Gender balanced management teams make for safer and more engaged employees, Sodexo study finds

Study of 50,000 Sodexo employees finds teams with gender diversity achieve better results across the board

International services company Sodexo has found teams managed by a balanced mix of men and women are more successful across a range of measurements including employee engagement and health and safety.

The five-year study of 70 Sodexo entities across different functions represents 50,000 managers worldwide and tested the performance implications of gender-inclusive work culture. The study examined women across all levels of management – not just upper-level leadership positions – in order to investigate the “pipeline” that will ultimately affect gender balance at the top tier of businesses.

Sodexo’s study found that non-financial factors can also significantly benefit from a more equally structured leadership, with benefits including;

Gender-balanced management reported an employee engagement rate that was 14 percentage points higher than other entities

Gender-balanced entities saw the number of accidents decrease by 12 percentage points more than other entities.

Gender-balanced entities had an average client retention rate that was 9 percentage points higher than other entities.

Gender-balanced entities had an average employee retention rate that was 8 percentage points higher than other entities

Operating margins significantly increased among more gender-balanced teams than other teams.

The pattern of results indicated that a near-equal balance of men and women in management was critical to observing gains in financial and non-financial KPIs. Once the proportion of women in management exceeded 60%, the benefits plateaued, confirming that a mix between 40% and 60% is necessary for optimal performance.

Analysts also found a direct correlation between the percentage of women in the total workforce and those in management, indicating gender-balanced workforces and leadership create an environment supportive of career growth for women. This lends support to the idea that gender parity in top leadership is closely related to the pipeline of women in the workforce.

Sodexo, already a leader in diversity & inclusion, is breaking new ground in gender parity. Today, women represent 50% of its board. Thirty-two percent of senior leadership positions are held by women globally – a 6% increase at the very top levels since 2013.

Middle management and site management positions are balanced at 46%. Currently, 59% of the total workforce works within gender-balanced management.

The Sodexo Gender Balance Study originated in 2014 with Sodexo’s desire to improve its gender parity in leadership throughout the management of its 425,000 global workforce and to expand previous outside research on gender parity in the workplace.

The full report can be accessed here: http://bit.ly/2tmBIbm

 

 

Quotas for female managers?

On International Women’s Day (8 March), Serena von der Heyde FIH MI makes the case for affirmative action to achieve greater diversity in the boardrooms of the hospitality industry

Like a lot of people, I don’t like quotas – I don’t think they are fair – but recently I have started to think again. Nearly 60% of the UK workforce in our industry are women yet only just over 20% of our managers are women, and these figures have been almost static for more than 20 years.  We know that businesses with more women leaders are more successful and more profitable, so why aren’t companies rushing to develop and promote them?  The benefits of diversity are proven, but still progress in achieving diversity is glacially slow.

We want a fair workplace for our young women and men, and optimum performance for our businesses, and yet a compelling business case has failed to bring about change; then should we consider quotas?

Quotas have been shown to get results, and fast.  They have been used across Europe to promote women in politics and business since Norway started in 2003.  Many countries including Iceland, France, Spain and now Germany have followed suit, and the numbers of board-level women have risen in those countries. What’s more, there is some evidence that where quotas have been in use for some time, diversity becomes self-fulfilling. The culture and infrastructure has changed to the extent that women and men are coming through to leadership levels in equal numbers. In Belgium, the quota system states that both sexes must be represented for applications for roles in politics, and recently it is male applicants that have been hard to recruit. For quotas to work, they need to come with strict repercussions. In France, businesses were threatened with de-regulation if they failed to meet quotas. In Spain there were no sanctions for not meeting quotas, and as a result Spain has been far less successful. Quotas without teeth are ineffective.

One of the main arguments against quotas is that they prevent promotion on merit. We want the best leaders for our businesses regardless of gender. But I challenge the notion that our meritocracy is working. If it was, wouldn’t we already have more women leaders? The truth is that our societal and cultural background is failing to provide a level playing field for our aspiring women leaders.  More women than men are graduating from our universities, and, on average, women have better grade degrees, but still we overlook their talents.  It is becoming clear that we have to learn diversity – it takes time for a culture to genuinely believe in the value of diversity, and then to implement processes that nurture it.

There is a difference between quotas and targets, in terms of delivering change; quotas enforce where targets incentivise. Personally, I believe that people learn better and change more when they can set their own agenda. Every business will have different issues affecting diversity, and real change is most effective when a strategy is developed specifically by the team for that business.  When regulations are imposed, teams spend half their efforts working on strategies to sidestep the new rules, and quotas can result in alienating the team.

For my own business, where we need to develop male leaders to ensure diversity, I will be:

• Ensuring full and ongoing commitment to diversity from the leadership
• Leading the development of our diversity strategy and targets
• Publishing gender pay differences, and recording gender balance across the team and our leadership team

This type of approach gives businesses time to develop a pipeline of talented women (or in our case men), so that they can make quality appointments and showcase successful women within the business. I believe that hospitality businesses should be recording gender balance, monitoring gender pay gaps and publishing their own targets and strategy for diversity.  However, if these initiatives prove inadequate, then it is time to consider resorting to the faster, but blunter tool of quotas.

Serena von der Heyde FIH MI is the owner of The Georgian House Hotel, London

Sign up to the Diversity in Hospitality, Travel and Leisure Charter here.

HQ Magazine Autumn 2017 out now

Your autumn edition of HQ Magazine has arrived in the UK and been dispatched to the rest of the world. It is available to view on our website now.

In this issue, our cover feature is on how to close the gender gap in hospitality. Globally, 70% of hospitality and tourism workers are female, and yet men hold the vast majority of management and board positions.

More women than men gain university degrees and women earn more than men early in their careers. But the situation starts to reverse when people get into their mid-thirties. Sometimes the pay gap appears because women take time off to have children. Sometimes they get ‘stuck’ at a particular level.

Tracey Fairclough MIH presents brand-new research based upon interviews with 100 women from our sector and, most importantly, provides a new road map towards achieving greater equality.

We report from an Institute of Hospitality roundtable discussion of GDPR and present the best ways to prepare for the new data protection laws that come into force in May 2018. Our participants found that GDPR is actually a good opportunity to spring-clean their data and re-think their marketing strategies.

Other topics covered this autumn include preparing chefs for the open kitchen environment, job-jumping and what it means for career progression and the new health-conscisousness sweeping through hospitality.

Editor Ben Walker AIH says: “I am encouraged to see so many of our members taking the initiative to get in touch and contribute excellent articles to the magazine. The majority of our magazine is generated by members for members. My warmest thanks go to all of our marvellous contributors. A big thank you also to our designer Miranda Willan at H2O Publishing for an especially eye-catching cover.”

Members can view the magazine by logging into the members’ area of our website.

If you are not a member, please join the Institute of Hospitality now to receive your copy of HQ Magazine.
Here is a free download from the current issue:
Report from Institute of Hospitality Roundtable on GDPR