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Chris Stylianou, chief operating officer of Sky UK and Ireland and a member of the Women’s Business Council, will be keynote speaker at this year’s Women in Business awards. Here, he shares his views on gender equality issues
What’s your attitude on putting more women on company boards?
Visibility at board level is important, but I think the bigger issue is having more women in senior management. That’s where most of the power is, where day-to-day decisions are made, and where the culture and strategy is set. It’s our approach at Sky.
Do you agree with quotas to improve the ratio of women to men in the workplace?
We’re KPI-driven and I find you need to set targets to be taken seriously by the business. For Sky, improving gender equality starts with recruitment – our target is having 50/50 men and women shortlists. Choosing from a wider talent pool gives you a more balanced intake; you then recruit whoever is best for the role. We used to be 70/30 in favour of men and are now near our recruitment target for all roles.
How do you support women in reaching senior roles?
We invest in talent management programmes like sponsorship, that pairs women and men senior managers. With good talent management we can show women we value them. We also encourage employees to think about sideways moves rather than up, for example, into areas where they can strengthen their skill sets before moving up.
Where do you find the greatest barriers to gender equality?
We’ve struggled to attract women to traditionally male dominated areas like IT and engineering. We run a women-only development programme in our home
service division, where currently only 5-10% of engineers are women. I believe 20-30% is achievable. That’s still below our target, but well ahead of the industry average.
Do you see evidence that the working environment is changing as more women take up leadership roles in business?
Yes. Reports and research show businesses do better with greater gender diversity. Men and women have different views on things and behave differently. My experience is when a team is more diverse it generates better ideas and more balance in how it approaches tasks.
What do you see as the most effective way of addressing change from the top?
Being committed and prepared to see things through. Jeremy Darroch, our group chief executive officer, recognised a long time ago that gender diversity is a business issue and not a just problem for Human Resources to sort out. He has been our catalyst for change and instrumental in making sure he leads the conversation at a group level. I’ve taken on that role in Sky UK&I. At Sky, we have a ‘Believe in Better’ approach based on doing the right thing. We strongly believe creating gender diversity should be a ‘business as usual’ activity.
How can women best engage with men to bring about change more rapidly?
It’s a question of bringing more men into the conversation. When I first got involved in gender equality issues about three years ago
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most women’s events I attended were 99% women and 1% HR guys who’d been told to go along. That’s changing. More men need to be encouraged to get involved. After all, at the moment they still dominate decision making in many organisations, so they are needed to make change happen.
What outcomes are you expecting to achieve with Sky’s Women in Leadership initiative?
We run internal and external communications, with a lot of networking events for men and women. We’ve increased the proportion of women in our top leadership group from 30 to 40% in the past couple of years, which is quicker than I expected. We’re now heavily focused on getting more women into IT and engineering roles.
What advice would you give to SMEs with fewer resources to spend on promoting greater gender diversity?
It’s not really about money. It’s about being committed to doing something, then putting in the time and effort to make change happen. Ask yourself if gender diversity is a business priority and, if it is, find ways to deal with it.
Enter the Women in
Business Awards The Awards take place on Thursday October 4 at Oakley Hall, near Basingstoke.
Entry forms can be downloaded at
womeninbusiness.biz
The closing date is June 8.
Sky high on gender equality
womeninbusiness.biz 40
businessmag.co.uk THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – MAY/JUNE 2018
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