Operations “Most businesses want to do better but it’s important
for them to acknowledge that what they’re doing is not good enough. That’s the first step to fixing things,” Khowala says. “Yes, we have seen progress and there’s a lot of awareness of gender imbalance but the needle in the c-suite and boards hasn’t moved. It’s inching up, but breakthroughs are not happening.” This is despite research from IBM, and many other organisations, showing that more women in decision-making roles means not only better financial performance, but stronger innovation, as well as customer and employee satisfaction. As Khowala stresses, the latter has never been more important in light of the recruitment epidemic prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Celebrating differences
Marloes Knippenburg is the CEO of Kerten Hospitality, a company that wasn’t featured in Aptamind’s report because of its relatively small size. Kerten operates under a different business model to the typical hotel group. Its mixed-use value proposition creates lifestyle destinations in a single building or development space combining its mix of brands, which include serviced office, hotel, F&B and wellness concepts. Under her leadership, Knippenburg’s executive team is almost 100% female, the result, she says, of leading by example. She has also noticed that the brand’s focus on environmental and social responsibility tends to attract young women, who she then gives a large amount of responsibility to early on in their careers. Ultimately, Knippenburg believes it’s important to celebrate what separates men and women, and then work with those differences.
For example, when a job post is put out, she has noticed that many women may look through it, focus on one point they can’t fulfil and decide against applying, something their male counterparts are less likely to do. “When women sell themselves, it’s never perceived as a good thing, but if it comes from men, it’s normal and kind of a given,” Knippenburg says. “Women are much better at selling each other and promoting each other, [rather than themselves].” She believes real progress on the gender diversity
front will come from women recruiting women or women promoting and motivating other women into certain positions. “It’s like when you climb over a wall first and then help the rest to climb up too,” she explains. “I don’t think you can necessarily change the whole system and say, ‘Now we need to recruit more women and hopefully they will just apply’. We as women have quite a big responsibility in driving this change, as much as men.” Many large hotel groups, including Accor, have
launched mentorship programmes to help bridge the gap between the highest echelons of leadership and
Hotel Management International /
www.hmi-online.com
the women coming up behind them. A large part of Accor’s RiiSE gender diversity network, which was set up in 2012, is focused on knowledge sharing through a mentoring programme and the promotion of female talent to senior positions. Today, there are 26,000 members in 100 countries, with specific programmes in different regions. The ‘For Women By Women’ mentoring programme in the UK aims to support victims and survivors of domestic abuse, whose employability options have been limited by the impact of Covid-19, by building up their skillset and creating fair and inclusive opportunities.
“When women sell themselves, it’s never perceived as a good thing, but if it comes from men, it’s normal and kind of a given.”
Marloes Knippenburg For Khowala, the important thing with these sorts
of initiatives is to be able to define success in clear and concrete terms. “You have to hold people accountable for getting women promoted into leadership roles and then you have to toe the line on that,” she stresses. “If part of the business was underperforming, we would do a deeper dive, we would measure, track, give responsibility to people and set refined targets. We need that same mentality to fix gender equality.”
Forcing change Knippenburg agrees that concrete targets and even legally enforced quotas are essential to force the change that needs to happen. It’s only when buddy systems or mentorship programmes are combined with mandates, such as a 50-50 split when shortlisting for a position, she says, that people will really start to take the issue seriously. “If you look at sustainability, when there were
no laws, we weren’t talking about it as much. Now governments have put measures in place, potential investors are asking ‘What are you doing on this front?’ Unless you force something, there will be a very small percentage of people wanting to change.” This is borne out by figures from the Gender Statistics Database from the European Institute for Gender Equality, which Khowala and her team analysed as part of another project she is launching. FiveEightTen, which is named after three of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – Gender Equality, Decent Work & Economic Growth and Reduced Inequality, is a tool for hospitality companies to track diversity and inclusivity data. Recent research the organisation carried out tracked the progress of more than 200 companies in the travel and tourism space between 2010 and 2020 and found that the
40%
The percentage that female representation falls to at mid- management level, falling to 33% at senior executive level. The Washington Post
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