their purpose and set strategy for maximum impact.

Here are a few tips of my own to the running of a successful, influential network:

DO have a strategy

It is difficult to have impact without a clear strategy. A clear strategy makes it easier to ask for resources and to attract volunteers. Network leaders should identify the network’s purpose, set goals and determine how they are going to achieve them.

DO represent the grassroots

One of the great benefits of a women’s network is that it is squarely rooted in the junior and mid-levels of seniority within the organisations and understands the challenges of women at those levels (e.g. need for flexible working, appreciation and promotion transparency). Networks listen and represent those challenges up the chain, providing an essential and often-lacking communications channel between management and team members.

DO provide safe spaces

Networks are great at providing a forum for discussion of stimulating topics that may not get aired, such as what it takes for women to thrive or how to treat others so they feel valued. One crucial function, therefore, is to hold that space for members so that they can discuss challenges, apprehensions and experiences in a judgment-free, supportive environment. Whether it’s by hosting lunch-and-learns on specific topics or running facilitated discussions, a safe space in which members can debate and think is worth its weight in gold.

DON’T take on too much

I frequently see networks attempting to deliver the work of another work function, like running soft skills training or helping deliver CSR strategy. While it’s great to cooperate, networks should set boundries between their responsibilities and the responsibilities of support functions. Networks are run by volunteers whose precious time should be spent delivering on their clearly defined and cautiously guarded remit.

DON’T exclude people

Some women’s networks resist opening their membership to men. In my experience, this is a mistake. Men who join gender networks identify with their agenda and want to help. It would be foolish to turn down members who are supportive and can help raise awareness. This is also an opportunity to model the behaviours you’d like to see, by treating others the way you’d like to be treated: welcomed, valued and included.

DON’T be afraid to ask for a healthy budget

As women, we tend to shy away from asking for a robust network budget, feeling undeserving or unimportant. As a result, we often pre-empt the outcome of a budget conversation with our own misgivings. Yet having a budget that allows networks to achieve their stated goals is crucial and empowering. Do what it takes by enlisting senior allies, collaborating with other networks and clearly identifying the commercial benefits of the network’s existence. Above all, don’t underestimate the value of your contribution to the organisation.

If you would like me to help your company’s network, please get in touch.

Do you have the right people on your leadership team?

If you’re a CEO or a Managing Director of a team or a business, you will have noticed that things are changing. Fast. So fast that most of us are finding it hard to keep up. The amount of information being flung at us is nearly insurmountable. To such an extent that, in order for us to digest as much of it as possible, we dedicate an average of 3 seconds to any digital message (emails, tweets, blogs etc) before we decide whether it is going to capture our interest or end up in the ever-growing junk box.

You will have noticed the louder voices of so-called minorities – women, Millennials, the politically-neglected – urging the incumbent regime and processes to change.

You will have noticed technological advances – from the speed with which information is spread to the integration of artificial intelligence with human endeavours – that affect our daily interactions.

The world is undoubtedly changing. Here are five concrete reasons to ask yourself whether you have the right people on your team to embrace those changes:

Ever-growing complexity

The explosion of available knowledge and information nowadays makes it impossible for any one person – no matter how clever – to absorb it all. The sheer vastness of information and the advances that we have made in mathematics, science, genetics, medicine, etc. make any one person’s job to understand how that knowledge interacts in order to solve one problem far too complex for any one type of person. The need to solve complex problems infers a need for diversity. The only way that vast pools of knowledge in different disciplines can be leveraged to solve complex problems is by bringing together a group of individuals who hold vastly different types of information, experience and knowledge.

Consider this example: In 2006, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings asked the public to help Netflix predict viewer film ratings. Netflix announced an open competition, rewarding anyone who outperforms their own Cinematch consumer film rating algorithm by at least 10% with $1 million. Various groups went to task. Among them, teams of mathematical whizzes, computer programmers, psychologists, engineers and data scientists. Each team did all it could to improve the algorithm. A couple of the teams achieved remarkable success by improving Cinematch’s accuracy by over 8%. But not any one single team was able to get any closer to the requisite 10% in order to win the grand prize.

You can probably guess what happened next. The top-performing team realised that their knowledge alone was not going to be enough to crack this code and offered to collaborate with other teams that had vastly different experience and knowledge. The team of data scientists collaborated with a team of computer programmers and a team of psychologists. Each group, however intelligent, operated on a set of assumptions that defined its knowledge, blinded by a number of facts that were disguised by these assumptions. It is only when the teams came together and broadened their understanding of complex human behaviour that they were able to succeed.

So, while, individually, each team had vast knowledge and understanding of their area of expertise, it was not until they combined the very different knowledge and experience that they were able to exceed the requisite 10% threshold.

In today’s world, most business problems are complex. They are complicated by the fact that systems are at once different (depending on where in the world they might be located) and yet are connected through the power of technology. They are complicated by the sheer layers of possible outcomes. They are complicated by different tax structures, legal instruments and cultural behaviours in different jurisdictions. Even a business that works solely in one country will not be able to escape the every-growing complexity of our world because – no matter where we operate – we are digitally connected to each other and, as a result, influenced by everything that’s happening around us, be it in our community or on the other side of the world. While IQ is important, as the example demonstrates, IQ itself is no longer sufficient to solve the problem – you need cognitive diversity, the different ways in which we interpret situations and solve problems. Chances are, if you’re recruiting the most intelligent people out there, you’re recruiting a very similar type of thinker. In order to grow the diversity pool in your business, stop paying attention to old recruitment habits (including the level of someone’s intellect) and start thinking about how to get as diverse a pool of candidates as you can muster.

Rising global middle class

The world’s middle-class population growth has shifted from established market jurisdictions to those we consider as ‘emerging’. Our global middle-class population is estimated to grow from approximately 3 billion in 2015 to over 5 billion by 2030. Half of this growth is occurring in Asia (China and India) as well as other emerging markets, including Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.

The explosion of the middle-class population presents the single biggest opportunity for most businesses. Yet to take advantage of those opportunities, a business must be finely calibrated to understand the complexities of those diverse emerging markets where the opportunities arise. Countries like China, Vietnam, India, South Africa and Nigeria (to name a few) are all culturally diverse, economically volatile and politically charged. To successfully navigate markets in those countries and to take advantage of opportunities in those markets, business must understand and be fluent in the cultural intricacies of those jurisdictions. Competition from local businesses is vast and local talent is scarce. So in order for any company to successfully engage in the market where opportunities arise, it will need to make space for a diverse employee base and build an environment which doesn’t just attract people from different backgrounds and experiences but is also able to retain them and, most importantly, allow them to contribute with those valuable differences that they bring to the table.

Increased customer sophistication

In this world that we now live in, where information about any given product or service is readily available, anyone who is looking for something specific, original or unique will be able to find it.

This in turn makes it difficult for companies. Not only do businesses have to closely and fully understand their customers, they also need to be able to differentiate themselves from any other company that is providing a similar service or product. As competition increases, companies cannot afford not to fully empathise and connect with their customers. Brand loyalty is a thing of the past and may not even exist in the new emerging middle classes. To satisfy a fickle client-base, teams and leader must work harder, first to attract an employee base that reflects this nuanced and diverse demand and then to retain and harness its value.

In order to do that, companies will require teams of people who reflect the diversity of their customer base. They will need to be closely connected to the customer and understand the nuances of individualised demands of millions of customers in order to deliver the requisite customer experience.

In addition, these teams will need to improve their empathy skills in order to better understand what customers want and how they want to be treated. As empathy is the main component of an inclusive environment, and inclusive team and leader will be better placed to take advantage of the diversity existing in that team and of those demanding sophisticated customers with highly individualised requirements.

Innovation and Creativity

Innovation is the name of the game for any company. In fact, of 1500 CEOs surveyed in recent years, 75% put innovation as a top 3 priority for their business. Irrespective of the nature of your business, keeping up and staying ahead might be the difference between a company that survives and a company that doesn’t.

It will come as no surprise that the best way to innovate and create is to draw from a very diverse base. The wider you cast your net for new ideas, the better your chances for breakthrough innovation. Inviting and encouraging diverse thinking in your team is fundamental to any organisation that aims to garner new ideas. Leaders will need to become more self-aware in order to guard against groupthink in their midst and to ensure they aren’t blindsided by something that a more diverse environment would have identified as a risk or an opportunity. Those who understand the greater benefits of being supported by a diverse range of thinkers (and the sacrifices that one’s ego must make in order to tolerate and, in fact, welcome dissent) stand to gain the most. A team that is diverse and is routinely freely speaking its mind will be better placed to spot those rare opportunities, develop new ideas and prevent poorly thought-through decisions.

Change in Demographics and Talent

The world is becoming older, better educated and easier to transverse. In addition, the way people work and what they expect in return in terms of future opportunities, respect for life outside work and where and when they work has been undergoing a seismic shift.

The world’s change in demographic is unprecedent and is on our doorstep. According to a number of sources that monitor and routinely predict demographics, by 2020 (at the latest), those older than 65 will outnumber those under the age of 5. In fact, it is predicted that, by 2050, the world’s population of those over 65 will represent 15.6% of the global population (up from 10% today) and those under the age of 5 only 7.2%. This will impact our workforce.

In addition, higher education in developing countries is becoming more accessible, generating a highly-educated, highly mobile educated workers, looking for opportunities elsewhere.

By way of example, it is estimated that, by 2030, China will generate more university graduates that the entire US workforce. By 2020, India is predicted to produce four times as many graduates as the United States. Given where the educated workforce will be coming from, companies will need to be able to attract a vastly different person – from every perspective – and demonstrate and ability to retain them.

And when it comes to workplace expectations, the so-called Millennials (those born between 1980 and 1996) have a thing or two to say about this. Expected to represent 50% of the workforce in the UK (and 35% of the global workforce) by 2020, any business that chooses to ignore the demands of this generation does so at its perils.

SONY DSC

What are those demands, you ask? Generally speaking, Millennials have been seen to be the one generation that isn’t afraid to vote with their feet. An average stay for a Millennial at any given job is 18 months. Why do they leave? For better opportunities. Millennials, more so than other generations represented in the workforce find it ‘extremely important’ to have opportunities to learn and grow, to have good leaders and managers (defined by their own criteria including transparency, coaching, motivation and purpose), having an interest in the role and the type of work. They are not, necessarily, motivated by money alone.

These massive shifts in demographics and attitude require a very different approach to harnessing talent. Being mindful of diversity and how to attract and retain it plays a major role in a company’s ability to win or lose the ‘war on talent’.

The question for you is, do you have the right team to tackle these changes and succeed as a business? Do you have the diversity that you need to embrace the changes and opportunities or does your team look predominantly like you and is therefore at risk of being blindsided? If you don’t have the requisite diversity on your team, ask yourself what’s missing and how you can attract and retain it. If you’re willing and able to make a change to prepare your team and company, the time to act is now!

Voice At The Table