Niven Postma discusses how organizations can attract more women and shares three ways to fill the C-suite with more female talent.
Chapter: Attracting female talent
About: Niven Postma has held executive positions since she was 29 years old, including being CEO of the Businesswomen’s Association, head of the SARB Academy at the South African Reserve Bank, and head of leadership and culture for the Standard Bank Group. She is now a strategy and culture facilitator for global clients, a contributor to Harvard Business Review and Inc., a part-time tutor at Cambridge University’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), and an expert lecturer and facilitator on women’s leadership development programs around the world. Niven also serves as the chair of the board of Cotlands, an NGO in the early childhood development space.
How have you seen the workplace evolve in terms of gender equality throughout your career journey?
I think the invisible and unspoken has become much more visible and acknowledged. So, the prevalent idea of “think manager, think male”—an idea that’s just as prevalent for women as it is for men—is changing and at the very least being challenged. So too is the South African version of “think manager, think white.”
What more do you think could be done to improve gender diversity and produce more female CEOs?
Three things:
First, stop thinking about this as a zero-sum game, that if you have more women in an organization, the men lose out. I remember a very interesting case study of an organization that was seeking to reduce the turnover of senior women and instituted a number of changes based on what women were saying. The turnover rate for women did drop, but the turnover rate for men dropped even more. It just became a better place for everyone to work.
“Stop thinking about this as a zero-sum game, that if you have more women in an organization, the men lose out.”
Second, acknowledge some of the systemic realities for women, especially in terms of the burden of unpaid care work that falls disproportionately on women. Even if the mom is a CEO and the dad is a stay-at-home dad, kids—when they are sick—still want their mother.
And third, have every senior executive—men and women—read the award-winning book Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez.
"Ask the women what they need and why. And then do something about it. ”
What should employers communicate in their brand to attract top female talent?
I’m not sure that the message is in the brand. It’s in the people. A recent conversation with a friend really made me think. She’s interviewing for a senior role, and one of the questions she’s asking herself in weighing the offer is this: “Do I want to become like these people?” Our jobs certainly give us a chance to change things in teams and organizations, but cultures, context, and colleagues inevitably change us too, and there’s a lot about the trade-offs of cultures in organizations that no one—including talented women—wants anymore. There’s an opportunity in that for all of us.
How important is it that an organization conveys a calling and purpose during these uncertain times?
TIt’s important, but it also needs to be felt in the daily, lived reality of the organization. If not, that dissonance between what an organization says it’s about and what people actually experience can be really damaging—much more so than having no purpose at all.
Request a free copy of the Empowering Women: A Collection of Thoughts from Women Leaders to Advance the Workplace.
Commentaires