Building together a more inclusive company that gives meaning to work for all, men and women alike, and improves performance.
Gender diversity: an indicator of inclusion
For the company, gender diversity is an indicator of whether or not all its employees, men and women alike, can thrive, develop their talents and contribute to performance.
Poor gender diversity scores reveal a worrying waste of talent, particularly female talent.Conversely, good gender diversity results at all levels of the company reflect the company’s ability to eliminate a series of barriers – visible or invisible, individual or collective, conscious or unconscious – that prevent the development of all talents.
Building an inclusive organization through a gender diversity perspective
Our corporate cultures are still marked by a stereotyped vision of roles, skills, availability, leadership and so on.
This generates a multitude of daily practices that are in fact only suitable for one category of people, creating insurmountable barriers for others: meeting times that are too early in the morning or too late in the evening, lack of punctuality that disrupts even the tightest schedules (for example, those of mothers), refusal of part-time work (80% of which is taken by women) for managers, seminars lasting several days away from home, hierarchical advancement subject to geographical mobility constraints, informal evening discussions that exclude those with family responsibilities…
We call these practices “exclusionary practices”: they are powerful destroyers of meaning at work, not only for women but also for many employees, especially the younger generations.
A daily challenge involving all levels of the company
Transforming our traditional one-size-fits-all companies into companies that make room for all talents, however different they may be: this is the challenge of inclusion, which in very practical terms means tirelessly tracking down and eliminating exclusionary practices.
It’s an exciting task, requiring perseverance, intelligence, a change of outlook, adaptation, and innovation.
The first to be invited to this gentle revolution are, of course, executives and managers: their capacity for transformation and their example-setting are at the heart of the challenges of change.
HR and diversity players are driving changes in methods and processes to embed an inclusive reflex in everyday life.
But progress also means that we all pay attention to the impact of our own behavior on the group as a whole.
Gender diversity: a strategic lever for meeting the expectations of younger generations.
Autonomy, work-life balance, fairness, respect for individual identity, a culture of trust, shorter hierarchies…
All these facets of a better gender diversity also correspond to the very important, indeed non-negotiable, expectations of the younger generations with regard to work.
With Happy Men & Women Share More,
let’s change the way we look at gender diversity, too often seen as yet another legal constraint or a simple communications issue: It’s a cultural, technical, managerial and strategic issue,
beneficial for women, men and the company,
which invites everyone to question the meaning of their actions and the conditions of their performance.
In the hands of managers, gender diversity is potentially a real lever for transformation, helping them to prepare their companies to meet the expectations of younger generations and anchor their future performance.
