Best Practices in
Women’s Leadership Diversity and Inclusion
Initiatives
Research Prospectus
July, 2014
Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ........................................................................................................................... 2
THE PROBLEM .......................................................................................................................................... 3
THE HYPOTHESIS .................................................................................................................................... 3
THE RESEARCH ......................................................................................................................................... 4
THE OUTCOME .......................................................................................................................................... 6
Confidential – Please do not share
Executive Summary
Multiple studies, from multiple organizations around the world, 1 show strong, positive
correlation between the financial success of an organization and the number of women in
that organization’s leadership. Despite this, the percentage of women in leadership
shrinks from 53% of the entry-level workforce to 19% in the C-Suite. 2
The good news is that corporations are paying attention to this research and developing
women’s leadership and diversity inclusion programs in conjunction with their diversity
and inclusion initiatives. The unfortunate news is that statistically women have not made
progress at the most senior levels and most numbers for women in leadership, particularly
in board positions, have been relatively flat for the last decade.
The Washington Women’s Leadership Initiative (WWLI.org) will address this situation
by conducting research, in partnership with a nationally recognized university, to provide
a best practices analyses of corporate women’s leadership and diversity inclusion
programs. This research will document the efficacy and impact of these programs and
highlight common program components that correlate with positive results.
Our goal: To help corporations who genuinely want to become more welcoming to
women in leadership to have the best practices information and scalable framework
models needed to put effective programs in place relative to their size and budget –
programs that produce measurable results.
Our Task: To document the best practices of organizations that have put women’s
leadership and diversity inclusion programs in place, and which have demonstratively
helped more women break through into the most senior levels. We will also document
practices which do not appear to have a meaningful impact on helping more women
climb into leadership roles.
Our Partners: To achieve the goals and accomplish the tasks above, the Washington
Women’s Leadership Initiative will partner with a nationally recognized university as an
exclusive academic partner. In addition, we are seeking to work with corporate,
government and non-profit organizations, varying in size and industry, that have
established women’s leadership diversity and inclusion programs to help us conduct
primary research, develop analyses of best practices, and broadly disseminate our
findings.
To learn more about how to become a corporate, government or non-profit partner, please
visit: http://www.wwli.org/membership/sponsorships-and-partnerships/
1
WDR 2012: Gender Equality and Development (Lin, World bank, 2012)
2
Confidential – Please do not share
The Problem
Beginning almost a decade ago, academic and commercial research institutions began
publishing studies that demonstrated that where there was a significant presence of
women in senior leadership – e.g., where 30-70% of the Board of Directors – those
organizations performed better. Catalyst found that Fortune 500 companies who met this
target had an 84% higher return on sales, 60% higher return on investment and 46%
higher return on equity. 3 McKinsey has found that where women are over 30% of the top
leadership, organizations performed higher on nine different metrics, including financial,
vision, values, leadership, accountability and innovation. 4 And the European Project on
Pay Equality found that organizations with more women on boards outperformed their
counter parts by 34% (as measured by revenue. 5)
Other institutions have confirmed this finding that gender-balanced involvement in any
decision-making capacity leads to greater group capability. 6 The positive impact of
gender-balanced teams is attributed to the way that women and men bring balanced
strengths to group interaction, which leads to more effective problem-solving. These
strengths include the balancing of decisiveness with collaborative decision-making,
information focus with social factors focus and analytical with emotional intelligence.
In part because of this data, many corporations now understand that unless they move
more women into leadership positions, they are not fully tapping the talent pool within
their organizations. Yet, despite many organizations making public commitments to
employing a diverse workforce in the leadership ranks, the numbers have changed little in
the last 10 years.
In 2011 McKinsey and Catalyst both published a comprehensive review of women in
leadership and found that while the C-Suite was on average 19% female, 7 only 16% of
board seats were held by women, and that 10% of companies had no women on their
boards at all. 8
The Hypothesis
Many organizations have implemented programs to grow and develop women into
leadership positions. Here are a few examples of companies who sponsor leadership
development programs to support women:
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Cisco
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IBM
3
The Bottom Line (Carter & Wagner, Catalyst, 2011)
Women Matter (McKinsey & Co, 2007, Deveaux, Devilliard-Hoellinger, Baumgarten), Is There A Payoff From TopTeam Diversity? (McKinsey 2012, Thomas Barta, Makus Kleiner, Tilo Neumann)
5 Women in the Executive Suite Correlate to High Profits (European Project on Equal Pay, Adler, Pepperdine)
6 The Female Factor (Harvard Business Review, Woolley and McGovern, 2011)
7 Unlocking The Full Potential Of Women (McKinsey 2011, Barsh, Yee)
8 2010 Catalyst Census: Fortune 500 Women Board Directors (Rachel Soares, Jan Combopiano, Allyson Regis, Yelena
Shur, Rosita Wong. Catalyst 2010)
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3
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Kimberly Clark
Lockeed Martin
Alcoa
Unilever
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Coca-Cola Company
Time-Warner
Sodexo
Kaiser Permanente
This is by no means a comprehensive list. Many corporations have tried over the years to
support the development of women into leadership. And yet, as the statistics above
indicate – across industries – these programs have not produced measurable
improvement.
What is the difference between the programs that succeed and those that don’t?
Based on preliminary research interviews with corporations, we believe that most
corporations have a genuine desire to promote women into leadership, and that many
women wish to lead. However, the research above suggests that the solution requires that
an organization make specific changes to its culture.
It is our hypothesis that many Women’s leadership and diversity inclusion programs
under-appreciate three factors that inhibit their success:
1. Culture-Focus: Many programs attempt to give women skills that will help them
fit into the existing culture, instead of focusing also on helping the culture adapt
to take advantage of the unique skills women bring to the table.
2. Gender-balance: Many programs only focus on improving women’s skills,
instead of including men in the effort to help develop strong and versatile
leadership cultures that allow both genders to succeed equally.
3. Best Practices: Many programs are developed internally, and often tasked to
respected individuals with demanding full time jobs that don’t involve
organizational planning, with the broad aim of creating a larger funnel of future
women leaders, but their development is often underfunded, not informed by best
practices from other organizations or focused on tracking metrics. Therefore these
programs are often quickly discarded or dismissed as company priorities shift.
The Research
The WWLI.org research project will document best practices of the programs that
produce results, and validate our earlier stated hypotheses. To do this we will evaluate the
following aspects of leadership development programs designed to support moving
women into leadership at major organizations:
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•
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program structure
organizational advocates
budget & resource allocation
metrics/measurements captured
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Confidential – Please do not share
Looking through the lens of these trends, this research will assess the impact of these
programs within the organization. Did these programs successfully help create a larger
funnel of women leaders? If so, how did the program contribute to that? If not, why not?
Secondary Methodology: Literature Review
We will identify relevant studies on performance of diverse organizations and summarize
their trends and findings. We will focus on findings from studies that analyze programs
which have shown to be effective at increasing the number of women in leadership.
Sources will include: McKinsey, Catalyst, Harvard Business School, Wharton School of
Business and American Express, to name a few.
Primary Methodology: Research Questions
We will conduct in-depth interviews with organizations that have committed to
implementing women’s leadership and diversity inclusion programs for a minimum of
five years. In these inquiries, we will seek answers to the following questions:
• How and why are women’s leadership and diversity inclusion programs
developed within an organization?
• How are they structured and maintained?
• How are the programs funded and resourced?
• What are the outcomes of said programs? What are the metrics used and how are
outcomes documented and used to inform the program’s improvement?
• What are the results? Are there more women in senior management positions
subsequent to the training? If so, what was the impact of the program in
contributing to this aim?
• What factors in the programs’ design is attributed to its success or failure to
produce measurable outcomes?
Primary Methodology: General Research Plan
There will be two components to this research.
The first is an online survey to document the structural elements of women’s leadership
and diversity inclusion programs within a broad range of companies. The results of this
survey will inform our understanding of how many organizations have programs and
what are the distinguishing characteristics of programs at various size companies.
The second component of the research will target well-established programs in medium
and large organizations. We will perform in-depth interviews (via phone or in person) to
capture the intent of the programs, their perceived success, and any and all metrics and
measurements of the programs.
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We would like to obtain a cross section of companies willing to commit 8-10 hours
across twelve to twenty-four months for primary phases of this research: participating
companies represent a broad spectrum across industries as well as by size (as measured
by revenue and employees).
Anticipated Difficulties
The critical difficulty will be in obtaining a large enough sample size of companies,
government agencies and non-profits willing to participate in both phases of the survey,
including to share their detailed program designs and results.
We plan to address these challenges in the following ways:
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Conduct all direct research contact through the academic partner so that industryinput is completely anonymous.
Publish anonymous results, without highlighting individual organizations
practices and results.
Provide participating organizations the option to be listed as a contributor.
Share detailed results with participating organizations, which will not be made
available to the general public.
The Outcome
WWLI.org and their university partner with publish a summary of the research results,
including a list of best practices and tips from organizations included.
All organizations that have developed, or are contemplating developing, women’s
leadership and diversity inclusion programs will benefit from this research. It will
provide them with a:
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outline of how to develop, structure, and fund effective programs;
critical understanding of key success factors; and
guidance and a business case for investing in programs to move more women
into leadership.
About the Washington Women’s Leadership Initiative (WWLI.org)
WWLI.org, a 501(c)3, is a cross-industry, multi-discipline, non-partisan, non-competitive
professional education and networking organization for executive level women. Our
exclusive events offer affiliates unique opportunities to meet and learn from some of the
most influential and inspiring women leaders from around the globe. WWLI.org’s annual
Vertici Award recognizes outstanding achievement in corporate women’s leadership
initiatives.
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Confidential – Please do not share
For more information, please contact:
Carolyn Thompson, Board Chair (Carolyn@WWLI.org)
Denisse Goldbarg, Board Member (DGoldbarg@yahoo.com)
Dana Theus, Research Committee Chair (DanaTheus@InPowerConsultingLLC.com)
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