STRESSED OUT

UNPRODUCTIVE WORKERS?

THE ANSWER MAY LIE IN

THEIR INBOXES!

News from everywoman and our partners, coupled with the latest thinking from the world

of leadership and diversity.

WHAT'S NEW AT

EVERYWOMAN

THE SOCIAL LEADER DIVERSITY IN

TECHNOLOGY:

GENDER EQUALITY IN

A DIGITAL WORLD

UNCONSCIOUS BIAS.

THE ENEMY OF DIVERSITY

AND INCLUSION

TAKE A LOOK AT OUR

EVENTS, AWARDS,

ACADEMIES AND MORE

07

Making it Happen!Welcome to UPDATE, the latest news from everywoman and our corporate partners. Here’s a quick roundup of the key happenings at everywoman.

June and July have been fabulous for the everywoman team; the 2015 FTA everywoman in Transport & Logistics Awards were held in a bigger venue – the London Hilton on Park Lane - where we welcomed almost 400 guests to celebrate the remarkable women in the industry. We were all in awe of both our winners and finalists, who we know will continue to inspire women and men in transport and logistics. Find out more at www.everywoman.com/tlawards

And if we hadn’t met enough inspirational women, the everywomanClub event with Karen Blackett OBE, CEO of MediaCom, was an eye-opener to an incredible woman’s career story. We’d like to say thank you to everywomanClub member Kate Percival CEO of Grace Belgravia for hosting the event.

The ‘Diversity in technology’ gathering with Melissa Di Donato, Salesforce and the 30% Club was a stark reminder of why we’re all on this journey together, driving gender diversity. You can find out more in this edition of UPDATE.

On London’s warmest day everywomanClub members were treated to a cool and glittering evening with Runiart Champagne, in the Fabergé salon at Masterpiece Fair. The hottest ticket for art lovers, this must-attend event is a highlight of the British social calendar, so we’d like to extend a big thank you to everywomanClub member Nazy Vassegh, CEO of Masterpiece Fair, for hosting the event.

Finally, we’d like to welcome our new corporate partners; Xerox, Fujitsu, Telefonica, Rolls Royce, State Street, and Shepherd and Wedderburn.

We hope you enjoy this edition of UPDATE,

Maxine Benson MBEFounder everywoman

Karen Gill MBEFounder everywoman Page 1

Diversity in Technology

in

CLUB

SPOTLIGHT ON

Page 2

MELISSA DI DONATO JACQUELINE DE ROJAS

Gender Equality in

a Digital World

We’re spending an eighth of our lives online.i Thanks to platforms like LinkedIn, it’s easy to recruit with the click of a button; networking is all the easier when everyone from celebrities to CEOs are contactable on Twitter; even our workouts are tracked by wearable tech.

In our fast-paced, digital-fuelled world, it’s impossible to get ahead without an understanding of technology.

But with a 70% drop in the number of girls taking A level computing this year, there’s still some way to go to attracting women to the sector – let alone seeing them take their rightful place at the board table.

Luckily, initiatives like the 30% Club, set up in 2010, are doing just that: leading from the top in order to encourage better leadership and governance, and ultimately, increased corporate performance for companies and their shareholders.

One such figurehead is everywomanClub member Melissa Di Donato, Area Vice President for Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific/ISV for Salesforce, as well as a champion of women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths). She was recently

appointed Leader of the Tech Working Group of the 30% Club.

At a recent Diversity in Technology event, supported by Salesforce, everywoman and The 30% Club, Melissa explained why more women need to make themselves visible.

“everywoman changed my life,” she explained. “I was that person. I always thought, ‘why should I attend these ‘women’s events’ in technology’?"

“I didn’t realise there was a diversity issue.”

Melissa was eventually persuaded by her mentor to attend an everywoman event for women in the sector – and felt inspired to step up and position herself as a role model for others.

“Before I set foot at that event, and walked into a room full of

inspirational women, I didn’t realise I was usually the only woman in the room. I looked around at all these people, with all their amazing stories, and realised I had to do something.”

“You can’t be what you can’t see,” she added. “Every single person is a role model; everyone has a story to tell.”

Now, working with the 30% Club, Melissa will be championing gender diversity in the industry with the aim of ensuring at least 30% of UK FTSE 100 boards are made up of women by the end of 2015.

Fellow everywomanClub member Jacqueline de Rojas, Area VP of Citrix, techUK President and a passionate supporter of women on boards highlighted that while 25% of board members are women – up from 12.5% - there’s still much to be done.

“You’ve been doing so much for women in tech,” she often hears, “but the needle has not moved much.”

“It’s because we’re talking in rooms without men,” she explained.

Teams with a male-female ratio between 40% and 60% produce results that are more creative, more sustained and more predictable than those of unbalanced teams, according to research by McKinsey.

To make a difference in the sector, we need to bring all the voices of diversity to the table, Jacqueline argues.

“I have seen subtle differences in approach make a massive impact on business outcomes in the boardroom" she says.

“Unless we lead with change from the top, we’re going to continue to recruit in the same image and nothing will change. We need more women in leadership for businesses to be more competitive and for change to be sustained.”

To find out more about how the 30% Club are promoting gender diversity on boards, visit www.womenformedia.30percentclub.org

і www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/digital-media/11597743 Page 3

MELISSA DI DONATO,AREA VICE PRESIDENT FOR EUROPE, MIDDLE

EAST, AFRICA AND ASIA PACIFIC/ISV FOR

SALESFORCE

JACQUELINE DE ROJAS, AREA VP OF CITRIX AND TECHUK PRESIDENT

Page 4

The Social Leader

“31% of everywomannetwork members believe they have the potential to

become thought leaders in their field”

Page 5

As the likes of Marissa Mayer, Richard Branson, and our very own everywoman Ambassador – Melissa Di Donato – take to social media to become thought leaders, June’s everywomanNetwork webinars explored a newly-coined term, ‘the social leader’.

During the webinars ‘Approaching social media like a leader’ and ‘Establishing your personal brand online’ we polled our members and every single

respondent was confident that they had knowledge to share with others; 100% agreed that there are individuals who could benefit from hearing what they have to say, however just 31% thought they had the potential to become a thought leader in the industry right now and only 6% felt they had defined their personal brand both on and offline.

Once upon a time you needed a knighthood or a

ranking in the Forbes rich list to have your words broadcast. Now we have LinkedIn – the largest digital network in the world at 364 million members and counting and times have changed. These days anyone and everyone has access to LinkedIn’s open publisher platform – a tool that allows you to share a blog post at the click of a few buttons.

There is a diverse range of other social platforms that are a podium for

professionals to find their voice and there’s an audience out there waiting to hear from anyone who dares to establish themselves as a ‘social leader’. Facebook sees 1.44 billion active users a month, while Twitter receives 302 million with 6,000 tweets sent every second of the day.

Social media has an immediate and powerful impact for those who are keen to establish a strong personal brand and we’re

looking forward to seeing more everywomanNetwork members showcasing theirs in the coming months.

Recorded versions of ‘Approaching social medialike a leader’ and ‘Establishing your personal brand online’ are available to members via www.everywoman.com - contact us to find out more at membership@everywoman.com

Only 6% of everywomanNetwork members feel they have defined their personal brand both on and offline.

UNCONSCIOUSBIAS

THE ENEMYOF DIVERSITY

AND INCLUSION? Page 6

Light-hearted banter though this may have been (Hunt went on to insist science urgently needs more women), gender-based prejudices have done nothing to increase the field’s female representation, which has stubbornly remained at just 7% for the last 20 years.і Often, says Dr Jennifer Rohn, a cell biologist at University College London, the owner of such prejudices isn’t aware they possess them:

“You’re looked upon as inferior in an unconscious way.”іі

Rohn’s assertion is backed up by a US study of 127 unwitting male and female professors. Each was sent two CVs for consideration for a laboratory manager position; the fictional candidates both presented as white, aged 22 and in possession of identical grades and comparable references. The only discernible difference was

their names. The upshot? ‘John’ was more likely to be hired and at a starting salary of $4,000 more than ‘Jennifer’.іiі

“Biases are ingrained from an early age,” says Dan Robertson, Diversity & Inclusion Director at the Employers Network For Equality & Inclusion (ENEI). “They’re formed through your socialisation – the experiences you have as a child; the conversations at home;

the toys you’re given; the labels attributed to your behaviours."

“They can also form through media exposure – gender portrayals in cartoons, soap operas, movies and novels. And our personal experiences play a part too. A male manager may make assumptions about how all women behave at work based on the actions of a few female employees,” says Robertson.

The unpalatable truth is that unconscious bias plays out in many common workplace scenarios.

Page 7

In June 2015 Nobel Prize winner Sir Tim Hunt was forced to resign following comments about female scientists (“Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them they cry”).

A British government sting operation using false identities concluded that jobseekers with ‘white-sounding names’ could expect to receive one positive response for every nine applications and ‘ethnic minority candidates’ had to distribute an average of 16 CVs to obtain an interview. іv

Only 14.5% of men in the US stand over six foot, but nearly 60% of Fortune 500 CEOs fall into this bracket, leading one study to conclude that every inch of additional height relates to a corresponding annual salary gap of £500 in favour of the tall.v

Economist Daniel Hamermesh found that the best-looking one third of the population makes 12% more than least attractive individuals – an earnings gap which can, over a lifetime, amount to $230,000.vi

Nearly 80% of hiring managers in the UK admit negative biases towards regional accents (most notably Birmingham, Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow and London).vii

Affinity bias i.e. ‘the same as me’, can see that juicy role going to a graduate of the same university we studied at, or someone whose CV hints at a mutual hobby. Such bias can have a long-lasting effect. “If you hire in your image, you’re more likely to award that individual stretch assignments or informal mentoring,”

says Robertson. “These micro-inequities add up to a framework of inclusion which sees you support their ideas and enable their visibility across the organisation.”

Ingrained prejudices become self-perpetuating through confirmation bias, whereby we seek evidence to confirm that our original perception was correct. If you have an inherent belief that employees on flexible work schemes are less committed than those working traditional hours, you may start to develop perceptions of someone working flexibly which

confirm that belief. The employee with a later start time is also liable to comparison bias, and perceived as ‘late’, ‘unreliable’ or even ‘lazy’ when compared to colleagues seated by 9am. “In terms of who is more likely to take advantage of flexible working, it’s easy to see how confirmation and comparison biases are more likely to have a negative impact on women,” says Robertson.

This is particularly true for returning mothers, who can fall victim to benevolence bias. A new mum might be discounted for attendance at an

overseas conference in order to spare her the added stress — a conscious decision underpinned by a plethora of unconscious assumptions about motherhood.

Unconscious bias isn’t just about differences. Own group bias can see male executives perceive other males as less trustworthy or hardworking than females. And young girls fostering self bias are twice as likely as boys to worry that pursuing a leadership role will make them seem “bossy”.viiі

Training programmes designed to stamp out

the results of unconscious bias have their work cut out, and the findings they unearth can be met with resistance. “Most organisations are interested in diverse talent and don’t discriminate on a conscious level,” says Robertson, who runs workshops for major corporations. “But there’s a big jump for them to accept that their inadequate diversity numbers are a result of the irrational, unconscious decisions they aren’t really in control of.”

Putting unconscious bias training at the heart of its

Page 8

DAN ROBERTSON

“Biases are ingrained from

an early age"

diversity and inclusivity policy, Pearson has just trained up its 1,500th employee.

“We wanted our hiring managers to understand how their biases might impact not only who gets recruited into the

organisation, but who gets fast-tracked, who gets to go on international assignments, and who doesn’t,” says Abu Bundu-Kamara, Director of Diversity and Inclusion EMEA & APAC at the worldwide education company.

But the challenge, he says, is in turning the learning into actionable change: “It’s one thing for someone to come out of a session understanding that they have a bias which favours

candidates from a certain ethnic group or with a particular degree; it’s another for them to return to their desks with a clear idea of how they prevent that bias from affecting future decisions.”

At an organisational level, new policies are already being rolled out across Pearson, including a scoring system on which employees are selected for stretch assignments previously awarded at managers’ discretions.

іRoyal Academy Of EngineeringііInterview in Radio 4’s Today programme (June 2015)іііScience Faculty’s Subtle Gender Biases Favor Male Students by

The final challenge of unconscious bias training is in measuring its effectiveness. Individuals may claim to be more aware of their own hotspots, but at Pearson – where the commitment to scaling out unconscious bias training to 40,000 employees will require building a bespoke e-learning platform – the return on investment will need to be calculated in much more concrete terms.

“There will be some very intentional questions around diversity and inclusion in our engagement surveys over the coming years,” says Bundu-Kamara. “But ultimately the proof will be in the numbers. Our population needs to look different in five years' time. From the number of women on our board, to the gender split in specific teams, we’ll be looking for clear indications that unconscious bias training has paid off.”

Moss-Racusin, Dovidio, Brescoll, Graham & Handelsman (Princeton University: 2012) іvA Test For Racial Discrimination In Recruitment Practice In British

Cities by National Centre For Social Research on behalf of The Department For Work & Pensions (2009)vThe Tall Book by Arianne Cohen Page 9

(Bloomsbury: 2009) vіBeauty Pays: Why Attractive People Are More Successful by Daniel Hamermesh (Princeton University Press: 2011)

vііResearch by Peninsula Group Limited (2015)vіііbanbossy.com.

ABU BUNDU-KAMARA

“...we’ll be looking for clear indications that unconscious bias training has paid off.”

Page 10

THE ANSWER MAY LIE INTHEIR INBOXES!

STRESSED OUTUNPRODUCTIVE WORKERS?

It’s been blamed for the UK’s low productivity levels. A third of us are so obsessed we do it from our sun loungersі. And a former government advisor says its prevalence is making us ‘sick’. If our relationship with email in 2015 were captured in an emoji, it wouldn’t be pretty.

How we use email hasn’t come under such scrutiny since 2011, when Atos CEO and former French minister for Economy, Finance and Industry, Thierry Breton announced his ‘zero email initiative’, a directive to his 80,000 workers to avoid emailing in the same building; his eventual goal to eradicate internal email across the IT organisation’s 42 countries. Critics

scoffed, predicting that by year-end, Breton’s vision would go the way of the fax machine.

Fast forward to 2015, and our relationship with the send/receive button is once again in the news, sparked by a remark made by Sir Cary Cooper, Professor of Organisational Psychology & Health at Manchester Business School. In his keynote speech on employee wellbeing at the British Psychological Society’s annual conference, he proposed that information technology is one of the factors affecting “workplace overload” and that our proclivity for checking emails in bed, at the dinner table and during

family time, needs urgent addressing. It’s perhaps, he suggested, one of the factors behind new figures which place Britain’s productivity gap with other G7 nations at its widest since 1992, 17% below the average of other leading industrialised nationsіі.

His comments made the front page of The Times, “primarily”, believes Cooper, “because they touched a nerve in almost everybody.”

“Email has a very important role in business, but in embracing this technology – perhaps a little too enthusiastically – we neglected to consider the consequences for our personal lives and our

workplace wellbeing.”

Fear of falling behind a deluge of emails is a major source of anxiety for as many as 67% of holiday-goers.ііі One study found that a distracting email notification increases the time it takes to complete a task by one third.iv While another concluded that completely disconnecting from your inbox for just one week drastically reduces stress levels.v

When Atos delved into its internal email epidemic, it found that barely 10% of mails sent warranted attention. Yet almost three quarters of workers estimated they spent 25% of their time on inbox management – a fact which

caused 82% significant stress, and an enduring pressure to ‘be seen’ on email outside office hours - to the tune of 20 hours per employee per week.

“We used to have the jacket on the back of the chair syndrome, where employees would leave evidence of themselves in the building so that passers-by assumed they were working late. Today we have email and there’s an element of machismo at play in this ‘presenteeism’ around late night, weekend and holiday emails,” says Cooper.

Now four years into ‘zero email’, Atos says it has reduced inbox sizes by 64% (an employee who once received an average 100 emails a day now receives fewer than 40). Furthermore, up to 220 ‘business processes’ - including leave bookings previously handled by email - have been redesigned to become ‘email free’. All in all Atos estimates it’s saved 25% in unproductive time, and created a seismic shift in how information

“...we neglected to consider the consequences for our

personal lives and our workplace wellbeing.”

Page 11

SIR CARY COOPER

is communicated and shared across the business – something Breton says was inspired by its youngest newcomers, many of who grew up with social media and, prior to appointment, had no experience of email. The organisation built a tool akin to a giant wiki, on which information and ideas are shared openly. “Instead of valuable experience and knowledge being tucked away in an individual’s inbox, it can become part of a library that adds to the company’s collective smarts,” says Senior Vice-President Lee Timmins.In Germany, where the government is considering a

ban on emails outside office hours, several organisations are taking early – and drastic – measures to encourage a healthier approach to electronic communication. Carmaker Volkswagen shuts down its BlackBerry server at 6pm every weekday, while fellow automotive specialist Daimler has introduced an ‘auto-delete policy’ on emails sent to vacationing employees; a bounce-back is triggered asking the sender to try again when the recipient returns.

Here in the UK, long-time everywoman partner Vodafone is taking a more

holistic approach to theemail problem, recommending employees use it sparingly, but leaving them free to do so at hours that suit them. “Our core office hours are 10 to 3, and beyond that employees are targeted on their productivity rather than being ‘present’. We wouldn’t suggest banning email at certain times because that would severely limit options to work flexibly, something which is at the heart of our ‘Better Ways Of Working’ initiative,” says Lucielle Cartwright, Organisational Development Manager in Vodafone’s Learning &

Development team.

Better Ways Of Working was born of a 2005 flood, which left the UK head office inaccessible, and employees — separated from desks and inboxes — twiddling their thumbs. As a result, stationary desks were removed, leaving staff to choose where to sit each time they arrive at work — a move necessitating a drastic overhaul of internal communications.

“If you need to liaise with your team you can head to your ‘home zone’ or speak via instant messenger,” says Cartwright. “It’s all

about the right technology for the right task; so while employees can still email, they can also instant message, share desktops to work collaboratively on a presentation, and dial into meetings via video conferencing. Our leaders live and breathe it so it’s become culturally imbedded across the organisation. And what we see today is that there’s a direct correlation between these measures, and not only productivity, but employee wellbeing too.”

Those organisations without an email usage policy are urged by Sir Cary Cooper to formulate one – sooner rather than later given that global business usage — currently at 108.7 billion emails daily – is predicted to grow by 6% over the next four years.vi “Einstein warned that technology could surpass human interaction,” he says. “It’s happening, and workplaces have to step in when employees can’t kick the habit.”

“...employees are targeted on their productivity rather than being ‘present’. ”

Page 12

LUCIELLE CARTWRIGHT

іSurvey by CareerBuilder ііInternational Comparisons of Productivity - First Estimates, 2013 (Office of National Statistics: 2014) іііSurvey by Sunshine.co.uk

іvEffects of e-mail addiction and interruptions on employees by Marulanda-Carter and Jackson (Journal of Systems and Information Technology: 2012)

v“A Pace Not Dictated by Electrons”: An Empirical Study of Work Without Email by Mark, Voida and Cardello (Association for Computing Machinery: 2012)

vіradicati.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Email-Statistics-Report-2014-2018-Executive-Summary.pdf

Book your place at one of our upcoming Awards Ceremonies:

CLUB MEMBER FILMING DAYS:10 September14 OctoberShare your insight with the everywomanNetwork, contact ewClub@everywoman.com to confirm your filming date.View the videos at www.everywoman.com/videos

TechnologyLeadership,

IBM Southbank, London

Engineering, Royal Academy of Engineering,

London

LEADERSHIP AND DEVELOPMENTOver the past 12 years we have developed a portfolio of breakthrough programmes designed to develop female leadership and build the female talent pipeline.

Contact us to find out how we can help you develop:

• Your female leaders ― emerging or mid-level.

• Strong ambassadors and role models for women and men across your organisation.

• Leaders who understand what it takes to manage a diverse team regardless of gender.

CONTACT kate@everywoman.comor 020 7981 2574 to find out more.

To find out more about how your organisation can be represented at everywoman Academies or Awards contact Joyce on 020 7981 2579 or Joyce@everywoman.com

Dedicated to developing leadership skills, these one day events provide future leaders with career-driving techniques, real life insight and advice from successful industry experts.

www.everywoman.com/calendar

To view all of our events go to...

EVENTSTransport and

Logistics,

Hilton,

Coventry

AWARDS

ACADEMIES

AN EVENING WITH

HeatherRabbatts CBE

24 September 2015

Page 13

ELEVATING ROLE MODELS IN A VARIETY OF SECTORS.

• The Specsavers everywoman in Retail Ambassadors Programme, 17 September 2015, Claridges

• The Black British Business Awards, 20 October 2015, London Hilton

• The NatWest everywoman Awards, 2 December 2015, The Dorchester

Contact everywoman: 020 7981 2574 | Visit: www.everywoman.com

Join our growing list of everywomanNetwork corporate partners, including:

NEW PARTNERS

We’ve moved to: 3 Brad Street, London, SE1 8TN.