F
indings from McKinsey & Company’s recent report, ‘Diversity Matters Even More’, found that companies with women’s representation exceeding 30% are significantly more likely
to outperform their peers financially. Those in the top quartile for ethnic diversity also show an average 27% financial advantage over others. Yet progress towards true diversity and inclusion
has been slow and, in some cases, has reversed. What is holding leaders and organisations back from embracing policies that could make a significant financial and strategic difference? At a time when companies are under pressure
to maintain financial performance while navigating a rapidly changing business landscape, it seems an entrenched culture of bias is still limiting the effectiveness of inclusive policies. This is despite the evidence to show there is a strong positive relationship between inclusivity and business success.
TRANSFORMING WORKPLACES INTO TRULY DIVERSE ENVIRONMENTS Mark Freed is an advocate for transforming workplaces into truly diverse environments. Since 2002, he has been running E2W, an organisation focused on supporting and helping both women in their financial services careers and financial institutions to attract, recruit and retain them. In 2021, Mark launched Men for Inclusion to address
frustration at the pace of change on the journey to a more inclusive and diverse financial services industry. Men for Inclusion’s aim is to help more men in the majority groups become true advocates for inclusion. It is driven by the strong belief that there are economic and social benefits in achieving lasting change. “Men for Inclusion emerged from frustration with
slow progress on inclusion across all industries,” he explains. “I believe more men need to get on board with the agenda. For example, we were recently working with some of our clients at a meeting hosted at the Bank of England and we were trying to answer the question, ‘why hasn’t financial services progressed?’ “If you look at gender pay gap statistics and
women in finance statistics, there are marginally fewer women in top quartile leading roles in the sector now than there were about seven years ago,” he says. “Some firms have actually gone backwards. Financial services companies have signed charters, been under pressure from regulators, government and shareholders and there is an ongoing conversation around ESG [environmental, social and governance factors], so why aren’t we progressing?” One conclusion his working group came to is that
senior leadership teams are not fully buying into the business benefits of diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) and that an inclusive culture is not being embedded effectively across organisations.
“What we are seeing is that some senior leaders have
not created a great business case,” he explains. “Under pressure, they have gone out and collected data and that data has demonstrated that they need more women in the organisation. They have launched a recruitment drive, attempted to retain the women they have already got and changed some HR policies to make their organisation more attractive. Then they try to integrate women into the existing culture by giving them leadership training.” What these organisations are failing to do, he says, is
put real thought into creating true equality and inclusion. Despite having recruited a more diverse workforce, they have not fundamentally changed the overall culture. “True inclusion and culture change is where the
benefits will be found,” he says. “Otherwise, all you have done is counted, recruited and fixed the women and blamed the men. That in turn creates gender conflict, because a significant proportion of the male population is now resistant to these measures because they consider themselves now to be the disadvantaged group. As a result, organisations see very little business benefit because they have not embraced the inclusion part.”
MEN’S ROLE & THE PERCEPTION OF PRIVILEGE One phrase often used in discussions around workplace equality is the perceived ‘privilege’ men enjoy. Mark prefers to use the term ‘relative advantage’ to describe his position, highlighting that men have previously been excluded from the conversation around equality and that not all men have equal advantages. “Privilege is a very emotive word,” he says. “I tend to
use words like relative advantage, because when people call me privileged, the first thing that I start to think about is all those reasons why I’m not privileged. I come from a working-class background, I am dyslexic and I failed miserably academically and left education as soon as I could with no qualifications because I can’t spell and I can’t write. Whereas if somebody says I have relative advantage, I recognise I am a six-foot-four, big-framed, grey-haired man and people tend to listen to me.”
“ True inclusion and culture change is where the benefits will be found. Otherwise, all you have done is counted, recruited and fixed the women and blamed the men.” MARK FREED, MEN FOR INCLUSION
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