Women in Financial Services
Doing the same old thing in the same old way?
Mark.Freed / 17 Feb 2017
There can't be many financial industry leaders who are still living in the past and don't believe in the Gender Dividend - the economic benefit derived from a more gender balanced workforce. The majority of financial institutions have targets, some very public, for improving gender diversity particularly at senior levels. However, you don't have to look very far to see that most are not doing too well in this regard. Using publicly available data, our research shows very few have been able to exceed 25% women recently across all senior hires. If your recruiting balance is 25% then you are unlikely to be able to achieve the target of 30% which is the recognised point at which the gender dividend starts to have an impact.
Lack of progress raises the level of urgency
One of the key problems seems to be that whilst institutions have moved to the present in terms of their understanding of the benefits of a better gender balance, recruitment processes are still in the past. If you keep doing the same old thing in the same way you will get the same old results. If you are recruiting from a talent pool that is predominantly male then your candidates are likely to be predominantly male.
What is your strategy to expand your pipeline of women leaders?
With a significant network of women pursuing careers in financial services, E2W offer an alternative; a predominantly female talent pool. Last year we launched our Stars programme, - an antidote to the traditional talent pool and recruitment processes and which enables our institutional clients to ‘do it differently’ and recruit the best. Senior women from the industry are part of our community and we confidently introduce them, to our clients. The programme aligns its aims to our clients’ goals to gain better gender balance, stronger pipelines and challenges them to consider different ways of meeting resource requirements.
As one institutional client described, “So I could be looking for a token male to put on the shortlist” or as one of our network members explained, “Institutions that retain E2W to help them recruit are going the extra mile to find female candidates. I take comfort from that and believe they will also go the extra mile to support me in my career and to help me achieve my aspirations”.
For more information;
Institutions and Recruiters – Mark.freed@e2w.co
Women pursuing financial services careers – tinafreed@e2w.co
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